On the opening day of the shotgun hunting season, few bears are killed due to the cold and rain

The woods were silent on this first day of shotgun bear season because it was chilly and rainy.

Only three black bears had been taken to the check station at the Whittingham Wildlife Management Area by midafternoon for weighing, sample collection, and the affixing of appropriate possession tags to guarantee the bears had been examined.

Before the station’s official opening time of noon, the three bears were brought there in the middle to late morning. Even though they were shown early, the bears were inspected, their biological information documented, and hunters questioned about the bears’ shooting locations.

Due to challenges and court rulings, the bear shotgun season was temporarily banned for a few years before being resumed in 2006.

The hunt also occurs during the traditional six-day buck season, which is the only time that shotguns are allowed for deer shooting in New Jersey and during which white-tailed deer can be killed.

In northwest New Jersey, hunters killed 397 black bears in the same five bear hunting zones during the six-day October archery season as they did during the shotgun season. To hunt in a zone, a hunter needs a $2 permit, and they may have two active permits at the same time. The hunter may buy a fresh permit for that zone for the December hunt if they have already used their October permit.

All of the hunters who were successful in Whittingham said that they were in the woods early on Monday, bagging the bears and transporting them to the station before the rain started to get harder.

In October and December, New Jersey has limited the number of bears that can be killed, limiting the hunt to all or parts of eight counties in the northwest. That area of the state, which borders the Catskill region of New York and Pennsylvania, both of which have sizable black bear populations, has the highest number of bears.

More over half of the harvest during the October bow season came from Sussex County, with Warren County contributing another quarter.

A specific number of black bears are ear-tagged annually prior to the start of the hunting season, and biologists use formulas to estimate the population of bears in the hunting region (bears have been reported in all 21 New Jersey counties).

Wildlife specialists can determine the harvest rate as the number of tagged bears is known and those bears will show up in the harvest. The hunt can go on if, by the end of the shotgun season, the rate is less than 20%.

Additionally, the hunt is halted for the year if that rate rises above 30%. The harvest rate was 22.6% as of Monday, the first shotgun day.

An established benchmark for assessing a hunt’s effectiveness in maintaining a stable population is the 20% to 30% range.

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