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Avoid Carnivore Encounters While Hunting and Fishing
Be prepared before heading out to your hunting or fishing expeditions. Learn more about the wildlife in the region and take step to to help you avoid unintentional confrontations while recreating.
Avoiding Wildlife Confrontations while Hunting
Avoiding Bears While Hunting
The Eastern Slopes Grizzly Bear Project, Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee’s publication Hunting Safely in Grizzly Country offers guidelines for hunters to use to avoid unintentional encounters with bears and other wildlife during your hunting excursion.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game also has guidelines to avoid unintentional encounters with bears.
Identifying Endangered Red Wolves
Red wolf identification cards given to hunters have worked to prevent accidental deaths of endangered red wolves, which can be mistaken for coyotes. Learn more >>
Impacts on Elk and Deer
State statistics show that wolves have relatively little impact on elk and deer populations in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and the Great Lakes.
Guidelines for Fishing in Bear Country
Prepare yourself by taking steps to avoid unintentional confrontations with wildlife.
- Do
not fish around bears, or near areas in which they are known to
frequent.
© Cameron Lawson - High use feeding stations are often aggressively defended by a bear.
- Avoid pools where bears tend to congregate due their ability to effectively fish there. Choose other locations on the river for your fishing spot. High use fishing areas often have high concentrations of fish carcasses scattered near the shore.
- If you spot a bear near the area you are fishing and a fish is splashing on your line, cut it loose to prevent attracting a bear to you or associating you as a food source.
- Keep harvested fish in the water, on a stringer and close to you. Try to avoid letting a bear get your stringer of fish.
- Make sure to discard fish guts into the water and puncture the lungs. Place butchered fish, bait, tackle, lines and fishing clothes in bear-resistant containers. If you don’t have a bear-resistant container, use a 25 to 30-foot length of rope to suspend food and trash from a tree limb at least 10 to 15 feet from the ground and four feet from the tree trunk, or suspend your food and trash from a rope that runs between two trees and high enough to suspend it 10 feet or more from the ground.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Wildlife offers tips to prevent encounters with bears while fishing.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources provides a guide to help prevent conflicts between hunting dogs and wolves.
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