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Hunters soon could be chasing grizzly bears across the ridges of the Rocky Mountains, leaving three states to come up with plans to ensure the iconic species won't be snuffed out so soon after recovering from threats to their survival.
The Obama administration in March proposed lifting protections for the more than 700 grizzlies around Yellowstone National Park. The bears have been considered a threatened species since 1975, but wildlife officials say their population has sufficiently recovered to turn over management to Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.
Other grizzly populations in Montana, Idaho and Washington state will remain protected. The grizzlies' Alaska cousin, the brown bear, is not considered a threatened or endangered species and is hunted regularly.
Yay, more unchewably tough meat! On the other hand, as a top predator its recovery does endorse conservation efforts over the past half-century.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Gravis on Friday May 13 2016, @12:16PM
the only weapon you get is a single knife.
if you really want to "prove" what a good hunter you are then drop the gun, you pussy.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @01:42PM
Knife? pfffffffft this is how real men do it [quoracdn.net].
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @02:27PM
mustresisturgeto...
Ok, you made me do this. I see your meme and raise you this [photobucket.com].
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday May 13 2016, @06:42PM
I see your raise and raise with this [youtube.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @02:00PM
I'd say a bow is a good compromise. [/Napoleon Dynamite]
(Score: 2) by Snow on Friday May 13 2016, @02:44PM
That should be a bow-staff, not a bow.
Or some numchucks would also be acceptable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @03:53PM
Bow hunting skills [youtube.com]
Gosh! It's right there. The second one, you idiot.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by devlux on Friday May 13 2016, @03:51PM
You know how you feel after being bitten by a horsefly?
That's how a bear feels after you insult it by trying to harm it with a bow and arrow.
If you're hunting a bear you need a gun and powerful one at that.
Otherwise you're hurting the thing but not enough to kill it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @04:14PM
Nope [google.com].
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @04:16PM
Incorrect.
According to actual studies on broadhead lethality (look for the work of Dr Ashby) you can do pretty well with a longbow on larger and physically tougher animals provided that you have an adequate draw weight, and suitable design of broadhead and shaft.
I forget the whole list of criteria, but a full penetration on a flank shot through both lungs is quite effective, and better yet if you hit heart and liver owing to the efficiency of exsanguination from a broadhead wound.
Basically, you want a cut-on-contact tip with single-bevel edges in a narrow angle, high hardness of the metal so as to minimise energy loss owing to distortion, a ferrule wider than the shaft so as to minimise shaft friction, very far forward centre of gravity, a twist direction based on the single bevel edges that agrees with the fletching, and a few other design elements.
But yes, a powerful longbow, well equipped, or a compound or recurve for that matter, is quite adequate for grizzly or brown or polar bear.
(Score: 2) by Sir Finkus on Friday May 13 2016, @02:49PM
My uncle killed a bear with a bow, does that count? I don't think it was a grizzly bear though.
Join our Folding@Home team! [stanford.edu]
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Snow on Friday May 13 2016, @02:57PM
Your uncle is an asshole.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday May 13 2016, @04:55PM
You don't know anything, Mr Snow.
Maybe he brought it back from the dead right after.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Snow on Friday May 13 2016, @05:33PM
Maybe... Or maybe he just killed a beautiful, majestic, animal to prove how 'tough' he was.
My cousin did the same thing (Bear hunting with a bow) and he's an asshole too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @06:35PM
Beautiful? ... maybe, I guess, if that's what you're into...
Majestic?
Are you serious?
For realsy-reals?
Bears are the angry drunks of Mother Nature. They're lumbering hulks of muscle and rage, with a way of life that drifts between scavenging any eating anything too slow to get out of the way.
They're about as majestic as possums, and about as discriminating.
Any time anyone talks about "majestic" bears, I can tell they got more of their information from nature documentaries than actual observation in the wild.
