Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Sows + Cubs ?

What's a normal number of cubs for a healthy black bear sow to have? I've seen several with a pair of cubs in recent years, but multiple folks in my area are showing pics like this from their trailcams this year. I know this hunter and he's pretty much abandoning any form of bait at the moment. That bow-stand location is likely ruined for the short run.

2 is impressive....

More cubs = better diet (typically)

They’ll have 1-4. The mode is 2.

Those look healthy!

ADFG says:

The cubs are born in their dens following a gestation period of about seven months. The cubs are born blind and nearly hairless, weighing in under a pound. One to four cubs may be born, but two is most common. Cubs remain with their mothers through the first winter following birth. Black bears mature sexually at 3 to 6 years of age, depending upon their environment. In the more southern parts of their range, bears will breed every other year; however, if a litter is lost early during the first summer, the sow will breed again that year. In more marginal environments such as northern Alaska, black bears keep their cubs with them an extra year and will breed every third year.

One bear is too damned many.

I have photos of no less than 35 bears in the same location.

Here are 13 you can see just in three photos. And there are two cubs are out of the frame. So, real world numbers, there are 15.







As for the more the merrier, once they start getting over populated, you end up with a bunch of dumpster divers and isn't healthy for them at all. All of the other game animals will be eaten and decline. I've already lost most of my turkeys and ALL of my grouse that were native to the land when I got it.

Got a question:

If you see a bear, how long do you wait to be certain it’s not with cubs before shooting it?

Johna
Where are you located?

No season?

Around here, 2 or 3 seems to be the norm. But, I've seen 4 lots of times and 5 twice.

Lots of beans and corn in the area. They eat very well.

Sow with 5 near me this year.

Just don't shoot the little ones.

Believe me, you will know when you see a big one.

I've seen 5 before

I found a sow under a tree top with 3 small nursing cubs late winter some yrs back. I could see 3 clearly and thought she might have a 4th from the sounds of things but I was already too close and wasn't getting within swatting distance to investigate farther even though she was groggy.

here in Minnesota bears and wolves are dang hard on our deer herd.

If you only shoot boars you do FA to control the population, really, quite the opposite.
Bears are hard on ungulates, Deer fawns and Moose calves.
One of those female Black Bears will probably kill 10-20 fawns a day during fawning, they do around here.

I’m willing to shoot any bear of decent size, but our regs forbid shooting any accompanied by cubs, even good-sized cubs. I’m just wondering how far the cubs will stray from Mama, and what a reasonable wait time is before I drop the hammer on one. I’ve seen cubs along the Skyline Drive with no adult in sight.

I’ve only seen a few bears, but as you said, the big ones really stand out. This is probably mostly academic as bears are pretty scarce where I hunt, but they do show up. Saturday and Sunday bears are legal for old men and children here, acorns are dropping, and pawpaws should be ripe, so there’s probably no better time to look for one. Two years ago I found a massive pile of scat right on the trail right at the same season. The spot I plan to sit has both types of mast.

Depends on the circumstances of the sighting...

Over bait- less than 5 minutes

Free range encounter-as long as you can afford to take. 10 minutes wouldnt be too long.

Calling- sow will usually run the cubs up a tree immediately upon hearing the call, so you can cut the encounter off right away, or not, accordingly.

Thanks, Tom. That’s in line with my best guess.

Lots of bears in WV, but distribution is uneven. You can take two if one at least is in one of the problem counties. The regular seasons are long; archery runs right with the three-month deer season, and rifle starts with the firearms buck season and runs until the end of the year. Then there are the special ones like this weekend, plus the Moutaineer Heritage Season for stick bows and sidelock MLs in January. Only four days, but you can take a bear, a deer, and a turkey, or try to anyway.

Being of a certain age +++, I don’t even need to fork over the $10 for a Damage Stamp. I used to always buy one, JIC.

We can't shoot any bears here, and their transplanting to north LA and southern AR over the last 10-15 years has a lot of people rather pissed. There was no vote for citizens on the "reintroduction" of the species, it was just shoved on us. Bears had been gone from here for about a century and now they are everywhere. Most landowners and hunters see them as very unwelcome, as our methods of hunting/recreation and reasons for purchasing such properties for the last 100 years did not take the possibility of bears into account. Now it's just a "deal with it" response by Big Brother, which has caused a lot of resentment and distrust.

The standard response for such a problem is SSS, but that’s a lot of shoveling!

Spot on ingwe.

There has been a number of times where I was very glad I didn't get into a any hurry to shoot because cubs were there and it just took some time to spot them. Kind of depends on the ground cover and the number of places a 20 lb cub could go unseen. I'm talking spot and stalk bear hunting.