Pennsylvania black bears are doing well enough to withstand all kinds of pressure, from hunting to disease, it seems.
Two specific types of Pennsylvania black bears got some attention recently.
At their most recent work group session, Game Commissioners asked questions about bears with mange and bears with cubs.
Commissioner Jim Daley of Cranberry Township noted that cases of mange seem to be in the increase, or at least getting more attention. Would it help to ramp up hunting pressure in those areas, he asked, and remove a few more bears before they spread the mite-borne illness from one to another?
The answer is no, said commission bear biologist Mark Ternent.
“I think it would be a lot like chasing a bouncing ball if you were to attempt to tackle that through harvest,” he said.
Were mange strictly dependent on the density of bears in an area that might be an option, he said. But it’s not.
There’s something else going on with the disease besides just the number of bears per square mile, he added. Until that’s known, hunting bears in mange-heavy areas as a management tool probably wouldn’t work.
“I’d be a little hesitant to try that just because as soon as you’d get rolling, the disease would naturally move somewhere else and you’d have to deal with it there,” he added.
Commissioner Brian Hoover of Delaware County, meanwhile, asked about the bear cubs that show up in the harvest every year. They attract a lot of attention, not all of it good, he said.
He wondered if too many are being taken and, at the same time, what becomes of cubs whose mother is harvested.
Ternent noted that about 20 percent of the annual bear harvest is made up of cubs. That makes no difference to the population, he said.
Pennsylvania bears have been increasing in number consistently for decades, he noted.
“There’s really no biological impact,” Ternent said.
He also pointed out that it can be very difficult to differentiate between an adult bear and a cub in the woods. Most hunters get only a glimpse of a bear before having to decide whether to pull the trigger, he said, with those looks often coming in heavy cover.
That’s why even back in the 1980s, when the commission had a rule against shooting cubs, they still accounted for 9 to 13 percent of the harvest.
As for cubs left behind when their mother is harvested, they tend to fare just as well as cubs with a mother, he said.
“You ask why and it’s because our cubs grow so big,” Ternent said.
The average cub will weigh 2 pounds in February or March. By November, he said, they average 80.
That means they’re healthy going into what is, time of year wise, a very late bear season. Denning, in the presence of a mother or not, is instinctual, too, he added.
Finally, the commission has long tracked bears year to year, Ternent said. That work has shown the percentage of cubs surviving into adulthood is comparable for those denning with a sow and those denning on their own.
