Photo by Vic Attardo

It's probably safe to say that New York is abuzz about bears. Following a record harvest in 2003, many New York sportsmen are once again anticipating a great hunt in 2005.

The New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is presently engaged in a "high level" bear study; meanwhile, the DEC's Region 5 office is conducting research on black bears in the Eastern High Peaks Wilderness Area to determine the home range, seasonal movement, habitat use and behavior patterns of bears in the region.

Biologists use foot snares to capture live bears and then place radio collars on the bruins to track their movements. DEC staff will also be "shooting" bears (with paintballs) to mark the animals. In addition, they plan to haze nuisance bears with rubber buckshot and other "non-lethal aversive conditioning tools."

According to the DEC, interactions between black bears and people have reached an unacceptable level in an area where hunters are also harvesting the most bears.

In the summer of 2003, there were 170 reported bear encounters with campers in which the bear either destroyed property -- backpacks, tents and the like -- or successfully obtained food.

Information on nuisance bears in the High Peaks Wilderness Area is needed to develop a comprehensive management plan with recommended actions to sustain an acceptable level of human-bear interactions. It comes as no surprise that the High Peaks Wilderness Area is in Essex County, one of the top bear-producing counties in the state.

ESSEX COUNTY
New York hunters may never know how good bear hunting was in Essex County last season. According to Beth Renar, a DEC wildlife technician, the agency is having difficulty calculating the 2004 harvest for this area of the state.

"We have a problem with one of the major contributors to the harvest calculation," Renar said. "It's really putting a wrench into getting bear harvest figures."

To obtain harvest numbers, DEC relies on three factors or sources. The information obtained from these sources accounts for 60 percent of the estimated harvest, according to Renar. To determine the bear harvest figures released annually, the DEC takes the factual number and increases the count by 40 percent.

The first hard source the DEC obtains is actual reported kills by hunters. According to Renar, that may seem like a rather straightforward account, but many hunters do not report their bear kill for fear of revealing "secret" hotspots to other sportsmen.

"These are small rural areas where no one talks," Renar said. "The harvested bears go into the freezer and that's the end of that."

The second source for obtaining the annual bear harvest comes from DEC officers who see bears being removed from the field. Unfortunately, those numbers rely on chance as much as anything.

The third source is taxidermists, who report the number of bears they take in for mounting. Herein lies the problem in Essex County and the greater Adirondack Forest Preserve.

According to Renar, the DEC lost a major taxidermist this year. Renar said this source was also a buyer of bear parts, including skulls, hides, teeth, claws and internal organs (notably gall bladders). The buyer annually reported some 150 bears taken from Essex and neighboring Clinton County. He was the largest reporter of harvested bears in the region.

Faced with this loss, the DEC is forced to rely on eight smaller taxidermists-buyers for its harvest figures, but this may not provide the accurate harvest figures that the agency has issued for many years.

While the 2004 figures, when they are issued, may be a matter of debate, there is no question that Essex County is always near the top of New York's bear harvest list.

In 2003, the last year that included full reporting in the region, Essex County hunters recorded a total of 198 harvested bears, the highest number in the state and, of course, in the Adirondack range. Of that total, 98 bruins were taken during the early season, one in archery season, 24 in muzzleloader season and 75 in the regular season. Neighboring Herkimer County recorded 192 harvested bears in 2003, followed by 159 bears in Hamilton County (both in the Adirondack range).