After a flood of applications, would-be Florida bear hunters have a one-in-a-thousand chance – the same as cracking open a double-yolk egg – of winning the lottery for a permit.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission received more than 163,000 applications for tags and $815,000 to participate in this December’s bear hunting season, the state’s first in a decade, by the Sept. 22 deadline.
It is unclear how many individuals want to hunt bears because a significant number of opponents of the hunt paid the $5 application fee with the hope of keeping the tags, which entitle the holder to harvest one bear, out of the hands of legitimate hunters.
Florida has an estimated 4,000 black bears and the FWC has spent the past year developing rules to resume an annual bear hunting season the state ended in 1994, when the animal was on the threatened species list.
But the bear was delisted in 2012, an abbreviated hunt was held in 2015, and hunters have been pressuring the FWC ever since to restart an annual bear season.
While groups like the Sierra Club, Bear Warriors United, and Florida Wildlife Association protested the effort, the FWC drew up a plan in August to award tags to participate in a 21-day hunt for 172 bears in four harvest zones spread across 31 counties.
The tags allowing the harvest of one bear are awarded in a lottery.
Failing to stop the FWC planned hunt, bear advocates embraced the Sierra Club’s “Bag a Tag, Spare a Bear,” campaign to grab as many permits as possible.
Susannah Randolph, the group’s executive director, said the campaign activated at least 27,000 hunt opponents to submit applications for a bear tag. The rules allow people to submit more than one application.
“Our folks tend to be women. They tend to buy multiple tickets too, between one and five, so I think the math is really on our side,” Randolph said about the campaign’s potential impact on the number of bears taken this December.
The Sierra Club produced a tutorial video instructing people how to buy a hunting license online, a requirement to apply for a bear tag.
At the close of the registration period, one bear advocate posted on Facebook that hunt opponents had spent $185,000 in permit applications, or about 23% of total submissions.
Florida Bear hunt zones 2025
The FWC said it had collected $817,000 from the bear tag $5 application fee.
The tags are bear harvest zone specific with the hunt occurring in four zones.
Nearly 29,000 applications seek one of the 68 tags available for the East Panhandle. The hunting zone is bounded on the north by Interstate 10, on the east by the Aucilla River, which is Jefferson County’s eastern boundary. The south boundary is the Gulf, and the west is State Road 79. Covers all or parts of Bay, Washington, Jackson, Calhoun, Gulf, Franklin, Liberty, Gadsden, Leon, Wakulla and Jefferson counties.
There are 34,120 applications for the 31 tags for the North Florida zone. It’s borders are the Georgia state line, State Road 121 on the east, County Road 18 on the south and Interstate 75, and on the west. The zone includes Osceola WMA and encompass parts of Hamilton, Suwannee, Columbia, Union and Baker counties.
The 18 tags for Central Florida drew 49,649 applicants. The Central Bear Harvest Zone is bounded on the north by State Road 16, on the east by Interstate 95, on the south by the St. Johns River and Interstate 4, and on the west by the Florida Turnpike, Interstate 75 and U.S. Highway 301. The zone includes Ocala WMA and encompass all or parts of Sumter, Marion, Alachua, Bradford, Clay, Putnam, Lake, Orange, Seminole, Volusia, Flagler and St. Johns counties.
And more than 50,000 applications are competing for 55 tags available for South Florida. Bounded on the north by Lee and Hendry County lines, on the east by the Hendry and Collier County lines, on the south and west by the Collier County line and Interstate 75. The zone encompasses all or parts of Lee, Hendry and Collier counties.
Winners have until October to claim tags
Residents will have to pay $100 to claim a tag, the cost for a non-resident is $300.
Those winning a permit will be notified by the FWC and have until midnight on Oct. 6 to claim the permit. Any unclaimed ones become available to the next person “waiting in line.”
FWC communications director Shannon Knowles says the agency will evaluate the number of unused permits, and hunter success after the December hunt to determine the number of tags needed for next year’s hunt to meet quotas.
Meanwhile, Bear Warriors United filed a lawsuit on September 17 seeking an injunction to stop the December hunt. The suit in Leon County Circuit Court argues the FWC committed procedural violations of its charter and the Florida constitution when it approved the hunt.
The FWC has yet to respond to the filing.
What to know
James Call is a member of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com. Follow on him Twitter: @CallTallahassee.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Bear hunt applicants face 1-in-1,000 chance of winning a December hunting permit
Reporting by James Call, USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida / Tallahassee Democrat
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
