Northern Ontario outfitters worry slow spring bear hunt a sign of things to come

We are the midst of spring bear hunting season in northern Ontario, but there isn't much hunting going on.

American tourists are largely staying home with COVID border restrictions still in place.

"So the bears are getting bigger, which is very positive for us. But unfortunately the Americans aren't travelling at this point in time," said Brenda Barefoot, who along with her husband runs the Bear's Den Lodge on the French River.

She says they haven't offered a spring hunt in several years now, with the Key River forest fire, local flooding and COVID-19 disrupting the season that was once a bit part of their business. 

Barefoot says the Ministry of Natural Resources only allows the lodge to welcome four hunters per season, a sharp drop from the 40 guests they would bring in for the spring bear hunt before it was cancelled in 1999.

She worries that this sets the stage for slow fishing season, after the first few weeks were "sluggish."

"What's unusual is they're cancelling. This is happening right and left," said Barefoot.

"Whether it's the weather or gas, inflation, COVID, name whatever."

It's a similar story at the Red Pine Lodge on Ivanhoe Lake near Foleyet.

"Yeah, we're losing some business," said owner Garry Litt.

"It's not going to kill us or anything, but it's business you were counting on this year since the pandemic's winding down."

Litt does have a handful of Canadian bear hunters coming this spring, but says the Americans who were booked cancelled, citing the vaccination requirements for crossing the border.

Tourist outfitters were among the loudest voices calling for the spring bear hunt to be reinstated, finally convincing the Liberal government to bring it back as a pilot project in 2017.

But there were also concerns about public safety with a perception that a rising number of bears were wandering into northern cities and towns and that this was connected to the scrapping of the spring hunt. 

Keith Munro, a wildlife biologist with the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, says there's conflicting science on that. 

"There's been some studies that have found that it's fully driven by food availability and there are some studies that show that harvest can play a role, especially over a longer time period," he said.

"It's an important tool in the tool box."

Munro says while the federation is pleased that the spring bear hunt is now fully returned, it continues to "push back on restrictions on placement of baits" which include not placing a bear bait within 500 metres of a home or within 30 metres of a road or trail. 

The Ministry of Natural Resources says the number of bears hunted in the spring has dropped steadily since the hunt was restored, going from 2,031 in 2017 to 1,649 in 2021.

The number of bears killed in the northeast over that time dropped by about 100 over that time, while it's down by several hundred in the northwest and has actually increased in recent years in southern Ontario.