AmericanBlackBear_EastTexas_Garner_Nathan_MishawakaIN_17August2024_Reel4211.mp3

Nathan Garner [00:00:00] As an overview, I know that when early settlers ... arrived in East Texas, black bears were very abundant... But they were considered extirpated, completely gone, from East Texas by World War Two, around 1940. There were a lot of threats to bears since the first settlers got to East Texas... And the threats still continue, of a different sort.

Nathan Garner [00:00:35] But indiscriminate hunting started their first decline because hunting used to be year-round. No limits on how many you could take. I mean, we're talking about, when early settlers got here, and that was before seasons were set or anything like that...

Nathan Garner [00:00:57] And then since then, since seasons have been so restricted in east Texas (and actually, I guess the last time you could hunt bear legally in east Texas would probably be around '78 or the late '70s), ... other threats like habitat fragmentation continue to happen. And of course, Texas has gotten a lot of people and so on and so forth.

Nathan Garner [00:01:28] Logging started. A lot of pine forests were cut down initially. So, there were disturbances to forestland that the bears had to adapt to rather quickly.

Nathan Garner [00:01:42] And you have to understand, black bears are one of the slowest reproducing mammals ... in North America. Black bear, wild black bear, ... they only start breeding at ages 3 to 4 years of age and only have an average of two cubs every other year during their 10 to 12-year lifespan... You can understand the limited amount of litters they can have. So, they're very susceptible to overharvest and disturbance...

Nathan Garner [00:02:17] And unregulated hunting was devastating to black bears in East Texas. And as far as the famous bear hunters of the past, of East Texas - Ben Lilly and Uncle Bud Bracken - there are accounts of how many bears they potentially harvested. I think one of them was reported, if my historical accounts are correct, to have hundreds of black bear hides hanging in their barns when they stopped hunting.

Nathan Garner [00:02:54] And they only stopped hunting because they couldn't find bears anymore. And they knew the areas were so depleted of bears that they just, there were none left, basically.