Published: January 26, 2008 08:40 pm         

Bear World

Let’s expand Maryland hunt

I loved Chris Ryan’s quote in the Charleston (W.Va. ) Gazette-Mail when that newspaper’s outdoor columnist, John McCoy, asked him to comment about the record bear harvest in the Mountain State this past year.

Ryan is the biologist who heads up bruin management for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources.

“We’ve got a lot of bears,” Ryan said. “An incredible population. That’s the bottom line.”

As you can see from the graphic accompanying this column, bear hunting is pretty good around these parts. This is one of my favorite graphics. I run it every year. When I first began using it, before 2004, the graphic showed how many bears were killed in Pennsylvania and West Virginia counties that touch Maryland. In those days, the Maryland counties were left blank because there was no bear hunting in the state.

Since 2004, though, I have been able to include the bear numbers from Maryland’s two western counties, the only counties in which bruin hunting is allowed. Bear hunting is now allowed in all of Allegany County, though only a portion was available at first.

This graphic puts in perspective just how many bears there are in Garrett County. If Ryan says West Virginia has a lot of bears (the state population is estimated at 10,000 to 12,000), then just how many bears must there be in Garrett County.

In West Virginia, where anybody who buys a license can hunt bears and where the season is quite lengthy, 260 bears were killed in the counties that touch Garrett County.

In Pennsylvania, where anybody who buys a license can hunt bears for three days in November using a rifle, 154 bears were killed in the two counties that bump up against Garrett County.

In Garrett County, hunted by only a portion of the 220 hunting teams allowed to take one bear per team, 43 bears were bagged in just four days.

Let’s look at that a little more. With only a fraction of hunters on the ground and with a much smaller time window of opportunity and without the use of dogs, Garrett County hunters killed more than half the number of bears bagged in Preston County, W.Va., and more than two-thirds the number taken in each of Tucker and Grant counties in the Mountain State. Realize that the West Virginia season includes both archery and firearms portions and runs from the middle of October until the end of December.

You can use all the wildlife population models you want. These harvest numbers and an understanding of the way they came about in the various counties in the three states show anybody who is paying attention that Garrett County is bear world.

And now, the harvest is moving eastward. In Allegany County during the 2007 hunt, eight bears were killed by hunters.

It is time, I believe, to do one of two things in Maryland.

1. Have a one-day bear hunt for anybody who buys a license, or;

2. Continue to have a lottery hunt, but increase the season harvest substantially, to 100 bears in Garrett County, to 30 bears in Allegany County and open up the western portion of Washington County to bear hunting for a limited number of animals.

3. Here is a third option for free. Establish a limited spring bear hunting season in Garrett County.

I think, too, that the success of the wild turkey program can be used as a model to make bear hunting available to all Marylanders.

There was a time, many of you will remember, when spring gobbler hunting was something enjoyed only in Mountain Maryland. But, after years of trapping Western Maryland turkeys and releasing them throughout the state, hunters in places as mountainless as the Eastern Shore have been given the opportunity to enjoy the sounds of the gobble and the 12 gauge in April and May.

The same process could be used to make bear hunting available throughout Maryland. In fact, the Department of Natural Resources has already mapped appropriate habitat throughout the state’s other 21 counties that would support bears.

We are not selfish out here in Almost Maryland. We are happy to share, whether it is our turkeys or our bears.

Contact Outdoor Editor Mike Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.