Keith Meyers/The New York Times
Wildlife officials at a weigh
station check a 200 female
bear killed by a hunter.
Posted on 12/09/2003 6:51:45 AM PST by Pharmboy
Keith Meyers/The New York Times
Wildlife officials at a weigh
station check a 200 female
bear killed by a hunter.
Keith Meyers/The New York Times
Protestors outside the bear weigh station.
Keith Meyers/The New York Times
Harry McDole and Jim Aumick Jr.
killed a female bear last
weekend.
VERNON, N.J., Dec. 8 — Thirty-three years after New Jersey's last bear hunt, hundreds of hunters armed with shotguns and muzzle-loading rifles tromped through a foot of snow on Monday in search of some of what could be as many as 3,300 black bears thought to be living in northwest New Jersey.
The six-day hunt had been alternately hailed as an attempt to cull a bear population that had grown to dangerous proportions and lambasted as a cruel exercise in human vanity.
Protesters, some in bear masks, and hunters were out in force after a fierce weekend snowstorm threw an unexpected wrench into the hunt. Bears live in 41 states, 27 of which, including New York, allow bear hunts. Connecticut does not have a bear hunt.
But the issue in New Jersey, the nation's most densely populated state, has been the subject of a handful of lawsuits and a welter of controversy. There was speculation early in the day that the snow would keep the bears in their dens, where hunters were forbidden by the rules of the hunt. But by 5 p.m., hunters had killed 61 bears, the largest weighing 498 pounds, the state Department of Environmental Protection said.
Martin McHugh, director of the Division of Fish and Wildlife, refused to characterize the first day's kill as high or low. "It's about what we expected for the time of year it is," he said outside a bear weigh-in station in Wawayanda State Park in Vernon. "We've got cold weather, and this is a conservative hunt."
Hunters who spent a futile day in the snowy woods said more bears would have been killed if the weather were warmer and the ridges and swamps of northwestern New Jersey were free of snow. After all, they noted, bears have not been hunted in the state since 1970 and have no wariness of hunters.
Bill Bender, 38, a hunter from nearby West Milford, said he had had no luck, even though he said he knew many of the trails bears roam near his home.
"It's just too cold," Mr. Bender said after stopping at the Wawayanda station to ask about the fortunes of other hunters. "They're denned up. They're just curled up in a ball somewhere. When it gets warmer, you'll start seeing them."
Harry McDole, 63, of Franklin, N.J., took the first bear, a 160-pound female, to the Wawayanda weighing station in midmorning.
"This is my fourth one, but it's my best because I got it in New Jersey," Mr. McDole said. He said had he killed the other three in New Brunswick, Canada.
"I've waited 33 years to shoot one in New Jersey," he said. "It's a great thing. It cost me only a $2 shotgun shell instead of spending $1,000 going to Canada."
Mr. McHugh, of the Fish and Wildlife Division, said about 5,300 hunters had received final state clearance to participate in the six-day hunt. Each hunter is allowed to kill one bear.
State wildlife biologists believe that 3 percent to 8 percent of them will succeed, meaning that anywhere from 160 to 425 bears may be killed this week.
The state's environmental commissioner, Bradley M. Campbell, has said he will stop the hunt at any point he believes that too many bears have been killed. He has declined to specify that number.
Mr. McHugh has denied charges by anti-hunt groups that the state wants to decimate the bear population. He said that officials are seeking only to slow the population's rate of growth. State wildlife biologists estimate that 600 to 700 cubs will be born by next spring.
The precise number of bears in the state is in dispute. Last spring, state officials estimated the population at 3,300. But experts hired by the state put the figure closer to 1,350. Mr. Campbell said last week that the number ranged between 2,000 and 3,000.
"It's laughable the state bear biologists would come up with that huge a range and use it as an excuse to have this hunt," one protester, Steve Heuer, of Hackettstown, N.J., said at Wawayanda on Monday.
Protesters said the event was appalling.
"I'm here because I've been calling, faxing, writing, and it doesn't seem to work, so I came out here," said Marylee Morinelli, 38, of Pleasantville, N.J., who showed up at the Flatbrook-Roy Wildlife Management Area with a video camera hoping to record the depositing of bear carcasses. "Our whole goal for documenting this is so the general public will have an outcry."
For most of the hunters, it was a long day.
The last time bear hunting was legal in New Jersey, Pete Hefferan was celebrating being part of the Roxbury High School graduating class of 1970. He was a hunter then, but for years it nagged him that he missed what he felt what was his last opportunity until Monday.
So Mr. Hefferan, 50, who said he had hunted on three continents and led African safaris for seven years, returned to the woods of his childhood in hope of finding the American black bear.
Rising at 4:30 a.m., Mr. Hefferan, dressed in a camouflage jumpsuit and blaze orange cap, loaded his truck with a thermos of his wife's creamy tea and his transitional Yeager rifle, a re-creation of a 1750 muzzle-loader.
Shotguns and muzzle-loaders are the only firearms allowed in the hunt, and hunters cannot shoot them within 450 feet of a home.
Even with the temperatures in the teens and ice crystals on his face, Mr. Hefferan seemed thrilled to sit in the cold for more than eight hours waiting for a bear.
"Any day is a good day out in the woods hunting bear," he said, despite seeing nothing more menacing than a very chilled squirrel.
Mr. Hefferan finally gave up just before 2 p.m., ending his hunt by first walking half a mile to a bear den that he had scouted weeks before. It is illegal to hunt a bear in or near a den in New Jersey, a restriction Mr. Hefferan agrees with. But he said he wanted to see if the bear had left its home, something that would have been evident by tracks in the snow.
"It hasn't even come out," he said. "They call it hunting, not a sure thing," he added with a hearty laugh as he crested the ridge of the den.
Opponents of the hunt had other views. "This is an extermination, not a hunt," said Steve Ember, a member of the executive committee of the Sierra Club.
Robert Hanley reported from Vernon, N.J., and Jason George from Cranberry Lake
I don't get that.
Not too bright to be dressed up as the prey... but them anti-hunters never were too bright. My only prayer is that they don't run into any of the idiot hunters (yep, they do exist) that will shoot at anything that moves. Any incident will give the lefties some ammo (ironic ain't it) to use against gun owners and hunters.
If I'm going after bear I damn sure wouldn't use a shotgun or a muzzle rifle. I think the idiot who wrote this doesn't know jack about hunting or guns. Typical liberal of course.
We've had photographic evidence for decades.
Either can be quite effective. It's likely a state regulation, not uncommon in states with high population density.
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