What does the spring bear hunt mean to Ontario? Well there are two sides to this story we can look at. The human side and the wildlife side.
Being a hunter who was trained and certified within the last 7 years, I wasn’t able to have known the privilege of hunting under the previous spring bear hunt rules and regulations. But when the spring bear hunt was cancelled over 10 years ago, speaking from the human side of things, it dramatically impacted people whose livelihood depended on the dollars brought in by hunters. Be it Ontarians or Americans the spring influx of cash was always a good start to the New Year. Tens of millions of lost tax dollars for tags, gas, supplies etc. are never recoverable. People lost their businesses and the hunting tourists found neighboring provinces more than willing to accept the money they would have spent here.
Now the spring bear hunt from the wild life side of the coin. As hunters we aren’t a bunch of drunken idiots out to shoot anything that moves, which is too often the way we are portrayed. The rules have always been to not shoot a sow with cubs. That is just common sense. If you take any piece of land anywhere in the world, it can only sustain so much vegetation and wild life. When you have an overabundance of either it spills out of that area and is forced to survive elsewhere. It is the same with the bear population, which sits at the top of the food chain in our forests. Bears in search of food have grown very bold and due to urban sprawl and find themselves in our cities and towns. Negative human-bear interactions because of this caused the province to needlessly create the Bear Wise program and the trap and move to release program which was useless as the same bears would be back within the day. Since the bear population was left unchecked, the two main sources of food for the bears were other bear young, and calf moose. There is a large parallel that runs between the cancellation of the spring bear hunt and the decline of our moose population. Since the cancellation the bear population has lost its fear of humans and as such the negative encounters (attacks etc.) are more common.
So back to me as a hunter, I have gladly bought tags for the last two years ‘ trial ‘ and was successful in harvesting a very nice boar my first year and was unsuccessful this past year. That is not to say I didn’t see any bear, I did see a large amount of them. Unfortunately they were sows with cubs, so instead of shooting with my rifle, I gladly shot with my camera and got some amazing interactions with wildlife.
Hunting has never been about the harvest alone, it’s about time spent in the amazing wilderness, with some great mentors and friends. If we are successful then we celebrate with some very good meat for our families and for that we are always thankful. Wild game is the best free range, non-hormone injected healthy meats there are. There has to be a reason that the number of Hunter Safety grads are on the rise every year. And just because a hunter buys a tag doesn’t mean we are able to fill it, its hunting not going to the butcher shop. Just like fishing, sometimes you just get skunked.
Kudos on bringing back the spring bear hunt, to more than just a handful of wildlife management units. It won’t just be an economic benefit, more people will be able to taste and enjoy bear for the amazing meat it is. I personally have turned some naysayers into bear lovers with allowing them to try it for the first time. And by lowering the numbers of bears slightly, the chances for negative human interaction should also lessen. It is a win-win, and long overdue. Glad that the OFAH was finally able to lobby the province to bring it back.
Richard Bennett
Echo Bay, Ontario
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