Mark Barton

Yes, it’s true. A Florida Black Bear hunt may be possible again in the Fall 2025 season for the first time in a decade. After learning a painful lesson in poor judgement during the last bear hunt in 2015, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) was forced to change our bear quota to zero after being sued for mismanagement.

The irony of this situation is that the bear resource wasn’t mismanaged, but the public perception is that it was. The 2015 quota was set to 320 bears, with target harvests from 4 different bear management units (BMUs). The hunt was set to last a week based on harvest success rates in other southeastern states, but the hunt was closed in just one day in two of the BMUs as the actual harvest rates were nearly double the targeted harvests. The remaining two BMUs were closed on the second day as it was predicted that the total quota of 320 bears would be exceeded if the hunt remained open for another day.

In total 296 bears were harvested, so the quota was never exceeded, but the real story here lies in the harvest success rates. To wildlife professionals and hunters these success rates indicated that the bear population was significantly higher than had been estimated prior to the hunt, but to non-hunters it indicated that we had just decimated the bear population. The latter narrative was ultimately used to bring the Florida Black Bear hunt to a screeching halt, to be revisited 10 years later.

While the anti-hunting community remains vocal on this issue, a recent survey performed by FWC indicated that the majority of the public supports a bear hunt albeit a marginal difference (approximately 60% support). Concerns raised by the anti-hunting movement include surpassing the quota, the ratio of male-female harvests as well as the well-being of cubs that may be left behind when a sow is harvested. For the proposed 2025 season, FWC has done an incredible job of building a heavily regulated hunt proposal with limited tag allocations that is fully defensible with scientific data and careful considerations to skew harvest ratios to older boars. Despite FWCs efforts to address all of the oppositions concerns, the opposition remains combative… surprise, surprise. Not really…

The truth is that while it is great that FWC is being fully transparent about their proposal, they shouldn’t have to cater to the general public, their focus should be on operating within the framework of the North American Model of Conservation (NAMC). This frame work depends on 7 guidelines known as “the seven sisters”, 3 of which are relevant in this issue: (1) Natural resources belong to the public but are managed by the government for the public; (2) Funding for management and conservation efforts are to be generated by consumptive users (hunters) via excise taxes (Pittman and Robertson Act and Dingel-Johnson Act) as well as license and tag sales; (3) management decisions should be based on sound scientific research, not politics, opinions or personal interest.

This model has been integral in the recovery of more than a dozen species in North America that have been near the brink of extinction at some point in time. Looking at the numbers of whitetail deer and wild turkeys in most rural parts of our country makes it hard to believe that these species were almost wiped out in our relatively recent past. These species were protected from harvest until a sustainable population could be reestablished (just like the Florida Black Bear), then a hunt was opened to generate more funds which could be used for conservation efforts (just like we are currently trying to do for the Florida Black Bear), and these efforts were followed by a full recovery of those species. The same story applies to Bison, Moose, Elk, Pronghorn Antelope and many more, and if we can adhere to NAMC now, there is no reason to expect that the Florida Black Bear won’t exhibit a similar resurgence.

With these guidelines in mind, it is clear that FWC should manage the Florida Black Bear resource for the benefit of hunters based on science, not emotions. Especially when those emotions come from sections of the public that clearly do not understand hunting nor the science behind wildlife management. And it is abundantly clear that they don’t understand hunting when they ask questions at public meetings like “How many arrows do you have to shoot a bear with before it is dead?” and that they are in disbelief when the question is answered with, “a single well-placed arrow is typically all it takes for a quick, clean kill…”, like this is some sort of wild action movie where the bear is Bruce Willis in Die Hard that can be shot multiple times and continue to fight. These questions and conversations make it clear that much of the anti-hunting movement isn’t based in reality but rather in emotionally charged scenarios that they have made up in their heads.

This article may have started focused on the Florida Black Bear hunt, but that hunt is just one of many contentious wildlife management decisions being opposed by anti-hunting communities across the country. All of these scenarios look the same: science-backed management decisions being questioned by emotionally charged individuals that do not understand science or hunting and fishing. And while most of our management agencies have done a good job at seeing through the emotional rhetoric and relying on science to make decisions that support the consumptive users of wild resources, the anti-hunters have started to take a new approach to getting their way. Several states are currently dealing with anti-hunter attempts to strip wildlife agencies of their regulatory powers by shifting these powers to elected officials that will have to depend on public voting to enact management decisions.

