I talked to Maria Davidson last year. Very interesting person & most biologists would be against hunting a species that has come back but she actually wants to get a season on them. She was telling me that the bears are expanding their habitat & the young bears are leaving looking for new territory. Of course the bad news would be, that it probably would not be with dogs, but she is very pro dogs.
I actually contacted her x husband Paul Davidsson a few years ago about problem bears & asked what they did with them. He said if they had a collar on them it was no problem to track to them & tranq. them & remove them. But if they did not, the bear would do his damage & move on. I volunteered my services & they were receptive to the idea but the problem is that when a bear is causing trouble it is normally in a populated area with a lot of roads.
They actually got a couple of blackmouth curs to run the bears off of some areas & they wanted short distance dogs. Honest, I am not making that up.lol
When they were restocking the La. bear program, they imported bear in from Mn. Maria says she can tell at a glance, even to this day, if a bear has Mn. gene. They are blockier & have much more hair, even bred down.
Last year a 300# boar bear was run over just south of Baton rouge & every year one or two make the news traveling through Mandeville, Covington are.
Talked to her a few times myself on large carnivore stuff. Seems to be a real nice lady. One of their first bear dogs actually escaped out of their truck on the way back from a call, and there was a short panic until a citizen called and returned it.
Tensas NWR is loaded with bears. I have a camp east of Marksville, and the NWR we hunt on has a few. Parked my bike year before last at a spot I hunt, and there was foam everywhere. Couldn't figure out what went on. My camp partner was there the next week, and saw the guy who's bike the foam was from. Bear cane and shredded his seat while he was out hunting. I have never seen one in the wild, but have seen tracks on Bayou Cocodrie NWR. I am a member of Bayoubucks site, and there are a couple videos a year from guys hunting Tensas NWR that film them at the base of their trees. Pretty wild.
Have a buddy I rodeoed with that grew up on an 86,000 acre place on the Rio Grande, south of Sanderson. His family tells stories of Mexican Brown Bears being around for alot of years down there. They saw them pretty regular.
