by Brian McCombie - Friday, October 17, 2025
While hard numbers are elusive, media reports and various social media posts suggest that anti-hunters applied for tens of thousands of applications to receive a permit for Florida’s upcoming December 2025 black bear hunt. And some antis appear to have received said permits—permits that will go unused, of course, as part of the animal rights extremists’ plan to “save” Florida bears.
One source told the Orlando Sentinel that he had funded antis like himself to the tune of $200,000 in permit applications. As a result, he claimed, 39 people he knew of were awarded bear hunt permits but would not be using them.
In a widely-shared Facebook post, antis claim to have spent some $185,000 in application fees. If true, and at the $5 fee charged per application plus a possible handling fee, that would suggest more than 35,000 bear permit applications made by these non-hunters.
In all, approximately 163,000 bear hunt permit applications were received by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) by the time the permit application deadline ended on Sept. 22.
As we reported here at NRAHLF.org, this past summer FWC Commissioners voted 5-0 to approve rules that established a black bear hunt, the first such hunt in the Sunshine State since 2015.
“Florida is home to some 4,000 black bears and the population is growing fast,” one of the articles states. “While there is enough suitable bear habitat to support current population levels, FWC biologists determined that, if bear numbers in the four largest subpopulations continue to grow at current rates, the bears will soon run out of habitat.”
On average, FWC receives some 6,300 bear-related calls every year. In the last 50 years, FWC also has documented 42 times when wild black bears have made physical contact with people; three of the people sustained injuries serious enough to warrant medical attention.
Florida saw its first fatal bear attack in May, in FWC’s South Bear Management Unit, home to the state’s third-largest bear population, when a black bear killed 89-year-old Robert Markel and his dog on the Markels’ property near Jerome, Fla.
According to an FWC press release detailing the incident and the following investigation, Markel’s “preliminary cause of death was consistent with injuries caused by a black bear. Necropsy results revealed that one bear (263-pound male) contained the partial remains of Markel. DNA results received on Friday, May 9, [2025] positively identified that the 263-pound male’s DNA was present on Markel, inside his residence and on the dog’s body.”
This was the second Florida bear attack on a human in Florida in 2025, though thankfully the first attack was not fatal to the person.
Not that the anti-hunters seem to care about such tragedies. Their focus is on “saving” black bears. Meanwhile, as this hunting news website also reposted, 300 black bears are killed by vehicle strikes in Florida each year—almost double the 172 black bear tags being issued for the December hunting season.
According to the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Katrina Shadix, president of the anti-hunting Bear Warriors United, for example, submitted 550 bear tag applications for a total of $2,750, “hoping to keep the permits away from those who do want to hunt bears.”
Shannon Knowles, FWC communications director, noted that the agency will collect and evaluate data once the December 2025 hunt is over and use that information, including the number of unused permits and hunter success rates, to shape future hunts.
Meanwhile, Shaddix’s Bear Warriors United also filed a lawsuit in Florida’s Leon County Circuit Court on Sept. 17 to stop the hunt. Titled Bear Warriors United v. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (Case No. 2025 CA 001772), the lawsuit argues that the bear hunt is a violation of the Florida State Constitution because FWC gave “an unlawful delegation of the FWC's decision-making to its executive director or its designee concerning the black bear hunt."
The suit also alleges that various other procedural violations occurred during the consideration of the bear hunt by FWC commissioners.
Originally, FWC set the number of bear permits at 187 but reduced the number to 172 permits, apparently after finding a slight decline in one of the bear sub-populations.
The Florida bear hunt is slated to begin on Dec. 6.
About the Author
Brian McCombie is a field editor for the NRA’s American Hunter and writes about firearms and gear for the NRA’s Shooting Illustrated. A member of the National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation, Brian enjoys hunting hogs, shooting 1911s, watching the Chicago Bears and relaxing with his two cats.