Why is that a problem? Because most people are not wildlife scientists and most people don’t hunt and fish. We are the minority, but we are tasked with conserving nature for the majority, which is becoming increasingly difficult with misinformation and emotional rhetoric running rampant on social media. Simply put, if wildlife management decisions are driven by popular vote, not only will we lose hunting and fishing but we will ultimately lose our wild places after our funding sources and federal protections are (probably unintentionally) dismantled by people who don’t understand them. But if we can get organized, get on the same page, we can prevent this doom and gloom from becoming a reality. Our efforts as a community should be focused in 3 areas: (1) Supporting our wildlife management agencies in making science-based decisions; (2) Educating the general public about the value of the North American Model of Conservation and our wildlife management agencies; and (3) Fixing the public’s perception of hunters from blood-thirsty killers to the stewards of nature that we truly are.

Notice that I didn’t mention anything about engaging the anti-hunters? No level of scientific support and logic is going to convince the anti-hunters that hunting is one of the, if not the, most powerful conservation tools available. Engaging these anti-hunter is futile and ultimately a waste of time; but hope is not lost. The percentage of the public that is adamantly apposed to hunting is small and most people are sitting on the fence leaning towards supporting or opposing hunting. These are the people that the hunting community needs to engage with; these are the people that are skeptical but open to learning; these are the people that can be turned into supporters by communicating effectively and respectfully about science, conservation and most importantly the amount of respect and admiration that hunters have for wildlife and the wild places they call home. 

As a Ph.D Ecologist, I often work closely with people who’s perception of a hunter is the personification of the disrespectful poacher that they read about in a news article. But to this day I have yet to engage these “people-on-the-fence” without at least some mild success in shifting their mindset to being more supportive of hunting and NAMC. A prime example is my wife, a Ph.D Neuroscientist (who is way cooler and impressive than me), who was essentially a pescatarian when we met. Her perception of hunters was not good, but now she is a full-on wild game-atarian, fully supportive of my hunting endeavors and my efforts to support NAMC.

How did I achieve that? I assure you it has nothing to do with good looks or charm, and everything to do with respect. It’s simple, really, you just need to be aware of your audience and think about how you talk about hunting. Understand that the things that seem normal to us can be very grotesque to people who have never been exposed to hunting. I always try to remind myself that most people have only experienced the death of an animal when a cherished family pet died, so most people associate dead animals with negativity and sadness, and that’s certainly not a good place to start a conversation with a stranger. So how can we talk about taking an animal’s life without reminding them of the time they had to bury their best friend? The key is to find a common ground, something that everyone can relate to, and luckily there is an easy one… food. Start your hunting stories by talking about the delicious meals you have prepared from wild game. My experience has been (to my wife’s chagrin) that most people will be intrigued and begin asking for more details. This is your chance to pull them off the fence to become hunting supporters.

Once you have piqued their interests, the conversation can go in many directions so just think carefully about what you say next, but here’s some things you should definitely not do or say: (1) Don’t show them a picture of you with a dead animal. To most people, it seems pretty weird that you would be proud of that. They don’t understand how much time and effort went into everything that led to that moment. So, when you talk about the hunt, focus on the scouting and the work that goes into learning the behaviors of these animals. (2) Don’t tell them how good the blood trail was, they don’t understand that it is an indicator of how good of a shot you put on your quarry. They also don’t understand how impressive it is to pull that off when your adrenaline is blurring your vision, your heart is beating out of your chest, and you’re fighting the shakes with every fiber of your being. In fact, they don’t even know that all of those things happen when a target animal comes in range. All they hear is that your blood thirsty and that you take joy in killing animals. Instead, tell them how quickly the animal died, or how it didn’t know what was happening until it was over.

(3) Don’t talk about how many or how big of an animal you killed, to them it just sounds like you’re bragging about your trophies. They don’t understand that we target larger animals because they are typically going to be older and males. And that the reason we want that is because males are ecologically less valuable to the sustainability of the population, and because older animals are more likely to have contributed to the population gene pool and also are more susceptible to disease and predation. When we present hunting in this softer, less edgy light we allow people to see that we hunters, much like them, have compassion for animals and that we are true stewards of our natural resources.

In closing, I want to issue you all a challenge: Next time you find yourself in a public setting, whether it be a work function, a wedding or even your kid’s friend’s birthday party, find someone sitting on the fence and gently give them a reason to hop down on our side.