FWP commission increases pressure on black bears

Laura Lundquist

(Missoula Current) The Montana Fish and Wildlife commission recently passed more hunting regulations targeting black bears as part of the commission’s effort to significantly reduce predator populations.

During its Dec. 4 meeting, the Fish and Wildlife Commission passed four amendments dealing with black bear hunting, two of which could take an increased toll on black bear populations, according to biologists.

Prior to the meeting, Region 5 Commissioner Brian Cebull submitted an amendment recommending that 10 special permits be created to allow black bears along the Beartooth Front to be hunted later in the spring in districts where quotas on female bears usually shut the hunt down early. Cebull said this would allow hunters to kill older male bears at higher elevations. Hunters could get the permits after earning bonus points.

Region 2 Commissioner Jeff Burrows asked why FWP didn’t just issue more black bear tags overall.

“Right now, what we’ve tended to do is take what I would characterize as a relatively aggressive management approach to predators,” Burrows said. “Why aren’t we just issuing more general licenses versus trying to create an area where - and maybe I’m mischaracterizing - a black bear haven where it closes immediately so we’re trying to create an area that’s got a lot of black bears and then do a limited license.

It turns out that the area is no longer a black bear haven, according to Region 5 biologist Shawn Stewart. During the meeting, Stewart said the black bear population is declining along the Beartooth Front.

“That is a deliberate attempt on our part to slowly reduce the population by overharvesting females. And I will say we are over-harvesting females, under commission direction to reduce predators,” Stewart said.

Another amendment, which Region 1 Commissioner Ian Wargo proposed during the meeting, was to allow hound hunters to kill bears until June 15, which is also the end of the general spring bear hunt. Last season, hound hunters were allowed to train their dogs by pursuing bears until June 15 but were supposed to stop killing bears by late May.

Prior to 2021, Montana didn’t allow people to hunt bears with hounds. The practice was banned in the state in 1921 because it isn’t considered to be fair chase. Then, the 2021 Legislature passed House Bill 468 to mandate hound hunting, in spite of opposition from groups such as the Montana Wildlife Federation. The Federation said chasing bears can result in cub abandonment, chronic stress, heat exhaustion in warm weather, and abandonment of home ranges.

The first spring hound-hunt in Montana was in 2022 and the commission set the hunting season to run from April 15 to May 25 and gave hound hunters a dog training season that ran from May 26 to June 15.

Prior to 2022, the spring black bear hunt for general hunters ran from April 15 to May 31 in most districts across the state. In 2022, former Region 1 Commissioner Pat Tabor argued that predators such as black bears should be reduced significantly to help bolster elk populations. In February 2024, the commission extended the general spring bear season to June 15 statewide, even though several biologists said they were concerned that, with the recent addition of a hound-hunting season, extending the season to June 15 could damage black bear populations.

On Dec. 4, Wakeling said biologists had some concern about extending the hound-hunting season to allow bears to be killed until June 15. Bears with cubs tend to come out of the dens later in the spring than male bears or females without cubs. So extending the season a few more weeks creates a greater risk of separating mother bears and cubs, which could lead to cubs dying if they can’t be reunited with the mothers or if the mothers are killed.

Hound hunters argued that they would be able to see if a treed bear was lactating so they wouldn’t shoot it. Wakeling said it’s not always possible to see whether a sow is lactating, and some bears have been shot.

“When the training season was proposed, the department expressed concern at that time that there was a risk of increased loss of cubs, orphaning of cubs,” Wakeling said. “Bears will send their cubs up a tree and then they’ll be pursued and they may be treed elsewhere. So you’ve separated them, and there’s some risk of orphanage in that situation. The department expressed some concern at the time the commission considered this. Now we’re talking about going a little further. Now there’s the potential for legal take of that female.”

In 2024, 56 of 57 bears killed by hound hunters were killed in the spring, according to the most recent FWP statistics.

The commission passed both amendments, although commissioners William Lane and KC Walsh opposed extending the hound-hunting season.

“We were coming off two years of almost record harvest in black bears. In 2021 and 2022, we harvested over 700 bears each year in Region 1 alone, almost 1,500 in two years,” Anderson said. “Over the last two years, black bear harvest dropped to 455 in 2023 and again last year. So we probably did dig into the black bear population pretty good in 2021 and ’22, even though the season at that time ended on May 31.”

Mace’s 10-year study was the last time FWP published any population monitoring. At that time, hunters statewide killed slightly more than 1,000 bears annually. In 2024, hunters reported killing 1,609 black bears.

In 2023, FWP biologists started a statewide multi-year black bear population study by assessing bears in the Blackfoot River watershed. In 2024, they moved to northwest Montana west of Kalispell and then the Little Belt Mountains in 2025. No data is available yet, but based on the commission’s agenda to kill more predators, populations might decline significantly between the year data is collected and when it’s made public.

During the December meeting, Wargo asked Chair Leslie Robinson if the question of black bears could be revisited in 2026 when there was additional information. Robinson agreed.

Later in the meeting, Region 3 Commissioner Jeff Burrows proposed three amendments related to another predator, mountain lions. Commissioners voted in favor of the amendment that extended the hunting season by more than a month to May 25, although using hounds to hunt lions in grizzly country still must end on April 14. Burrows withdrew two other amendments that would have eliminated quotas on male lions in western Montana and would have required hunters to hunt in only one of three areas in the state.

Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.