UPDATE: Apparently the hunt numbers are right around where the Division of Fish and Wildlife expected them to be after two days. In 2003 approximately 350 bears were harvested with the majority taken on opening day and the second largest number taken on the following Saturday. This past Monday 136 bruins were taken and another 66 on Tuesday. (Monday opener and Saturday are the two days with the largest number of hunters in the woods and also the largest for the deer kill as well.)
One who has taken the bear seminar and gotten his permit has informed me that the target harvest is 25% of the tagged nuisance bears. (Apparently all nuisance bears are released in the hunt area during the year.) When that figure is reached, the hunt will be halted.
The number of nuisance (tagged) bears killed compared to the number known to have been released (assuming they didn’t high-tail it to NY, PA or the suburbs outside the hunt zone) can be compared to the total number of bears harvested to yield a value for the bear population in the hunt zone west of I-287 and north of I-78. It will be interesting to see what value they come up with when the hunt is over.
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