REMINDER: It is MANDATORY to report on your hunting licence, regardless of success. The Department of Natural Resources relies on harvest reporting data for important management decisions, and so efforts to improve this reporting compliance level will be made over the coming hunting seasons.

Year	General Bear Harvesting Licences Sold	Senior Bear Harvesting Licences Sold	New Corrected Estimates (General)	New Corrected Estimates (Senior)
2016	3,726	5,665	410	147
2017	3,946	6,279	434	163
2018	3982	6685	438	174
2019	3869	5805	426	151
2020	3766	4822	414	125

How is bear harvest estimated?

In 2015, NR&R staff aimed to correct historical black bear harvest numbers based on licence sales. These correction factors are based on follow up calls to hunters that did not submit their mandatory bear harvest report. The following correcting methods were used to estimate harvest based on the number of licences sold:

General licences:
To determine a “kill” estimate:
(General licences sold) x (0.11) = Estimated number of licence holders that hunted and killed a bear.
To determine a "no kill" estimate:
(General licences sold) x (0.47) = Estimated number of licence holders that hunted and did not kill.
To determine a "did not hunt" estimate:
(General licences sold) x (0.31) = Estimated licenses not used.

Senior licences:
To determine a “kill” estimate:
(Senior licences distributed) x (0.026) = Estimated number of licence holders that hunted and killed a bear.
To determine a "no kill" estimate:
(Senior licences distributed) x (0.31) = Estimated number of licence holders that hunted and did not kill.
To determine a "did not hunt" estimate:
(Senior licences distributed) x (0.61) = Estimated licenses not used.

Note: there are a proportion of reports that come back “incomplete”; therefore the totals do not equal 100%.

Reported Black Bear Harvest by County*

County	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020
Annapolis	29	42	25	20	33	31
Antigonish	23	4	19	16	20	11
Cape Breton	1	0	1	2	3	4
Colchester	41	28	58	25	56	24
Cumberland	51	41	66	53	98	48
Digby	11	14	13	6	18	20
Guysborough	18	21	20	12	36	16
Halifax	35	36	39	28	22	28
Hants	20	7	23	16	23	24
Inverness	4	3	4	3	16	5
Kings	30	34	26	21	21	26
Lunenburg	15	21	13	11	8	21
Pictou	42	25	49	26	47	19
Queens	22	14	15	13	16	19
Richmond	1	0	0	0	0	0
Shelburne	5	8	8	8	6	14
Victoria	4	2	8	8	3	3
Yarmouth	6	13	11	12	8	18
Total	357	312	397	280	434	331

*These harvest numbers are only those that were reported. This table does not account for the estimation determined in the Harvest Table.

Part of Nova Scotia’s black bear management plan includes monitoring the age structure of the yearly bear harvest. Changes in age structure could indicate a change in the bear population that would need to be monitored and addressed.

Bear pre-molar teeth are submitted as part of a mandatory collection from hunters and trappers when successful in harvesting a bear.  The ages were determined by cementum tooth analysis performed by Matson’s Laboratory.

Black Bear Snaring Information: 2016-2020

	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020
Harvest Information
Licences sold/distributed	299	354	319	328	352
Did not hunt	70	72	85	91	114
Returned blank	38	73	16	35	130
Returned no kill	46	50	41	47	50
Returned with kill	63	94	65	86	49
Sex Ratio
Male	15	28	26	38	26
Female	43	58	29	15	11
Unknown	0	8	7	5	5
Effort Information
Number of snares	214	313	229	267	170
Number of snare days	3309	6434	3094	3086	1969
Number of snare nights	1319	2895	1239	1442	1128

Please note all data for snaring combines senior and general license data.

REMINDER: It is MANDATORY to report on your hunting licence, regardless of success. The Department of Natural Resources relies on harvest reporting data for important management decisions, and so efforts to improve this reporting compliance level will be made over the coming hunting seasons.