It seems that the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW) is on a bit of a promotion kick attempting to convince more Mainer’s to take up bear hunting.

Maine has too many bears – or at least anyone with any sense at all realizes that – and not enough hunters to control the growth. Or, it could be that the MDIFW is too tightly controlled by the guides and outfitters who dictate to them when, where, how often, how long and what bag limits will be on black bear. Then again, maybe two seasons for bear would work but you still need hunters.

Several articles have appeared in newspapers of late encouraging people to take up bear hunting with the MDIFW expressing thoughts of how the population of bears keeps growing while the population of bear hunters keeps shrinking.

Perhaps an actual change in attitude and presentation of propaganda at the department might help in that way. MDIFW is pretty quick to relate stories of their great bear management activities, cuddling up with bear cubs during the winter surveys and sharing stories of “named” bears as though they were a member of the neighborhood instead of potential table fare.

Some people (potential bear hunters) would prefer to see statistics from bear harvests to determine whether making the effort to take up bear hunting or come to Maine for a visit and do some bear hunting is worthwhile. To a bear hunter, cute and cuddly bear cubs all snuggly-wuggly into the jacket of a bear biologist isn’t what excites a bear hunter.

So here’s a suggestion. To help generate a bit more interest in bear hunting, MDIFW could at least pretend they give two rat’s patooties about bear hunting and see if they could publish the bear harvest results for the previous bear hunting season before the next one begins. Maybe they could even run a few more bear hunting reports in those same newspapers they like to publish cute bear pictures in.

But now that MDIFW has announced that they are no longer all that concerned about game populations and will focus more on health, counting and producing data is a thing of the past. It’s also a convenient way of ensuring there is no accountability.

Well, here’s a thought. If MDIFW is pretending to be recruiting bear hunters (more precisely they are recruiting revenue to pay the retirement pensions) but at the same time changing their focus to the health of game herds instead of population numbers, then history tells us that soon MDIFW will have their hands full of taking up the chore of dealing with all the diseases that come from overpopulations of any animal.

Health focus they want? Health focus they will get!

BUT DON’T GO LOOK!