salty444

I was on a small vacation visiting the Whiteface Inn in lake Placid this past weekend with my wife. She wanted to do some small shopping and decided to stop at North Country Taxidermy and trading post located in Keene NY. While she was looking at other things I noticed 3 black bear cubs mounted to logs on the wall. I thought this was rather odd since I thought it was illegal to shoot cubs or their mothers in NY. When I asked the woman working at the store why they had the cubs for sale on the wall. She quoted

" Happens all the time. When we shoot the mother what are we supposed to do.............. let the cubs starve? I hunt with my boys all the time and we do this alot"

I was extremely irrated at this comment from her. Last time I shot a bear I had to have the DEC come and weight it, take a tooth and a sample of meat. They checked the nips to make sure it was not nursing cubs and thenThey gave me a tag to bring to the taxidermy. I am having a hard time believing a DEC officer would allow someone to shoot 3 cubs after they just shot the mother only to savethem from the cold.

Personally I think this gives hunters a bad rap. After seeing this I started to nosy around the store. They must have had about 50 very small black bear skins, About 100 dear heads with the horns cut off and about 50 of them were spikes. Largest rack was an extremely nice 10 point selling for $90.00................... what does this tell you about North County Taxidermy and trading post located in Keene, NY ???

Steve863

I think it is illegal to shoot a bear out of a group of bears only in the southern zone in NY. I think up in the Adirondacks one can shoot a cub if the wanted to. I can't see it being legal to shoot the rest of the cubs in the group just because a mother was shot as the taxidermist was suggesting. We get just one bear tag don't we? There is LOTS of shananigans in hunting and taxidermists surely play a part also. There are bad apples in every bunch, but from my experience it seems that in the hunting world the percentage of bad apples to good ones is higher I am sorry to say. I really feel sorry for hunters that do things ethically and then get lumped in the same class with the many losers that are out hunting these days!

salty444

Hi,

I read in the rule book that it is illegal to shoot a cub in the southern zone. But I highly doubt you will have an easy time explaining to the DEC officer that you were doing the ethical thing by shooting the mother and 3 cubs since they would just starve anyway.

livbucks

They won't starve.
They will become a nuisance to someone's garbage cans for awhile.

Steve F.in MD

Their web site: http://www.northcountrytaxidermy.com/ says they have been in business for over 30 years. I can only believe they get their products from leagal sources or the DNR up there would have shut them down. They even sell their products on E-bay so it's not like they are hiding what they are doing.

Pawildman

It used to be illegal to shoot cubs or bears that weighed less than 100 lbs here in PA. That rule was changed many years ago, because hunters get excited when they see a bear in the woods and tend to shoot. If they walk over and look at it and it is a cub or less than 100 lbs., they walk away from it. The Game Commission realized this, and decided to remove the 100 lb./cub rule. Now, if a "hunter" wants to shoot a 25 lb. cub and brag about his tremendous accomplishment, he is legally entitled to do so. They also realized that if cubs were going to get shot either by mistake or on purpose, it was better to have them removed from the woods and lawfully tagged than to be left to rot.
So, after all that, I guess that I'm telling you that cubs are legal game here in PA., and the reasons why. It becomes more of a personal choice and how you morally view the situation at crunch time, as far as I'm concerned.

Wilds

Thinkin' here someone got duped........

"Ma" and her boys prolly had a good laugh over it with some other locals...down at the coffee shop.

Tourists are fair game in some places........

Them cubs all likely died a normal, natural, road kill death somewhere in the Range of Black Bear.....if Ebay was involved.

Pretty funny.......

A.Nielsen

I havent hunted black bears yetand I wouldnt shoot a cub but thats just me.I have heard of people that do. If its legal theres not much you can do no matter how crappy it might be to you.

SPIKEHORN11

Thats how it sounds to me,lol.

The DEC monitors taxidermist very closely. If they weren't on the up and up they wouldn't be in business still.

WesternMdHardwoods

NOT EVERYONE IS A TROPHY HUNTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is it that wrong for someone to mount a deer or bear that actually maybe meant something to them??

As far as it being legal to shoot cubs, im not sure??? I do not see anything wrong with it IMO I bet they were different nice lookingmounts though? I have seen some but I believe they were cubs hit by cars???