Photo by Terry Jones
A large Louisiana black bear in the Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge
One of Louisiana’s greatest conservation victories is the restoration of the Louisiana black bear population. The bear was removed from the endangered species list in 2015, and its numbers continue to grow. Today, it is estimated that there are between 500 and 1,500 black bears in Louisiana. Most are found in the Tensas and Atchafalaya basins, but bears have been popping up everywhere over the last few years.
Bears are so numerous in some areas that they have become a nuisance. Today, more and more hunters are complaining of bears destroying corn feeders, deer stands and utility vehicles. Many hunters believe the bears directly compete with deer for food, and claim that whenever bears move into an area the deer start to leave.
As a result, a growing number of people are beginning to call for a bear season to thin out the critters. Louisiana state senator Stewart Cathey has heard the complaints and unsuccessfully tried to get a bill passed in the 2022 legislative session to open a bear hunting season.
Dealing with nuisance bears, however, is not a new problem in Louisiana. On September 23, 1910, the Logansport (Indiana) Pharos ran the following story:
Packs of Bears Plague Farmers—Louisiana’s Latest Peril Expensive as Boll Weevil
A number of farmers living at Lottie and other points in the southern part of Pointe Coupee parish, Louisiana, near the great Atchafalaya and Fordoche swamps, visited Baton Rouge, which is only twenty-four miles distant, the other day to secure the assistance of professional hunters in killing off bears that are destroying their crops, especially corn and sugar cane.
This is the only big swamp section left in Louisiana, and it will probably be drained in the next few years if the people of Louisiana pass the conservation constitutional amendment now before them. The swamp is full of canebrakes and has always been a favorite resort for bears, exceeding the Yazoo delta in this respect.
Heretofore the farmers in the cleared lands have cultivated cotton mainly, but the boll weevil has driven cotton out, and they are now raising corn and sugar cane, both favorite foods of the bear, which has a decidedly sweet tooth. On one place a pack of bears completely destroyed fifty acres of fine growing corn, either eating the ears or trampling down the stalks. It has never before occurred that the farmers had to appeal to a neighboring parish to help them out of a bear difficulty.
The Baton Rouge hunters sent an agent out to the Atchafalaya swamp to look over the situation. He returned with the report that the complaints were justified, that the bears were really doing a great deal of harm and that there were, judging from the tracks, some immense fellows of 1,000 pounds or more in the party.
He also reported that there was no relief in sight, as it was unlawful under the game law to kill bears at this time of the year and that even if the farmers took the law into their own hands for the protection of their property it would be impossible for man or dog to run down the bears at this season of the year. The luxuriance of the canes in the canebrakes where the bears seek refuge renders it difficult and unsafe if not impossible for a hunter to force his way through them.
The Louisiana game law, which was passed when President Roosevelt was hunting bear in Madison parish, fixes the hunting season for the game from November to February and makes it unlawful to trap bears at any season of the year. It was also made unlawful to ship a bear carcass out of the state. The idea, of course, was to preserve bear hunting as a sport, and there has been in consequence an increase in the number of bears in the state.
The farmers have been advised by sportsmen to let the bears run a few months longer and then arrange for a grand hunt. But in the last few days the depredations of the bears have been so great that the farmers are unwilling to hold off longer and now announce that there is going to be a bear battue in Pointe Coupee the like of which was never before seen, whether the game law allows it or not and whether the thermometer is 90 or zero.”
A “bear battue” was a form of hunting where men used sticks to beat bushes and the ground to drive bears toward other hunters. No follow-up article has been found, so it is not known whether the farmers took matters into their own hands or not.
Dr. Terry L. Jones is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. For an autographed copy of “Louisiana Pastimes,” a collection of the author’s stories, send $25 to Terry L. Jones, P.O Box 1581, West Monroe, LA 71294.
