# 2016 Bear Harvest Stats



## twincedargap (Oct 1, 2017)

Apparently I wasn’t alone in my frustrations last year.  To me it seemed the abundance of acorns made it hard to find focused sign.  I wasn’t the only one that didn’t tag one.   Not many bear were taken: 

http://georgiawildlife.com/sites/default/files/wrd/pdf/harvest-summaries/bear/north_ga_bear_harvest_summary_2016.pdf


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## Buckman18 (Oct 1, 2017)

I'm going to guess that 2017 will closely parallel 2016. There are a ton of acorns again, and the hurricane knocked many of them out over night.


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## northgeorgiasportsman (Oct 1, 2017)

It's unusual to see two such crops in successive years, but here we are.  I don't think the crop is as heavy as last year, but it seem that every single tree in the woods is dropping this year.


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## CornStalker (Oct 1, 2017)

Agreed. Ton food out there and it's tough hunting...


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## Gerrik (Oct 1, 2017)

I have just been concentrating on funnels, saddles, and trails. Irma dropped a ton of acorns all over the place.


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## Triton Mike (Oct 1, 2017)

our crop this year dwarfs last year.  Acorns for days..


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## Killer Kyle (Oct 1, 2017)

Triton Mike said:


> our crop this year dwarfs last year.  Acorns for days..



My extensive observation of my hunting areas yields vastly different results. Where I hunt on Chattahoochee and in the NF, acorns are very scarce. White oak acorns I mean. Red oaks are there like always, but in my usual haughts, white oaks have barely produced at all. In the places they did, the acorns have been itty bitty, tiny acorns barely bigger than a jelly bean. I focused more on lower areas this than last year and the year before, so maybe the acorns did better higher up. In the places I've been so far this year (my usual places), the white oaks have been extraordinarily thin.


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## Killer Kyle (Oct 1, 2017)

twincedargap said:


> Apparently I wasn’t alone in my frustrations last year.  To me it seemed the abundance of acorns made it hard to find focused sign.  I wasn’t the only one that didn’t tag one.   Not many bear were taken:
> 
> http://georgiawildlife.com/sites/default/files/wrd/pdf/harvest-summaries/bear/north_ga_bear_harvest_summary_2016.pdf




I still believe those stats need to be taken with an extreme err towards caution. I believe those stats are highly, highly inaccurate. 5 bears killed/reported in all of Towns Co?! Impossible. The harvest had to have been 30 or even 50 rock bottom. There's no way only 5 were killed in Towns Co. There must be some serious underreporting. If 12 were reported killed on Chattahoochee alone which is ~25,000 acres, you know probably at least 5x that many had to have been killed in Towns Co. The data generally may still indicate a lower harvest than usual, but I think the numbers are way, way, way off than the actual values.


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## meatseeker (Oct 1, 2017)

Killer Kyle said:


> I still believe those stats need to be taken with an extreme err towards caution. I believe those stats are highly, highly inaccurate. 5 bears killed/reported in all of Towns Co?! Impossible. The harvest had to have been 30 or even 50 rock bottom. There's no way only 5 were killed in Towns Co. There must be some serious underreporting. If 12 were reported killed on Chattahoochee alone which is ~25,000 acres, you know probably at least 5x that many had to have been killed in Towns Co. The data generally may still indicate a lower harvest than usual, but I think the numbers are way, way, way off than the actual values.[/QUOTE
> Absolutely agree. The last time I killed one was 2014. That year I personally knew twice as many people who killed bear that year than Was reported. I think the "tagging" requirements on bears caused MOST kills to go unreported.


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## Panther25 (Oct 2, 2017)

I heard from a DNR biologist in Minnesota that they aren't concerned with knowing the exact population of a species or the exact number harvested. They simply want their survey to be consist so they can compare from year to year.


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## meatseeker (Oct 2, 2017)

I don't know what a dnr up mirth would know about Georgia bear kills but it's not a survey. They actually tag them and pull a tooth off each bear killed


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## northgeorgiasportsman (Oct 3, 2017)

meatseeker said:


> I don't know what a dnr up mirth would know about Georgia bear kills but it's not a survey. They actually tag them and pull a tooth off each bear killed



Each kill reported.


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## The mtn man (Oct 3, 2017)

Killer Kyle said:


> My extensive observation of my hunting areas yields vastly different results. Where I hunt on Chattahoochee and in the NF, acorns are very scarce. White oak acorns I mean. Red oaks are there like always, but in my usual haughts, white oaks have barely produced at all. In the places they did, the acorns have been itty bitty, tiny acorns barely bigger than a jelly bean. I focused more on lower areas this than last year and the year before, so maybe the acorns did better higher up. In the places I've been so far this year (my usual places), the white oaks have been extraordinarily thin.


That's what I found on chatahoochee, what whiteoaks that did drop, bears had already mopped them up and moved on. And I was pretty high up.


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## The mtn man (Oct 3, 2017)

This sounds like north carolina, one year a particular county had reported around 15 bears killed, i personally knew of over 20 killed in just one watershed.


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