ShawnD wrote:WOW!
That's a lot of bears, of course over time.
Do you have any idea as to how many bears come and go on your property in a years time?
We can ID anywhere from 12-20 bears a season. The 1.5 year and 2.5 year olds are the toughest to ID...they dont have any unique markings yet and are all the same size.
We avg around 2.5 bears a year at the camp property. It only takes 1 or 2 sows to replenish those numbers in the spring. So if you have 10 breeding sows, the numbers sustain themselves.
We are very careful with our harvest numbers because you have to remember, the sows only have new cubs every second year. My uncles bear was taken at a remote site where we scouted out new/additional bear country. The 1.5 and 2.5 year old bears have the highest mortality rate too, so whether you take one or not, a lot of them wont be back next year. You really want to protect your mature sows if you can and it's easy to ID if they have cubs, if they dont it can be tough.
We sometimes think we're over thinking things, but we continue to have a great bear population.