Wisconsin’s Bears, Bear Hunting Grow More Popular, Intriguing

   One sure sign of summer is widespread reports of black bears cruising Wisconsin’s backyards, crossing our Main Streets, or raiding our garbage cans and bird feeders in places we seldom see bruins.

   As biologists with the Department of Natural Resources explain, hungry bears often start roaming in mid-May as they search for food after months of hibernation and dormancy. Bear sightings increase in June as July’s breeding season nears, with mother bears shooing away their yearlings. These young adults then disperse and start casting about for mates.

   In turn, summer is typically when you see suburban moms posting Facebook videos of their idiot-husbands getting too close to backyard bears, and police officers eyeing treed bears in village parks. Meanwhile, you’ll also see DNR press releases as biologists urge people to leave visiting bears alone, pull in all their bird feeders, keep their garbage cans indoors, and never-ever feed bears.

   One such biologist is Nancy Christel in the DNR’s Spooner office. She often gives talks across northwestern counties about bears, and sensible ways to live among them. Bears seldom stay long when wandering into southeastern Wisconsin, but they’re a big part of Christel’s home turf.

   And she knows firsthand that bears never forget a reliable food source. During a talk June 19 at the Perlick Distillery near Sarona, Christel spoke to a Natural Resources Foundation gathering. She said her home’s previous owners often fed bears, and it took her five years to persuade resident bears their food truck wasn’t coming back.

 Whether the discussion involves bear dens, fecal plugs, breeding journeys or hunting methods, Wisconsin’s black bears are generating more interest than ever the past 35 years. — Snapshot Wisconsin photo

   Folks love learning about bears by inspecting bear skulls, petting bear hides, and viewing photos of bears sliding paw-over-paw across ropes to reach suspended bird feeders. And judging by their smiles and laughs, they also like close-up views of the 42 teeth in adult bears’ mouths, and full-color photos that distinguish a bear’s springtime fecal plug from its late-summer berry “pie.”

   Yep. Not only can Christel prove that bears defecate in the woods, she can describe how they can drowse all winter in their den without defecating or urinating.

   We pause for this note: If you find this topic disturbing, you must not guide many kids on nature hikes. Though adults won’t admit it about themselves, kids freely celebrate the human fascination with all products of the alimentary canal. That is, bear poop, deer pellets, wolf logs, owl pellets, turkey dung, rabbit pellets, coyote dung, raccoon scat, grouse droppings, porcupine pellets or any other animal excrement they want ID’d.

   The more details you provide about content and digestive processes, the more you’ll impress these impressionable minds. And based on how Christel’s audience zeroed in on black bear fecal plugs during her talk, senior citizens and middle-aged folks remain kids at heart. One man impressed the crowd by identifying the fecal plug in Christel’s photo lineup of bear droppings.

   That’s no small feat, given that most of the room never before heard the term “fecal plug” until that moment. Though zoologists bicker whether bears truly hibernate in winter, they agree it’s remarkable how bears can slumber five months without eating, drinking, urinating or defecating. After all, some old-timers can’t sleep seven hours without four or more bathroom breaks.

   As the fecal plug proves, it’s not all discipline and willpower. Although fecal plugs look much like standard bear poop, they feature cells and secretions from the bear’s own intestinal lining. The plugs also contain fur the bear ingested while grooming, leaves and other bedding materials from its den, and calloused parts of foot pads it shed and licked.

   After bears finish hibernating, they step outside their den and rid themselves of the plug, presumably with neither modesty nor discretion. And though the North American Bear Center of Ely, Minnesota, claims “fecal plugs have a light odor that is not unpleasant,” it didn’t cite the source's name.

   To Christel’s credit, she focused more of her hour-long presentation on the status of Wisconsin’s bear population, and her research on bear dens and denning habits. As with any speaker, she can’t dictate which topics her audience or eavesdropping reporters find most remarkable.

   Nor can she control where the conversation goes once she stops talking and everyone drives home. Some of us, for instance, like digging into details about Wisconsin’s bears and bear hunting. Wisconsin is home to roughly 25,000 bears, and DNR surveys find 60% of Wisconsinites are comfortable living near them, and 70% aren’t worried about damage bears can cause.

   Bear hunting has grown increasingly popular in Wisconsin since the mid-1980s. In fact, a record 146,021 hunters applied in December for one of the 13,110 bear tags the DNR issued for this fall’s hunting season. That’s over 16 times more applicants than Wisconsin averaged in the late 1980s, and 50% more than the 97,467 applicants for 2010’s bear tags.

   Bear hunting applications have exceeded 100,000 annually since 2010, and increased each of the past five years after temporarily stalling around 120,000 in 2020. Because of that interest, applicants this year needed 10 years’ worth of preference points to have a 47% chance of drawing a bear tag for Zone A in northwestern Wisconsin, and a 70% chance of drawing a tag for Zone B in northeastern Wisconsin.

   Applicants for zones C and D currently have to apply at least two years to have a reasonable chance of drawing a tag, and those seeking tags for zones E and F might get drawn after applying one year.

   Hunters killed an average of 4,176 bears annually from 2010 through 2024, including a record 5,133 in 2010. They killed 4,432 bears in Wisconsin in 2024, a 38.5% success rate, up from 3,005 bears in 2023, a 24% success rate, which was attributed to a heavy acorn crop across the state’s top bear range. Boars (males) comprised 51% of the kill, 2,260; while sows (females) totaled (2,172).

   Wisconsin’s top bear hunting county in 2024 was Marinette with 306 kills, with Sawyer next, 296; and Rusk, 291. Hunters using only bait killed 3,360 bears last year, while those using trailing hounds killed 961. Hunters using neither bait nor dogs killed 65 bears. Gun-hunters took 3,783 bears, 85.5% of the kill; while archers killed 419, 9.5%; and crossbow hunters took 184, 4%.