Bear Hunters seeing decline in harvest this year

Bear hunters in Minnesota are having a harder time this year than in previous seasons, thanks to plentiful wild foods like berries and acorns in the woods, according to Minnesota Department of Natural Resources officials.

Bear season began on September 1st and by September 26th hunters had registered 1,857 bears. That’s 33 percent less than the 2021 crop of 2,770 at a time.

The season runs through October 16, but the vast majority of bears are harvested in the first few weeks of the season, so it’s not likely the harvest will increase much further.

The 1,857 bears killed so far are 35 percent below recent highs of 2,992 at that time in 2020 and 2,146 in 2019, and is the lowest harvest since 2018, when 1,537 bears were recorded at that time.

When berries, acorns, hazelnuts and other natural foods are plentiful like this year, bears are less likely to visit hunter’s bait piles, resulting in fewer opportunities for hunters to shoot, DNR officials said. Last year’s harvest was likely larger because the severe drought severely reduced natural food in the forests, prompting bears to seek out human food sources, whether it be hunter’s bait or Northland residents’ garbage cans.

“It’s the abundance of natural food that reduces the overall harvest,” said Dan Stark, large carnivore specialist at the DNR. “There’s plenty of food in the woods in most places this year.”