Op-Ed: Vermont’s bear hunt exposed
July 5, 2024 | By Lisa Jablow
It took a public records request sent to the Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife, but Vermonters now have a clearer picture of the 2023 bear hunt. The data that the department published in its report was incomplete, likely because the public would be unhappy to know that hunters killed cubs, yearling bears, and a large number of females. Most of the bears that are hunted each year are bears that never cause a problem with humans.
The 2023 hunt resulted in another record-high mortality rate: a total of 838 bears were killed, with 43% of them being female. This figure does not take into account: (1) bears that were killed by hunters but not reported; (2) bears killed by vehicle strikes; (3) bears killed "in defense of property;" (4) bears mortally injured but not recovered by the hunter; (5) first-year cubs that died because they could not survive after their mothers were hunted and killed.
Fish & Wildlife’s hunting data shows an alarming number of cubs who were shot and killed (approximately 47). I classified cubs as a bear who weighed 70 pounds or less (estimated to be up to a year old). The smallest bears who were hunted and killed were in the towns of Troy and Windsor and weighed just 34 pounds. The number of yearling bears -- about 18 months old -- that were hunted and killed is estimated to be 173 (I classified yearling bears to weigh 71-100 lbs.).
The data further shows that 364 female bears were killed. Even if only 10% of those females had two first-year cubs, that means that potentially more than 70 of those cubs also died. Cubs stay with their mothers for 17-18 months, and during this time they learn crucial life lessons such as where to den and what to eat. Unlike deer, bears have very low reproductive rates. Bear sows don’t become sexually mature until they reach about 3-4 years of age. Their ability to have litters is dependent on food supplies prior to denning.
Some might be surprised to know that Vermont’s regulations allow hunters to kill mother bears with cubs in sight. This disturbing fact became apparent after a Mad River Valley landowner's trail camera captured a bear hunter killing a mother bear with two cubs in 2022. At least one of the cubs later died of starvation. The landowner subsequently submitted a petition to the Fish & Wildlife Board and Department to make this act illegal—tragically, his petition was denied.
Bear hounders, including those from out of state, killed 127 bears, including a 43-pound cub. In addition to the legal hunting season, June 1 marks the beginning of bear hound "training" season, making Vermont an outlier with the early start date. New Hampshire and Maine don’t start their training seasons until later in the summer. During this time, bear families are terrorized for miles by packs of hounds. This time of year bears are still trying to put on weight, and instead of being able to forage for food they are forced to waste fat reserves and hydration fleeing from hounds. During these pursuits sows are separated from their vulnerable cubs.
When bears come into conflict with humans, it directly correlates to areas where food attractants are not secured. Bears are lured into residential areas by bird feeders, unsecured trash and other items, and no amount of hunting and killing them will stop that.
It has been well documented in peer-reviewed scientific literature that the hunting of bears does not reduce human-bear conflicts. Researchers have found: “Human-bear conflict was not correlated with prior harvests, providing no evidence that larger harvests reduced subsequent human-bear conflicts. (Martyn E. Obbard, Eric J. Howe, Linda L. Wall, Brad Allison, Ron Black, Peter Davis, Linda Dix-Gibson, Michael Gatt, Michael N. Hall "Relationships among food availability, harvest, and human–bear conflict at landscape scales in Ontario, Canada," (1 October 2014)).
Yet the bear hunt continues as a recreational activity for a subset of hunters, leaving in its wake vulnerable orphaned cubs and fractured bear families.
Former Waterbury resident Lisa Jablow is a professional musician and a member of the boards of directors for Protect Our Wildlife VT and WinDART, the Windham County chapter of Vermont Disaster Animal Response Team. She lives in Brattleboro.