Florida Bear Hunt Ends After Hunters Kill 300 Black Bears Over Weekend

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) said on Sunday that it wants to end the first bear hunt after 20 years in Florida, which killed 295 black bears over a single weekend.

Though the hunt began just one half-hour before sunrise on Saturday, it ended after a couple of days, once the hunters reached the statewise limit of 320 bears, according to a FWC press release. "The 2015 bear hunt is officially over," the news release declared.

The reason why the hunt was launched was to bring down the bear population, which has expanded from a few hundreds to over 3,000 in about 40 years. There are 41 US states with bears, out of which 33 conduct hunts.

The hunting was first called off in the "designated central and east Panhandle regions of Florida" after Saturday. In the following day, the north and south units were also cut off, stopping the hunt in all four "bear management units," according to Fox News.

Hence, this weekend, about 3,778 people were buying permits, and the $100 license will fund the waste management programs in Florida.

Hunters could not use dogs or bait, and were allowed to hunt bears weighing more than a 100 pounds. The weapons allowed for the hunt were "shotguns, bows, pistols, revolvers and crossbows".

Even as the plan got some flak from critics, the director of FWC Habitat and Species Conservation division, Dr. Thomas Eason said, "From a biological sustainable population perspective, none of these numbers are worrying to us. We have a large resilient growing bear populations," according to ABC7.