Florida\u2019s first bear hunt in a decade ended Sunday, but state wildlife officials still won\u2019t say how many bears were killed.<\/p>\n
They also haven\u2019t explained why.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll provide updates as soon as we\u2019re able to,\u201d a spokesperson, Shannon Knowles, replied by email Monday morning.<\/p>\n
The 23-day hunt, which began Dec. 6 and is planned as an annual event, was restricted to 172 permit holders, each of whom won a \u201ctag\u201d through a lottery to take or harvest one bear, terms the agency uses for killing.<\/p>\n
As many as 50 permit-holders may have secured a tag with no plan to participate in the hunt. Animal advocates said foes of the hunt entered the lottery to prevent the killing of bears for sport.<\/a><\/p>\n Each lottery entry cost $5. The state said it sold about 163,000 permit applications, and no one could win more than one.<\/p>\n Bear advocates have sharply criticized the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission\u2019s silence during the hunt, arguing it fuels mistrust in the taxpayer-funded agency.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been ignored, misled, gaslighted and bullied by the FWC thus far,\u201d Chuck O\u2019Neal, founder of Apopka-based Speak Up Wekiva and Speak Up for Wildlife, said in a text Monday. \u201cWe have no confidence in an accurate death toll coming from that agency.\u201d<\/p>\n Hunt foes claim public opinion strongly opposes hunting Florida bears, state-listed as a threatened species from 1974 to 2012.<\/p>\n After a decade off, Florida resumes bear hunting. Here\u2019s what to expect.<\/a><\/p>\n O\u2019Neal tracked kills at a check-in station during the 2015 hunt and said he used his observations to help sway FWC leadership to abbreviate the bear hunt from seven days to just two as the death count hit 304 in the initial weekend and threatened to exceed the harvest quota of 320.<\/p>\n There are no such stations this year.\u00a0Hunters were directed to report a bear kill this year through FWC\u2019s hunting app.<\/p>\n FWC has ignored requests from the Orlando Sentinel for those reports.<\/p>\n Chuck Echenique, president of The Future of Hunting in Florida, has said a live harvest update was unnecessary during this year\u2019s hunt because Fish and Wildlife sharply limited the number of bear permits. By comparison, in 2015, the wildlife agency sold 3,776 bear permits.<\/p>\n