Second Annual Black Bear Bonanza set for March 4
Arkansas hunters swat aside black bear record with increased harvest limits
By Randy Zellers
AGFC Communications
BENTONVILLE — The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission will be one of many conservation agencies participating in the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers Second Annual Black Bear Bonanza, Presented by onX, from 9 a.m-5 p.m. Saturday, March 4, at the Benton County Quail Barn in Northwest Arkansas.
The Bonanza is being held by the Arkansas Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advocating for public lands, waters and wildlife. The family-friendly event features a day full of activities, live music, raffles and seminars celebrating the success of the black bear’s reintroduction into the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas in the 1950s. The growing population of black bears now supports a regulated hunt in Arkansas as well as Missouri and Oklahoma and continues to expand into new territories.
Along with returning favorites such as the World Famous Owl Hoot Contest and a live recording of Clay Newcomb’s Bear Grease [Render] Podcast, new seminars have been added to the day’s events.
The first 300 guests who arrive for the morning session will enjoy Basecamp coffee compliments of onX. The morning’s activities include a wild game butchering demonstration by Pack Rat Outdoor Center’s Rick Spicer; Dr.
Devin Pettigrew, an archaeologist who researches ancient hunters and their tools and tactics, will discuss ancient bear hunters and the tools they might have used; and Jonathan Wilkins, host of the Black Duck Revival Podcast and owner of Black Duck Revival in Brinkley, will demonstrate easy ways to turn your success in the field into meals for family and friends.
After lunch, AGFC Large Carnivore Program Coordinator Myron Means will provide the latest news regarding bears in Arkansas and will take questions from the audience.
Meateater content creator Clay Newcomb and special guests will record a live episode of his Bear Grease [Render] Podcast. Clay will then be joined by Arkansas Game and Fish Commissioner Anne Marie Doramus and Lynn Sciumbato from Morningstar Wildlife Rehabilitation Center to judge the World Famous Owl Hoot Contest, emceed by Bear Grease Podcast crew member Brent Reaves. First prize this year is a genuine Arkansas-treed coonskin cap, and qualifying for the contest will take place in the morning, so be sure to arrive early if you want to participate.
This year’s Super Raffle is powered by onX and includes a Canadian bear hunt with Baldy Mountain Outfitters in Manitoba and a Garrett Polk knife custom- made with a handle made from a bone of a bear Clay Newcomb harvested.
Tickets for the Super Raffle are capped at 200, and the first 50 buyers will receive an onX app card worth $30. The regular raffle has thousands of dollars of prizes including outdoor gear, clothing and other valuable items from sponsors like Umarex, Vortex, Bushnell, First Lite, Benchmade, and many others. Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation will be on hand with engaging activities for families and lunch
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will be available for purchase from several food trucks. There will be live music, an Outdoor Brands Pavilion, and atlatl demonstration as well.
Tickets for the event are $10 for everyone 13 and over and are available in advance at https://www.backcountryhunters. org/black_bear_bon anza_2023 or at the door.
Children 12 and under get in free. All funds raised will support the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers chapters and their efforts to protect local public lands and wildlife. For more information, email the Arkansas Chapter at arkansas@backcountryhunters. org.
Backcountry Hunters and Anglers is the voice for wild public lands, waters and wildlife. To learn more about BHA connect via social media on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or YouTube or their website.
2022 bear harvest comes in at 665 with increased quota in Arkansas
In the world of wildlife management, harvest records usually are broken by small percentages. But bear hunters in Arkansas broke the record of 577 set during the 2020 season by taking 665 in 2022 – a jump of 15 percent.
“The increase of almost 100 bears was largely due to two factors: The fact that there was a sparse mast crop across the state and the fact that we increased the bear zone quota from 345 bears to 500 bears,” Myron Means, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission large carnivore program coordinator, said during the January Commission meeting.
Archers took 536 bears (80 percent of the total), hunters using muzzleloaders took 77 (12 percent) and modern gun users took 52 (8 percent).
“This is nothing that’s really unique to Arkansas but it’s kind of prominent to bear hunting in general, the fact that 80 percent of the bears are harvested with archery equipment,” Means said. “Not to say that muzzleloaders and modern guns do not make an impact in the harvest, but they’re not as near significant methods as archery.
“The simple reason behind that is most people bait and most people bear hunt early in the season, as soon as the season opens, and really kind of do the damage, as far as harvesting bears, most of the time within the first couple of weeks of archery season.”
Bear season began with archery Sept. 26-Nov. 30.
Muzzleloader season was Oct. 17-25 and modern gun season stretched from Nov.
14 until Dec. 6 across four zones. Zone 1 (Ozark Mountains) had the lion’s share of the harvest with 458 (242 males, 215 females). The zone 2 (Ouachita Mountains) total was 200 (105 males, 95 females). Zones 5 and 5A in southeastern Arkansas accounted for seven bears.
Of the 665 total, 348 were males and 317 were
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females.
“The sex ratios lined out really well, as they have in the past,” Means said. “You always want to harvest more males than females across the state and we had 52 percent males and 48 percent females, which is about where you need to be.”
Means says hunters harvest more bears in zone 1 for a good reason.
“That’s largely due to the landowner component in zone 1,” Means said. “You have a lot of private land interspersed with the public land, which makes baiting a lot more effective in zone 1 than it is in zone 2 or 5 or 5A. It just presents a whole other dynamic when hunting bears, especially when you can bait on private land. “That’s the other reason why we have the quota established in zone 1 and not in zone 2. We get questions every year: Why don’t we have a quota in zone 2? The simple answer is that because of the landownership dynamic of the Ouachita National Forest and the surrounding land; it’s kind of self-regulating. There are not a lot of bears in that core area of the national forest that are typically going to be susceptible to baiting or susceptible to harvest over bait, unlike all the bears across the Ozark National Forest. There are very few places across that core bear range in the Ozarks that do not have areas that are not susceptible to harvesting bears. If you bait on a piece of private land, bears can come from 3 or 4 miles away to partake of that bait site, which makes them susceptible to being harvested.”
Zones 1 and 2 also hold the counties most populated by bears – Newton, Searcy, Van Buren and Johnson north of the Arkansas River, and Polk, Scott and Yell south of the river.
Future Hunting Grounds
More territory for bear hunters could open in the near future in southern Arkansas.
“Right now the only open bear zones we have are zones 1, 2, 5 and 5A,” Means said. “Hopefully, within the next couple of years, we’ll have zone 3 and zone 4.”
If enough field research work is completed next summer, Means intends to propose regulations for the 2022 bear hunting season in zones 3 and 4. If approved, that would mean about 80 percent of the state would be open to bear hunting.
“Zones 3 and 4 are going to present some challenges because it’s primarily private land,” Means said.
“There’s a growing bear population in that part of the world – densities are low – but because of the fact that it’s private land, virtually every bear in those zones could potentially be susceptible to being harvested on the first day of the bear season.
“Historically, that’s a major accomplishment for the state, for the agency to restore bear hunting across most of the state that used to be named The Bear State.”
