Still no offical word from the NJF&W if there will be a bear hunt. I called them on Wednesday asking them when the applications will be out. They said that they are waiting to hear from Campbell. From what I've had read in the past Campbell doesn't have the power to stop the hunt, he can advised McHugh who is in charge of the NJF&W on what to do, and only McHugh can stop it.

Campbell is not signing off on the permit applications.

What can you do? Join the NJ State Federation of Sportsman's clubs and make a donation to have the applications printed.

Hey guys. All is not lost. Campbell can talk all the garbage he wants about no bear hunting this year, but i know someone on f&g counsel and all he says about this issue is, all the counsel needs to do is amend the regulations to allow the bear hunt to continue under a general hunting license rather than have permits. This way Campbell can cancel all permits, but we can still hunt the bear using the regular years license.

Heard that too. The right to hunt bear would have already been implied with your purchased hunting licenese, you would just have to check the bear in at a check station if you got lucky.

The only problem i can see is, how do they regulate the # being killed. If the F&G only wants a max of 500 killed they cant just close the hunt like they did in the permit hunt last year. They only way around that, that I see, is to have the # of days the hunt open to like 3 days or so, not allowing the numbers to pile up.

They can still shut the season down at any time. Has nothing to do with permits.

guys, answer a few for me. what do u do with the bear meat??? what is the big deal about killing a bear?? i think that i would rather kill a wild pig..i love bacon sandwiches just enlighten me a bit, because out of the N amer animals to hunt....a bear is very low on my list.


Lemond

Personally i have no desire to hunt bears, but i will support it for those who do. My uncle in Maine has friends that hunt bear and they mix it up in stews and such. He also said, unless you can prepare it perfect, making steaks and such is just wasting meat.

NJ bear meat is excellent. Not much different taste than venison if it is handled and prepared correctly. Remove as much fat as possible. Even steaks are quite tasty.

Lem,

We hunt bear in NJ for a number of reasons. First, there is a surplus of a natural resource and it would be irresponsible and wasteful not to harvest them. Second, they overpopulated to such a level that we are having dangerous levels of encounters on a daily basis. (25 cat 1 bear complaints last week alone). Even if you couldn't eat them they still need their numbers reduced for the safety of humans as well as the balance to the enviornment.