While bear hunting dog breeds come in all shapes and sizes, some are better suited to bear hunting than others. This article will cover the best bear hunting dog breeds for bear hunters looking for a tough and dependable canine companion on their next hunt.
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For more details, check the Disclosure section at the bottom of the page. Karelian bear dogs are medium-sized bear-hunting dogs with an admirable track record. They were bred to hunt and fight bears due to their natural aggressiveness, strength, agility, and endurance.
This bear hunting dog breed is also fearless in the face of danger. The Alaskan bear hunting dog is an excellent hunting bear partner. These dogs can fight grizzlies and black bears without a problem because they have been bred to have these bear hunting traits: strong, agile, and fearless in the face of danger with their courage.
Sometimes they fire beanbag rounds or rubber bullets to scare the bear even more, and then the bear dogs are released.
They track it, bark at it, nip at its heels, until the dogs are called back by their handlers. Soledad is a huntress. But Soledad is also trained to do something else—she can sniff out polar bear dens.
Also read about dogs that can sniff out cancer. Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, land managers at oil and gas fields and other work sites are required to establish mile-wide buffer zones around polar bear dens, preventing activity until their hibernation is over. Bear dogs have also been helpful in solving wildlife crimes. When the wildlife department was tipped off that a gray wolf had been poached—the first in recent memory—it was critical to find the body.
The dogs were able to track down the carcass in 40 minutes. With the body, law enforcement was able to prove the crime and prosecute the case. Grizzly bears can be eight feet long and weigh more than a thousand pounds. But they needed more evidence to bring the suspect to court. But within 20 minutes of bringing in the bear dog team, one of the dogs found elk remains.
Read about sniffer dogs that find cremated human remains in the rubble after wildfires. Ann Bryant, executive director of The BEAR League, a volunteer bear conservation group in Tahoe, ran into obstacles trying to use them in populated areas.
Fourteen years ago, the organization got two Karelian bear dogs, Anya and Dmytry, from a breeder and trained them up. You really got to research it, be dedicated at it. These dogs have to become your life. Derek Reich, a volunteer who assists the Nevada Department of Wildlife with its bear dog team, says that the time and resources required to train bear dogs has limited the growth of their program. It's a lot of effort and resources put into an animal who may just be harvested in a hunt the next week.
All rights reserved. Share Tweet Email. Even the girl who pushed it admits it wasn't a smart choice. There are a lot of factors to consider, but if your dog is not leashed and is already fighting with a bear, the only good course of action is to use bear spray.
The less obvious question is: Why is there a bear in a teen's backyard to begin with? And in Los Angeles County, a couple of miles from a freeway, no less?
In fact, why are there so many bears in suburban areas? A bear in the nearby town of Monrovia made the news a few years back after he entered a backyard, broke into a garbage can and took a siesta in a tree , while a pound bear visited the town last year to stroll from one trash can to another. In nearby La Crescenta, a man on his cellphone nearly walked into a pound bear roaming the neighborhood , where bear sightings are "not unusual," according to NBC Los Angeles' Jonathan Lloyd.
If you're thinking that back in the day you wouldn't have seen a bear that close to a major metropolitan area, you'd probably be right. Because of overhunting, by , the formerly widespread grizzly bear had been almost completely eliminated from the contiguous U. Grizzly bears were protected by the Endangered Species Act in , and while there are far fewer of them today than there were years ago, there are far more of them today than there were 50 years ago.
The other species of bear in the contiguous U. While their numbers also declined after European settlement, there are estimated to be more black bears in North America today than when European settlers first arrived.
An increase in bear populations is only part of the reason we're seeing more bear encounters, however; there are also more people, and they're living in different places than they were before.
There were nearly million more Americans in than in , and a bigger population means more land being used for homes. Growth is especially high in the Intermountain West, where the population is expected to increase at double the country's average rate.
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