And as for having done it with a bow as opposed to a firearm, at least the bow demands greater skills in stalking and greater physical strength - not that a bow is my preferred tool for the job, but if your understanding is based on the degree of challenge, bow hunting is definitely the harder way to go.
Oh, wait! I got it!
Anyone who does things you don't personally care for is an asshole. Right. And your opinion is oh-so-special because ....? Please enlighten us why we care what you personally think.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Friday May 13 2016, @07:38PM
I spend a lot of time in Bear Country. I have seen bears in their home. Grizzly Bears and Black bears. I have spent many nights tenting in bear country.
Bears are not 'lumbering hulks of muscle and rage'. In reality, they are quite timid and scare easily. In general, if you leave them alone, they will leave you alone. This is why people wear bear-bells. The bear will hear you, and stay out of your way. The vast majority of bear attacks could have been avoided.
Saying "Welp, they aren't endangered anymore, so let's start shooting them in the face until they are again", is the type of reasoning that got them on the endangered list to begin with.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @08:27PM
The proposal of the scientists was not to keep bears teetering on the edge of endangerment. They proposed that this particular population of specific bears in a specific range no longer meets the criteria for needing federal protection, and that management (whatever form that management might take) could be reasonably delegated to the states to meet the needs of the states.
Got that? "Welp, they aren't endangered anymore, so let's start shooting them in the face until they are again" isn't what they said. It isn't what they proposed. They didn't even state that the states should or must allow hunting in any form whatsoever. If the state of Wyoming were to declare that hunting grizzlies were to be off limits for all time, that fits perfectly within what the scientists proposed.
As for the idea that bears scare easily - sure. Up to a point, that is true. However, it is not analytically useful. They are rapacious, powerful omnivores only matched in their ferocity by wolverines and wolves - and not lone wolves either, but whole packs of wolves. Guess what? Wolves are shy as well, and they will still eat you while you scream, if the urge takes them. A bear's response to a near threat might be to leave the area, but could just as easily be to charge, flatten the opposition, and commence eating. Hunting bears is treated by (sane) hunters as pretty much any other predator hunt; to be treated with the same care as when hunting anything that might hunt you back.
None of this makes them majestic. It pretty much puts them on a level with feral hogs, with thicker fur and claws instead of tusks. They, too, usually run. But a feral hog massing hundreds of pounds, with razor-sharp tusks as long as bananas can just as easily gut you like a trout. Doesn't make them majestic, either. Oh, and they will eat fawns, or for that matter anything foolish enough to get into chomping range.
As for your original statement to the effect that anyone who shoots a bear with an arrow is an asshole, that's still unsupported by the facts at hand, and most definitely unsupported by the content of the story. The fact that you've spent time tenting in bear country - well, great. Still doesn't make them majestic, nor suggest that they couldn't, or shouldn't, be hunted to some extent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @04:03PM
If you're trying to prove some kind of macho thing, maybe. On the other hand, if you want to actually be effective, you should use your brain - which leads to technology - which leads to firearms.
The point of hunting here isn't some sort of ultra-macho, chest-beating, delt-flexing exercise in hairy-chested dominance, but in management of the wild population. In that case, it is your duty to be as accurate, effective and humane as you possibly can be.
Anything less is animal abuse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @06:28PM
Bears are not human. I don't have feelings for bears, one way or the other. I care about humans.
Fact: Bears are hazardous to humans. The benefit they provide is minimal compared to the harm. We might as well be talking about parasitic worms, HIV, smallpox, polio, etc. Bears just happen to be bigger.
I therefore am happy if they are removed from the wild by any means possible. Put them in zoos. Poison them with bait. Do whatever it takes. This isn't about proving how manly a person is. If you want to do that, buy a zoo and sleep in the bear cage. The rest of us, who might like to enjoy a safe and unstressful trip into the woods, shouldn't be forced to miss out due to man-eating monsters.
This idea that natural things must be preserved is nonsense. Yes, the ecosystem changes. In case you hadn't noticed, we have already dramatically and irreversibly changed it. We need to focus on what makes our environment best for us humans. Bears do not have a legitimate role in our world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @07:25PM
Insightful? +5? Seriously?
