Chris Lawrence Charleston

I don't remember the year, but it was in the early days of the West Virginia Outdoors radio show.     The guest for Saturday morning was Joe Riffenberger, the legendary biologist for the West Virginia DNR who headed up bear research in the state.  

Joe was waxing eloquently, as was his custom, on the finer points of his favorite subject--the black bear.     The call was from a lady in Huntington.    She was immediately on the offensive and angry that there were no bears left in West Virginia.    The lady railed at Joe and at me and at all hunters claiming because of "hunters and your 'boom booms'" there was no way to see a bear in the wild anymore.   

I was young, and fairly inexperienced in dealing with such adversity on the radio, I mean come on what is this...Talkline?    I tried reasoning with her and clearly it was a foreign concept.    She was fixed in her position and there was no changing her mind, hunters were the root of all evil and left to our own devices we would likely wipe out every living creature on planet Earth by the end of the decade.   I finally was forced to cut her off.  

I tried to regain my composure, but noticed Joe hadn't even lost his.  

"There's no changing her mind, despite the fact that everything she said was a untrue,” Joe responded matter of factly.  "It's kind of like having an argument about abortion, you'll argue all day and wind up where you started." 

Hopefully over the years, my skills at dealing with those who disagree with my position have improved.    Joe had a reputation of being rough around the edges himself, but when the subject was a bear, facts were ALWAYS on his side.  

The DNR last week released the harvest figures for the 2007 bear-hunting season.  Hunters killed a record number of bears last year, 1,807.   That bests the old record set in 2003 of 1,730.   The state's bear population has been steadily growing each year and steadily expanding into parts of the state where bears haven't been noticed in a century.   The change has been slow and gradual, but it’s been happening for the last 10 to 20 years.

Certainly the largest number of bears taken in 2007 came from the mountain counties, which are the black bears’ traditional haunts, but I also noticed several other curious facts.   Hunters killed six bears in Berkeley County, where the growth rate of subdivisions is eating away at bear habitat.     Hunters also killed six bears in Lewis County and three in Upshur County.  Clearly the westward expansion is on.   

There were three bears killed in Mingo County.   Hunters also took two bears a piece in Calhoun County, Gilmer County, and Wirt County.   Given the rural nature of those places it's not hard to imagine a bear there--although they haven't been there for years.   However, Roane County, Ritchie County, and Jackson County produced bear kills in 2007. 

The reason for the westward expansion is several fold.  Bears are expanding in numbers and looking for new territory.  Food sources in the west are abundant.   The bears that are now so numerous they are problematic in the upper Kanawha Valley grow into massive creatures of 600, 700, and 800 plus pounds.    Bears, like other animals, will follow the food.

The aforementioned Riffenberger can be credited for some of that expansion.  Through his research he noticed that by simply delaying the season for one month, the pregnant females would go to den before they were available to hunters and would survive a hunting season.   Since bears take about two years to produce an offspring, the changes were a little slower in coming than turkey or deer populations, but come they did.  

It was Riffenberger's research that led to the laws changing, but it was the dollars spent by hunters and anglers on licenses that ultimately funded the research.   Hunters and anglers pay hefty excise taxes on hunting and fishing equipment earmarked for the purpose of improving, enhancing, and restoring natural resources, game and fish, and their habitat.   

I doubt the lady in Huntington who called to take us to the woodshed has contributed a dime toward anything that would truly help wildlife.    She had an excess supply of bitterness, hatred, and disdain because she couldn't see a bear in the wild.    I hope she's reading this and notices that I failed to mention one more bear that was killed in a non-traditional county.  The hunter took that bear in Cabell County.  

Chris Lawrence

 

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