Lush crops of acorns, hazelnuts and berries in many parts of Minnesota north of Little Falls and Hinckley reduced the wanderings of black bears and lowered this year's harvest of the animals by as much as 70 percent in some areas.
With just a bit of hunting remaining, wildlife managers last week said 1,375 bears were taken by hunters in the first 17 days of the season. That's 21 percent fewer than a year ago at this time and 40 percent below the year-to-date mark set in 2016.
In one major hunting area that stretches north from Mille Lacs to Hwy. 2 and then east to the Wisconsin border, oak trees produced so much food that the bear harvest dropped 60 to 70 percent, officials said.
"When food is good, sows in particular are homebodies. They don't get shot,'' said Tom Rusch, Area Wildlife Manager for the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in Tower.
Rusch said this year's bumper crop of natural foods across bear country began in the spring (no frost) and continued through a wet and warm summer. It was the most fruitful growing season he can remember since 1996, another down year for the harvest of black bears.
"Their preference is for natural foods,'' Rusch said. "Whenever natural foods are good, harvest is off.''
Same for nuisance bear complaints. This year's abundance of such food as blueberries, chokecherries, raspberries, cranberries, elderberries, wild plum, dogwood berries, hazelnuts and acorns made for fewer human interactions, wildlife managers said.
Minnesota hunters have shot as many as 5,000 bears in a season, but the DNR has been limiting license sales since 1982. Dan Stark, the DNR's large carnivore specialist, said recent quotas helped stop a decline in the bear population that happened before 2010. Since then, abundance of the animals has not grown, but it has stabilized at an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 black bears.
