BY DANNY BLEVINS

STAR CORRESPONDENT

The cold nights and frosty mornings can only mean one thing to many Tennessee hunters – it’s bear hunting time!

Tennessee black bear season is winding down in Tennessee, and hunters are putting up their dog boxes, bear dogs, radios and rifles until another year.

Black bear hunting is a tradition in these mountains that dates back to some of the first settlers of the area.

When the original settlers arrived, black bears could be found from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Mississippi River. For the next 200 years, settlers hunted the bears for meat, fat and their hide until black bears were almost extinct in the entire state.

During the 1970’s, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) saw that extra steps had to be taken if they were to insure a strong bear population.

In 1973, for example, only 16 bears were killed statewide, and 14 of those were killed in the Tellico zone.

Something had to be done if black bears were going to remain a big game animal, so the TWRA took three very important steps.

First, they saw that something had to be done about the poaching of bears.

Along came Operation Smokey, the largest bear poaching sting in North American history.

The result was the arrest of 43 individuals who were convicted of 130 state and federal crimes related to poaching of black bears and the selling of bear parts.

The result on the bears was a steady decline of poaching in Tennessee and the increase of the bear populations.

Second, the TWRA saw that many female bears were being over-harvested by hunters.

Since female black bears go into hibernation earlier that male bears, the TWRA set the bear season later in the year. This had the desired effect. Fewer female bears were killed, and the bear population again increased.

These steps had a significate impact on the bear populations, but the TWRA took it to the next level in the last 15 years.

During that time they changed the hunting seasons to allow a bear harvest during the annual archery hunting season. They also instituted no-hunting zones that allowed bear populations to increase without the pressure from hunting.

These are located in some of the most rugged terrain in the state, and when the bear’s natural populations increase in the no-hunting zones, they will naturally migrate to other areas (hunting areas) looking for more territory.

The result was an explosion in the bear harvest.

At the end of 2018, it was estimated that the total bear population for the state was around 7000 animals and that same year 759 bears were harvested in the state.

This is a long way from the 16 bears harvested in 1973.

These no-hunting zones have been so successful, the TWRA has been allowing limited hunting in some of these zones with set quotas.

Today, black bear hunting is one of the fastest-growing outdoor sports in Tennessee.

Hunters who have never tried the sport are teaming with a good group of hunters and dogs and getting out in the crisp Autumn mountains.

But what about the future? How is the bear population right now, and how many bears were harvested during the 2019 season?

We will try to answer these questions and more in the next East Tennessee Outdoors column.