{"id":426573,"date":"2025-12-05T13:54:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T13:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/426573\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T13:54:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T13:54:12","slug":"floridas-black-bear-hunt-to-kick-off-saturday-despite-numerous-efforts-to-stop-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/426573\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida\u2019s black bear hunt to kick off Saturday despite numerous efforts to stop it"},"content":{"rendered":"

JACKSONVILLE, Fla.<\/strong> \u2013 Despite numerous efforts to try and stop it, the Florida black bear hunt officially kicks off Saturday.<\/p>\n

According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the hunt will end on Dec. 28.<\/p>\n

The Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission voted in August to approve the hunt \u2014 the first since 2015. The commission used a lottery-style system to grant permits, with each permit-holder able to kill one bear.<\/p>\n

A total of 172 permits were issued.<\/p>\n

The FWC said it\u2019s bringing back the hunt because it believes it is an effective tool to try and balance population numbers, which data shows is over 4,000.<\/p>\n

But opponents of the hunt contend that the commission\u2019s approval was not based on sound science and used outdated bear population estimates. <\/p>\n

There was an emergency injunction that was filed back in October, but a circuit judge denied the request on Nov. 24, which means the hunt is still on. <\/p>\n

RELATED | <\/b>\u2018Science is not there\u2019: Conservationists hold rally outside Florida Capitol pushing for state to stop December bear hunt<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

There are four bear harvest zones: East Panhandle, North, Central, and South. <\/p>\n

News4JAX paid a visit to Green Acres Sporting Goods store in Jacksonville.<\/p>\n

We spoke with the firearms manager, who said he\u2019s seen a few customers who are gearing up for the bear hunt, but this time of the year, in general, brings in more customers because of the hunting season.<\/p>\n

He said gun safety is something to be stressed \u2014 especially with this bear hunt coming up. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are doing this, you obviously have a hunting license. You should\u2019ve already completed a hunter\u2019s safety course. So you definitely don\u2019t want to be out there without the proper knowledge as far as general gun safety, so I definitely recommend taking a hunter\u2019s safety course,\u201d Ziadeh Farhet, firearms manager at Green Acres, said.<\/p>\n

FWC released what it called a \u201c2025 Guide to Bear Hunting in Florida.\u201d Click here to read it.<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 Despite numerous efforts to try and stop it, the Florida black bear hunt officially kicks…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":426574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[5229,81006,3188,723,7310,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-426573","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-bear-hunt","10":"tag-fl","11":"tag-florida","12":"tag-jacksonville","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115667302320092550","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}