Hunting radio-collared bears must be made illegal
September 10, 2010 – 11:24 PM CDT
With all the radio-collared bears safe, as far as we know, the time has come to make it illegal for hunters to shoot radio-collared bears wearing brightly colored ribbons in central St Louis County, MN (the study area).
We would like to gain this protection through an order from Minnesota DNR Commissioner Mark Holsten, but our past requests have been rejected, and quotes from DNR officials in Sam Cook’s article in the Duluth News Tribune yesterday sound like nothing has changed.
A reader poll associated with that article is running 779 to 87 in favor of protection. Our own polls parallel those numbers. A petition at the Bear Center already has thousands of signatures.
Legislators are calling and asking if they can write legislation protecting the radio-collared bears in this study. We’ll be asking other key legislators to add their strong voices and possibly take the lead. We want to give them support. As a first step, if you live in Minnesota, please call or write your state legislators and ask them to support this legislation and possibly even co-author it. This is the beginning of a long process. More steps will follow depending on how things go.
Here’s some background on why we are asking for this help.
Most hunters respect research and education efforts. Most are responsible and ethical and would not kill Lily, Hope, June, or other radio-collared bears.
There are exceptions, and for them we need enforceable laws with teeth, protecting these study bears.
Here’s what we’re talking about.
In 2000, a hunter shot Whiteheart, a radio-collared bear who had been the subject of the first den cam. Afterward, I had a nice talk with the hunter about what we are doing, hoping his hunting party wouldn’t kill any more radio-collared bears. The hunter laughed and said, “It sounds like I wrecked your day, doesn’t it.” A few days later, his brother shot Spirit, another radio-collared bear. They then maintained the bait site where Whiteheart was killed for another 2 weeks in an attempt to kill a third bear. The deaths set our research back years.
In 2005, 8-year-old Blackheart hung out by a hunter’s bait for several days. We thought her radio-collared would protect her. At 1:30 PM, Lynn heard a shot from the bait. Sue Mansfield was off radio-tracking other bears. The last we heard from Blackheart was her signals disappearing down Highway 169. The collar was not returned.
The next year (2006), we again posted signs asking hunters not to shoot radio-collared bears. We worried when the signs in Gracie’s territory were torn down as fast as we put them up. Why would a hunter do that? Several hunters had told us, “If you don’t want radio-collared bears shot, make it illegal.” Would a hunter shoot little yearling Gracie? We put bright ribbons on her collar. It didn’t help. A couple days later, a hunter shot her.
In 2008, Mickey, wearing ribbons, was deliberately shot by a hunting group that has since decided not to shoot radio-collared bears.
In 2009, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources posted a picture of a radio-collared bear with ribbons on their web site and sent a special letters to each hunter in the study area asking them not to shoot radio-collared bears. None were killed. We counted on a similar letter this year, but it didn’t happen. Sarah was killed.
This was particularly discouraging. Sarah’s killing came after a year of unprecedented publicity about the values of these ribboned, radio-collared bears to science, education, and the economy. Sarah was shot after years of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Minnesota Bear Guides Association asking hunters not to shoot radio-collared bears.
The shooting was certainly deliberate. There is no way a hunter could have missed the big ribbons on her collar. The ribbons are brightly colored duct tape doubled over so they are stiff and stick out.
We believe hunters in the study area should look twice for ribbons for several reasons.
A little history: when Lynn wrote the initial bear-hunting regulations for Minnesota, his main goal was to make the hunt as humane as possible. The number of kills can be limited by permits, season length, and reducing wounding loss. It is important that kills be clean and quick so hunters don’t wound bear after bear until they kill one and put their tag on it. To make clean kills, hunters shouldn’t shoot and wound bears they can only half see. Making hunters look twice for ribbons and collars in the study area will help hunters determine that their targets are bears (not people or researchers) and that they have killing shots.
Doing that is especially easy in Minnesota because nearly all hunters hunt over baits and get long looks at bears in cleared baiting areas. No hunter has ever told us he didn’t see the ribbons on a radio-collared bear. In fact, the hunters who shot Whiteheart and Spirit (both without ribbons) said they saw the collars.
There is another reason to expect bear hunters to look twice. The Minnesota bear season starts on September 1 shortly before Labor Day weekend, one of the busiest vacation periods. People are enjoying a last fling in the northwoods. Leaves are still on the trees and bushes. Visibility is poor. Most vacationers don’t wear orange. Many vacationers, especially those from out of state, have no idea the forest trails they are hiking hide camouflaged hunters with high powered rifles. Hunters who recklessly shoot through dense leaves at escaping bears can’t determine if the bear has a collar and can’t determine if people are beyond the wall of leaves. Making hunters look twice for ribbons and a collar prevents them from making such reckless shots and will reduce wounding loss for the bears.
The list of hunting accidents involve unbelievable lapses of judgment in the heat of the hunt. A common theme is that a hunter shot without identifying a target that turned out to be a person. Many of the accidents involve young hunters. The girl who shot one of the DNR’s radio-collared bears this year was twelve. Taking the time to look for ribbons and collars is beneficial to all. It shouldn’t be a hardship to require hunters to check for ribbons and collars in the relatively small area of central St Louis County. The value of the bears in that area to science, education, and the economy makes that second look worthwhile.
Is there any precedent for looking twice before shooting? In some areas, hunters are asked to count the points on a buck’s antlers to make sure it is legal. Seeing ribbons on a radio-collared bear in a cleared opening at a bait site is easier than counting the points on antlers in the brush.
Will a law against hunting radio-collared bears wearing ribbons make crooks out of hunters that make honest mistakes? It is hard to imagine how a diligent hunter could miss the gawdy ribbons we use, but if there are extenuating circumstances, law enforcement officers can use discretion in writing tickets, just as they do with traffic tickets. However, we can think of no excuse for not fully identifying a target. If it is too dark and rainy to do that, hunters should hold their fire.
Most of the hunters we have talked with would like to see a law against hunting radio-collared bears that wear ribbons. They themselves would not do it, and they hate to see non-ethical hunters who deliberately do it be rewarded by legally “getting their bear” when it tars all hunters as bad. Hunter Jim Braaten got it right in his blog at http://sportsmansblog.com/2010/09/08/minnesota-dnr-shouldnt-put-bear-hunters-in-this-position/ He wants it to be illegal to hunt radio-collared bears so people who shoot them can be labeled as lawbreakers and poachers, not hunters.
We tried asking hunters to cooperate, and have lost 5 valuable study bears since 2005. Simply asking hunters to cooperate has not worked well enough. Relying on hunter discretion has resulted in too much damage. Think how much damage a bullet in Lily, Hope, or June would do to our research, our education efforts, and the regional economy. The risk is too great. Study bears with long data histories are irreplaceable in our lifetimes.
It’s time for legal protection for radio-collared bears wearing brightly colored ribbons in central St. Louis County. The law must be enforceable and have teeth.
Learning about the lives of the 13 radio-collared bears is so much more important than killing them.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
PS: About 8:15 PM, as we were writing this, June entered her winter den. June is a major figure in the research. Her being safe in a den gives some needed relief in this tense time.