The Florida 2025 black bear hunt has been a flop as an attempt to manage the bear population in Florida. It may have been successful as a trial run on how to manage a bear hunt. Only 52 bears were harvested. To keep a stable population, at least 600 bears should have been harvested, probably 1500. About 15 % of a black bear population needs to be harvested to keep a stable population. From myfwc.com:
There were 52 bears harvested during the 2025 bear hunt, which is a hunter success rate very close to other states with similar hunt parameters. All harvested bears were physically checked by FWC staff and bear response contractors, providing valuable data that will influence future management strategies. Analysis of the data collected is underway, and a full harvest report will be released in the coming months.
In 2024, 295 Florida bears were killed in vehicular accidents. One thing missing from the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) press release is an estimate of the population of bears in Florida. This important number is essential when managing a wildlife population. The last official estimate dates back to 2014-2015, over a decade ago. An estimate was supposed to be done in 2025. The FWC now says a population estimate may be done by 2029. In 2014-2015, the estimate put the Florida bear population at 4,350 bears. In the 2019 Florida Black Bear Management Plan, the best estimate showed an expected bear population in 2026-2027 of 11,088. This is very close to the estimate of the pre-Columbian bear population of 11,500. These estimates do not include cubs.
The estimate of 11,088 bears is for the four largest subpopulations of bears in Florida. The three smallest subpopulations in Florida added another 238 bears in 2014-2015. Those populations have probably doubled in the last decade. Other than vehicle accidents, the largest killer of bears in Florida is the adult male bear. Adult male bears kill (and usually eat) about 1/2 of cubs before the cubs become independent. Boar bears almost certainly kill over a thousand bear cubs in Florida every year.
When adult male bears are harvested by human hunters, they kill fewer cubs. More bear cubs have a chance to become adults. To stabilize a bear population, about 10-15% of the adult bears have to be harvested every year.
In Michigan, the bear harvest has been about 15% of the bear population for many years. The Michigan bear population continues to grow. Bear harvests in Michigan average over 1,700 per year, from a bear population of 12,000. We do not know the bear population in Florida, because the FWC has been rather slow in measuring the population. Using the best estimate from the FWC plan published in 2019, there should be over ten thousand bears in Florida. To stabilize the bear population, the harvest should be about 1,500 per year.
Next year, if the FWC decides to stabilize the Florida bear population, they should issue at least 20 times the permit numbers issued in 2025, or about 3,000. If the proportion of success is the same as in 2025, about 900 bears would be harvested. This number is still to low to stabilize the Florida bear population, but it would provide more data to confirm success ratios for bear hunters.
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
Hunting big game of any kind is a culture. When you destroy the resident culture by over regulation and lack of opportunity you do not fix that with a 10 hour hunter education class and a cheap tag. Over generations people develop and learn the art of big game hunting and pass it along to the next generation. Many states have found the interruption of that generational gifting to work to the detriment of effective wildlife management. This is one such case. No amount of money spent at Cabelas or Bass Pro can make up for your grandfather’s wisdom.
they will get serious when they have a demonrat killed by a bear inside city limits tampa sarasota area most likely
The numbers are skewed due to a huge press for anti bear hunters to get tags and sit on them. Need to fix that somehow. It was big news for the anti hunting idiots.
A flop by design
Simple solution. They need at least twelve times as many bears harvested so they need to issue twelve, or more, times as many tags next time. I expect more as you’d get more duplication of effort by hunters as density goes up. However with so many tags it would likely overwhelm anti-hunting crowd’s ability to soak up tags.
Add in some hunting education – how to be effective rather than solely safety focused – and harvest could increase dramatically enough to meet target. If not – bump number of tags again 🙂
This just means there are more bears for dumb liberal broads to cuddle up with instead of men. I see no real loss in this.
FWS did less than the bare minimum to facilitate this “lottery/quota” hunt based on political pressure. There seems to have been a “perceived, urgent” need to “do something”. So, they did. Meaning, “lets offer a handful of permits in order to say we ‘did something'”. Then, antihunting lunatics did what they do & muddied the waters per usual. Their actions/antics, based solely on emotional reactions, ruined any shot at a fact-based result. The main question is how did they facilitate THEIR part of the puzzle? How did they purchase their permits? I’m fairly certain that they would’ve had to produce… Read more »
Maybe more permits need to be issued next year, apparently only a total of 172 permits were issued across the East Panhandle, North, Central and South BMUs, and each permit allowed the harvest of one bear within the assigned BHZ.
Cut the permit costs in half too.
FWC releases results of 2025 black bear hunt | FWC