by Brian McCombie - Monday, June 23, 2025
Anti-hunters may have lost a huge battle in Florida, but they apparently are not done fighting.
The loss for the antis occurred in May 2025 when the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) voted 4 to 1 to hold a limited black bear hunt sometime between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, 2025. One last vote is slated for August to officially approve the hunt.
As the FWC noted following the May vote, “If Commissioners decide to re-open regulated bear hunting, it would provide access to the resource and manage the population. Hunting would allow the FWC to start managing population growth rates for the Bear Management Units, or BMUs, with the largest bear subpopulations. Balancing species population growth with suitable habitat helps to maintain a healthy population, and hunting is an important and effective tool that is used to manage wildlife populations across the world.”
A slew of anti-hunting and animal rights extremist groups very vocally opposed the hunt previous to the May FWC meeting and vote, claiming, among other things, that bear numbers were not high enough to warrant a hunt.
Yet, the FWC’s own data showed that the bear population increased by almost 50 percent between its 2002 and 2015 abundance surveys. The data also revealed that black bears had expanded their occupied range from 17 percent to 51 percent of Florida since 1992.
Faced with a surging population—estimated at over 4,000 animals and growing fast—commissioners felt a bear hunt was a needed conservation strategy to reduce bear numbers to be in step with available habitats. A hunt can also limit these bear populations from expanding into new areas, expansions that would only increase the already high number of human-bear conflicts occurring across the Sunshine State.
Most recently those conflicts have escalated to one bear attack on a person that resulted in a person being killed near Jerome, Fla., and another attack near Silver Springs that left a person harmed but alive.
Faced with the expectation that the hunt will be held, anti-hunters in Florida have shifted tactics, calling on their fellow antis to apply for bear tags.
The group Speak Up Wekiva is spearheading the effort, and the organization’s idea is simple enough: Have Floridians who oppose the hunt apply for as many of the bear hunt tags as possible, and every tag they receive via the proposed lottery is a tag that will go unused.
On the group’s website, Speak Up Wekiva included instructions on how to apply for one of the proposed 187 bear tags. As the website notes, “Wait for FWC to finalize the new rules 8/13. Shortly thereafter you will be able to enter the lottery for a bear tag at $5 per entry, enter as many times as you can. If you win, buy the tag for $100. Happy hunting (or not).”
Of course, the Speak Up website campaign features a photo of a cute black bear cub, which would never be hunted, paired with the caption, “If you love me, buy up the permit that will be used to hunt me at GoOutdoorsFlorida.com.”
Likewise, there exists an online petition called “Stop the Florida Black Bear Trophy Hunt!!!” that shows an adorable bear cub nose-to-nose with a mamma bear sow, neither of which would be hunted.
Both are misleading as the FWC proposed hunt guidelines set the weight on any bear taken at no less than 100 pounds, and specifically note, “No cubs may be harvested [and] No females with cubs may be harvested.”
The overall hunt quota itself was set at less than 200 animals, with strict harvest reporting requirements in place so the hunt can be halted as soon as the quota is reached.
The antis hate it but as the FWC noted in its overview of the bear hunt proposal, “Regulated bear hunting adds a positive value on bears by providing people with additional economic and recreational opportunities. Hunters can use the meat, pelt, fat and other parts of the bear they harvest. In contrast to all other current management action options, regulated hunting generates funding for conservation.”
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.
Photo by Lon Lauber; lonlauber.com