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TWRA: Bear harvest may top 2005 mark
Tuesday, December 27, 2006
Last updated: 12:56 p.m. EST
By TNHUNTING.COM STAFF
By all accounts, 2006 was a good year for Tennessee bear hunters. How good? Maybe the second-best year ever.
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County Harvest 2006
Carter — 52
Cocke — 40
Sevier — 39
Unicoi — 33
Monroe — 27
Greene — 19
Johnson — 19
Sullivan — 17
Blount — 13
Washington — 10
2006 — 303 (so far)
2005 — 310
2004 — 167
2003 — 234
2002 — 150
2001 — 159
2000 — 117
1999 — 171
1998 — 108
1997 — 366
1996 — 122
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Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency numbers show that 303 bears were killed during the 2006 bear seasons. But that number isn't yet official. While the seasons are closed, some kill tags are still trickling in. That makes 2006 just the third year on record that Tennessee bear harvest numbers have exceeded 300. And it is just five — or seven? — short of last year's harvest. TWRA's annual Big Game Harvest Report details 310 bear kills in 2005. But agency biologist David Brandenburg stated in a news release that 308 bears were killed last year.
Regardless, when all is said and done, the 2005 and 2006 bear seasons will be very comparable to one another. Currently, the 2005 season is the second-best on record, while the 2006 season is the third-best on record. The record was set in 1997, when a widespread mast failure forced bears out of the high ground to search for food. Hunters killed 366 bears that year.
Part of the reason for the increasing harvests these days is the agency's expansion of the season.
“Due to some management strategies put into place in the 70’s and 80’s, Tennessee black bear population is now the highest it has been in the past 100 years,” said Brandenburg. “A series of bear preserves were set up across the bear habitat where no bear hunting is allowed and the majority of the bear hunting season was set after the beginning of December, a time when female bears are in or near their den sites.”
Of the bear kill tags returned so far, 183 of the bears killed were boars, while 120 were sows.
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