Bear hunt brings out pros, cons

By Linda Bell
Correspondent

In an effort to prevent people from getting hurt by a bear and to curtail property damage from bear break-ins, Crystal Lakes will allow an archery bear hunt on greenbelts that make up about 13 percent of land area in the large mountain subdivision northwest of Red Feather Lakes.

The Crystal Lakes Road and Recreation Board, working with the Colorado Division of Wildlife, has requested 12 permits for the special bear hunt from Sept. 5 to Nov. 30. The final number will be left up to area wildlife manager Dave Clarkson and Crystal Lakes Manager Jody Sandquist. All hunters will be required to pass a target test and successfully complete a special safety course before being issued permits.

Tyler Baskfield, public information specialist for the DOW, said allowing this kind of managed special hunt on private property is a new step for the DOW. Bow hunters, who wear camouflage instead of blaze orange, have only 30 yards or less to target their prey, making it the safest method of hunting.

Clarkson said the DOW estimates the resident bear population at Crystal Lakes to be at least 12 or more. The average success rate of bear harvests by bow hunters is 5 percent, he said.

For the past five years, Crystal Lakes residents experienced more than 100 bear break-ins per year and thousands of dollars in damages, according to Sandquist. She estimated there are at least three generations of resident bears habituated to humans and what they can offer in the way of fast food. That cycle of dependence needs to be interrupted, she said.

Sandquist said so far this year there have been 13 break-ins, far fewer than in past years by this time, so it seems the community's educational program on bear awareness is working. But, she said, bears become more persistent through late summer and fall as they struggle to put on enough hibernation weight.

A Bear Aware Team, a program initiated by the DOW in April 2005 and made up of Crystal Lakes residents, now documents every break-in they hear about and works to educate the residents on the reasons bears are attracted to their properties, said Jim Tiffin, who heads up the team.

Tiffin said landowners have been forced to board up their windows, remove trailers off their property, erect electric fences around their lots and pay for costly damages. In the past few years, bears broke into many more houses than trailers, Tiffin said, and people were getting pretty angry.

Because the bears are habituated to breaking in, asking the DOW to relocate them wasn't really a good option, he added.

Last year, the DOW killed one bear in the subdivision and one or two were taken during the public hunt on adjoining Forest Service land in 2005, Sandquist said.

Tiffin said the board authorized a single bow hunter on the Crystal greenbelts in 2005, which was not successful. Because the program was just developing, the hunter was limited to using a tree stand, not hunting on the weekends, and only hunting during the regular two-week bow season, Tiffin said.

Since it is illegal to hunt, pursue or recover a bear from private property without permission, a letter to all property owners requesting permission for hunter access was sent out during the winter, Tiffin said. So far, about 150 or 10 percent of the total number of landowners in the subdivision granted permission.

Baskfield said Colorado law requires licensed hunters to remove all edible parts of their take. He said people harvest bears for their hides and their meat. If hunters want to give away more than 20 pounds of meat to one person, they need certification from the DOW to do so. If a bear dies on private property, and the hunter doesn't have permission to access that property, neither the landowner nor anyone else can benefit from the kill, he said.

Not all landowners in Crystal Lakes agree the hunt is safe. Tom Dondelinger, a Crystal Lakes property owner, says he uses those common areas for hiking and fishing. He said his main concern is for safety. "There is potential for accidents to happen," he said.

Dondelinger suggested fewer permits should be issued, hunters should not be allowed to hunt on weekends, and it would be far safer to trap the bears than to encourage hunting. Dondelinger noted the board made this decision without a general vote of the property owners.

Sandquist said a special notification letter about the bear hunt will go out to all Crystal Lakes property owners, and there will be signs on the greenbelt trails warning people about the hunt.