The spring black bear hunt…

The spring black bear hunt is unethical. It provides limited to no economic or environmental benefit. In the absence of a spring hunt, more bears are taken in the fall, with essentially equivalent demographic and economic consequences. The only concrete outcome of the spring hunt is to generate orphan cubs, when mothers are taken either illegally or accidentally. MNRF's own research (Obbard et al. 2008) shows that hunters have a poor ability to distinguish male and female bears, so the prohibition on taking mothers is ineffective. Please reconsider this poor policy proposal.