Florida hunters are facing attempts to sabotage the upcoming black bear season. This comes after the state makes plans to reinstate a regulated black bear hunt for the first time since 2015. It's great news for hunters. But not everyone is happy about it.
Anti-hunting advocates are planning to ruin the season by essentially review-bombing the registration lottery. They're applying for the lottery in mass, hoping to snag the tags away from actual hunters. If they win the tag, they'll hold onto it and not hunt the black bear. This would essentially lessen the number of black bears hunted.
Anti-hunting advocates are speaking out about why they're doing this. One person responded to Florida's Amendment 2 for allowing this practice to happen. Amendment 2 allows anyone with a license to hunt and fish. It guarantees constitutional rights of hunting and fishing.
Black Bear Lotto
"Never in my life did I think I'd be a hunter," Chuck O'Neal, president of Speak Up Wekiva, told Naples Daily News. "Now that we have a constitutional right to hunt, I might as well take advantage of that."
O'Neal argues that he has a constitutional right to apply for the lottery to hunt black bears even if he doesn't plan on killing one.
"We'll put in a few times or a few hundred times. It's an equal opportunity to enter this. I must admit, I'm not a good marksman. I may kill a bear with kindness," O'Neal said.
However, advocates may run into a legal hurdle if they go forward with this. Snatching up a bunch of hunting tags with no plans to actually hunt may prove to be illegal. We'll see ultimately what comes of this. But the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission believes the black bear population needs to be culled to prevent human-bear conflicts in the future. 187 tags will go up for the lottery in August.
