Black Bears in SE MN

[jkcmj]

A friend of mine snapped these shots of bear tracks in the Whitewater State Park while morel hunting last week...then I got a call from another friend today who was driving down I-90 past the hwy 76 exit to Houston, MN and a black bear was in the ditch near the exit trying to run through the sheep wire fence along the interstate and kept bouncing back off of it time and again. That's two bears in the last week within 15 minutes either side of Winona. Maybe if we can get people to lay off shooting them for awhile we can get a sustainable population going down here???

[matchset]

thats awesome!

[mrklean]

ha good luck on no one shooting them

[reinhard1]

i seen on the news that a black bear was hit and killed by a vehicle in Lino Lakes up here. i have never seen a bear in this area of the metro. good luck.

[Jameson]

No quota zone????

[IL Res]

Last spring a semi hit a big one on I-94 right next to the truck scales east of Woodbury. It must have been about 400# class. I thought it was someone's sofa until I got close...

[jkcmj]

Yeah, and they get bigger as the day progresses if the highway Dept doesn't get them moved off!

[muskiemanAD]

I have alsways thought that WMA would have a bear or two in it. Saw [PoorWordUsage] in there a few years back that was not Coyote but looked rather big and had deer hair in it.

[picksbigwagon]

back in the 40's or 50's my uncle shot a black bear just outside of Preston, wasn't a big one, but the rug still hangs on his wall

[JIvers]

We get the occasional wanderer through the SE corner of the state. With growing black bear numbers north of the Cities we seem to be seeing more black bears down there.

A few years ago one was photographed several times around Rushford before it moved on. A few years before that (2000?) a large black bear was hit and killed by a car near Brownsville. There've been other sightings as well.

Just across the river in Lacrosse County the Wisconsin DNR believes they have several resident black bears. That is, bears that spend the winter in the area, and aren't just moving through in search of food or mates. It would be neat if we could have a small but permanent population on our side of the river, too.

As for shooting them, I'm pretty sure that in all of Minnesota, black bear are protected game animals and cannot be killed outside of season [true], without a license [true], or outside of a designated quota area. [No on that last part.] As for self-defense shootings, black bear attacks on humans are pretty rare. The thought of a few in the area while I'm deer-hunting, or whatever, doesn't bother me.

They just need to stay north of the Iowa border. There, black bear were not included in existing game regulations because there weren't any in the state at the time they were written, and thus they can be shot on sight at any time.

[NoWiser]

Just across the border from Lake City, in Wisconsin, I used to see plenty of bear sign while bowhunting for deer. I dragged a deer across a huge sandbar on the Chippewa river once, and the next morning on my way out to hunt again, there were bear tracks over the top of the drag trail left by the deer. For the amount of sign I saw, I think there was a definite resident bear in that area. Pretty cool.

[jkcmj]

Since all of southern MN is a no quota zone, all anyone who sees one has to do is buy tags over the counter and kill it...that was what I was referring to.

By Alma, WI they have a good resident bear population, with several of our clients having sows with cubs on trail cam, and some consistant harvest numbers during the fall hunt in the area. Many there are very protective of their land and bears, so they get a chance to flourish by letting the sows go and harvesting primarily mature boars. My brother regularly sees bear tracks and sign on his land in trempealeau county as well. My cousins and uncle saw a nice fat lazy black bear in the back of their farm a couple years back, which is right across the bridge from Winona. I just wish the DNR would cut all bear hunting in the southern tier of the state until they establish some numbers, but I guess they don't want the hassle with crop damage, so they encourage people to shoot them so they don't establish themselves.

[JIvers]

As I'm reading the regulations, you may shoot two bear per year in a non-quota area, which includes all of SE Minnesota. http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/hunting/bear/index.html

You can buy a permit for the no-quota area without a drawing, no strings attached. The season, however, is the same for the whole state, if I read this right.

Has anyone actually bought a tag and shot a bear during the season in SE Minnesota recently? Seems to me it would be pretty much like winning the lottery if you actually pulled it off.

Personally, I'd prefer the DNR allow the population to build up a bit in the southeast, but that probably won't happen.

[96trigger]

Some of my students got a bear and cubs on trail camera numerous times in the Plainview area. They saw it deer hunting also. They are becoming more and common down here. Every couple of years it seemed like we heard about someone seeing one or getting pictures, now it seems like its almost every year. There is a chance that a population is getting established. Last night I was coming home and something big black ran in front of my headlights. I am almost positive it was a cat, but the thought of it being a bear cub crossed my mind because it was big and there was just something about it that didn't seem right for a cat. Funny I read this thread today after that incident. It definitely was not a coon either, coon have a very distinct run, this was not a coon.

[HooknHorns]

Boy those tracks in the first pic look like theyre from a big bear, if thats a quarter for comparison. If there were bears around in september where i hunt id start baiting for sure.

[JIvers]

And right on cue, here is a photo of a black bear taken by Ridgeway, Iowa, which is about fifteen miles south of Harmony and the Minnesota-Iowa border:

http://www.kcci.com/news/central-iowa/Be...ab/-/index.html

This bear better turn north quick and get back to Minnesota, as there are no restrictions on shooting bear in Iowa.

[james_walleye]

Last october a friend of mine was out glassing for deer near Adams, just east of Austin, when he watched a bear for about 10 minutes.

[itchmesir]

2001 there was a black bear in Stockton/Minnesota City area.. Don't remember what happened to it off the top of my head..

[JIvers]

And here are photographs of a black bear in Fountain City, Wisconsin: http://www.wxow.com/story/18956400/black-bear-spotted-by-fountain-city

The story says the bear "swam across the Mississippi and came ashore". If so, this bear was in Winona County a few minutes before these photos were taken.

[picksbigwagon]

We were heading through Preston today and saw a good sized black bear by the tennis courts at the old high school. I have pictures on my cell phone which doesn't work here yet, but it is the first black bear I have ever seen in the wild. It was probably about 11 am when we hit town

[JIvers]

And here is a story, with a picture, about the black bear in Preston. Some other sightings in Fillmore County are reported as well: http://www.hometown-pages.com/main.asp?SectionID=13&SubSectionID=22&ArticleID=44302

Sounds like the Fillmore County Sheriff's Dept. kept their heads about them, and didn't send out the SWAT team when this bear ambled through town.

[hockeybc69]

I am not in SE MN, but had a bear in the backyard in Big Lake a couple days ago. Thats a first for me.