Den check rounds out hunting numbers
By Terry Karkos
Staff Writer
OLD TOWN – On Feb. 18, bear biologists Randy Cross and Jennifer Vashon of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife hiked into cut-over woods to a bear den near Old Town off Route 43.

Because of the lack of natural food in the woods during the fall, they wanted to check the status of an 8-year-old sow and her three yearlings.

Last March, Cross visited the den – a 3-foot-wide by 18-inch-high hole in the ground in a small stand of fir – and found a bear and cubs that had never been studied. Soon the mother was wearing a radio collar.

“We track each radio-collared female to her winter den to evaluate the condition of the female and document the birth of cubs or survival of her previous litter,” Vashon said.

Maine’s stable bear population is currently estimated at 23,000. In order to maintain that number, bear biologists must know the number of bears entering the population to replace other losses.

“While the number of bears harvested by hunters each year is known, the number dying from other causes must be determined by our research,” Vashon said.

Research involves visiting bear dens. Over the last 28 years, biologists have studied 2,049 bears.

On Feb. 18, biologists were dismayed to find only one female cub had survived to become a 32-pound yearling.

“They have a hard life out here. It’s not uncommon for sows to lose two or three cubs or whole litters. In the summer of ’95 – a bad food year – sows in our study areas lost a third of their cubs,” Cross said.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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