Surely even an SJW of the highest order can figure out for themselves that this is the equivalent of telling people who want to cross the Atlantic that they need to learn to swim. Want your appendix removed? Vodka for anaesthesia, and the broken vodka bottle for surgery!
This doesn't even pass the laugh test in the field of moral philosophy, let alone technology, economics or human development.
You can do better than that, mods.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @04:06PM
It's all down to how you prepare the meat.
The easy answer is of course in ground form, typical in sausages and burgers.
A secondary easy answer is slow-cooked, in the form of a stew or similar dish. Bear curry, anyone?
If you want bear steak (not sure why, but whatever) then you need to prepare it with suitable marinades or other treatments that will reduce the toughness of the meat before you get cooking.
The culinary arts: good for more than just foodie bragging rights.
(Score: 2) by devlux on Friday May 13 2016, @04:16PM
Hunting is a good thing for mankind.
It allows us an outlet for urges that predate our species. The urge to band together, to stalk something, to kill it and bring it home.
Hunting is a huge part of what makes us, us and it tries to bleed over into our daily lives all the time whether we want to acknowledge it or not.
Despite your own horror and revulsion at the thought, consider this. What is less horrible? Trapping an animal in a small pen never letting it know freedom, fattening it through forcefeeding and then killing it? Or going out into the woods and hunting your supper from whatever the land provides?
As for bear in particular. I've eaten bear. One year when I was about 9 or so we were on a hunt for Deer or Elk or something I don't rightly recall.
Bear got attracted to the smell of the camp. We tried to shew it away but he wouldn't go away even when a warning shot was fired. Dad and an Uncle shot it a few times, finally brought it down on the 4th shot. It was horrific to see in the literal sense of the word. But I was always taught if you kill it, you eat it.
Bear like any meat, is only tough if you don't know how to cook it properly. You have to slow roast it for hours. What you get is like a good quality steak but very greasy due to the amount of intramuscular fat. For some reason and this may have been a family recipe, but for some reason I remember it also having a strong flavor of sagebrush and strawberry. It was pretty good.
Animal ain't a trophy to hang on your wall or decorate your living room.
It's a living being, and it's food and clothing and medicine and a whole host of other things that were necessary to our survival as a species for at least the last half million years or so.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday May 13 2016, @09:18PM
well then i have to bow to your superior tenderizing powers. i grew up in the rockies and the church had wild game dinners a few times a year. bear was always there and was as tough as shoe leather. i much preferred venison, elk, or duck.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by devlux on Friday May 13 2016, @10:01PM
With any wild game, low and slow is the way to go. Wrapping in foil helps alot.
Also it was mom that could cook like that. Pretty much all skills along these lines skipped my generation, or well skipped me anyways.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday May 13 2016, @04:46PM
That seems an awfully small number -- there's already one genetic bottleneck in their recent past, why make another?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @04:53PM
Nationwide, that would be a very small number. You're dead right.
However, this isn't nationwide. This is the count of a specific population in a specific area.
Rats in Manhattan are not endangered.
Rats appear to be functionally extinct in Antarctica.
See the difference?
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday May 14 2016, @07:14PM
Grizzlies in Wyoming don't mate with those in Alaska, and over time they become distinct. Like salmon from different rivers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 15 2016, @05:05PM
Duly noted. I'm sure those scientists will turn on a dime when they're informed of ... wait. Hold the phone; I think they already know.
Grizzlies range, especially under population and food pressure. The Yellowstone grizzly population is a source for the surrounding area, and in actual fact has been for quite a while. Granted that Wyoming grizzlies don't have a sperm donation plan with a worldwide reach, there's also not an entirely closed system either.
If you are desperately concerned about the inevitable closing of the genetic door, then arrange for some cross breeding. We've done it with lots of other animals, it's not a secret any more.