Bear Hunting

Bear hunting is a popular sport in Canada, Alaska and other parts of North America. The Black Bear has no special conservation status, because it lives in remote areas and doesn’t suffer from habitat destruction and human encroachment. The IUCN Red List considers this species as the Least Concern. About 30,000 Black Bears are killed annually in America. Bear hunting is a source of income for camps and professional hunters in Canada and Northern America. A hunter needs a quality gun and expensive outfitting. It needs a great experience to kill a bear in its natural habitat. Hunting with a guide is rather expensive, but safe.

Bear hunting is regulated by law in America. Every hunter should have a license to kill a bear and take a trophy. Black Bears rarely suffer from poaching in America, because the demand for their hides and body parts is very low, but the Asiatic Black Bears are killed mostly for their blades and other body parts used in Asian medicine. The population of the Asiatic Black Bear is declining because of poaching and habitat destruction.

In America, bear hunting is popular not for bear hides and body parts, but mostly as a sport. However, bear meat and fat are very expensive products and bear hides are sometimes used for making rugs and clothes. Other benefits that people gain from the Black Bears are research and education. Medical research on the metabolic pathways of the Black Bear during their hibernation helps in finding new methods of treating kidney failure, gallstones, severe burns, and other human illnesses.

Sometimes, Black Bears damage cornfields and gardens, raid livestock, come to towns and search for garbage. Usually, the danger associated with these animals is overestimated, because they are not aggressive and all recorded attacks were caused by humans or dogs. Keeping garbage cans tightly closed makes bears look for other food sources. Human-habituated bears sometimes cannot adapt to living in the wild and keep close to suburbs. They don’t usually display aggression, but encountering with a bear can frighten and cause injuries. In these cases, bear hunting is used to maintain safety in the town.