For what is presumed to be the first time in Missouri, a father/son pair has harvested a pair of black bears in the same season. Doug and Gage Fannen were drawn in this year’s lottery by the Department of Conservation to participate in the third annual bear season in Missouri. Both of them filled their tags on the Fannen family's 300-acre farm located just inside Douglas County.
“Being a father myself and having a son… I just couldn’t imagine the feeling that must be to harvest black bears together. There’s only been 32 bears harvested legally in Missouri,” explained Corporal Mark Henry of the Missouri Department of Conservation in Douglas County. “And the chances of a father/son getting to harvest bears on their property… You know, that’s a pretty significant deal.”
Doug Fannen, who currently serves as the Marshfield Police Chief, has previously hunted elk, mule deer, antelope, whitetail, among other small game but this was the first year he has ever hunted a bear.
“Our family has put in for the lottery for three years and this year Gage and I were drawn. So we spent all summer putting out cameras and trying to figure out the best place to find them,” he explained. “I sat for over 60 hours before I killed my bear and Gage sat for over 30… I was just wowed. That’s something that will likely never happen to us again.”
The Missouri Department of Conservation was was founded in 1937, and until 2021, the state never offered a bear hunting season. In the inaugural season, 12 bears were harvested. Another eight bears were harvested during the 2022 season and this year, a total of 12 bears were harvested during the third official bear hunting season in Missouri.
At the turn of the century, Missouri’s bear population had collapsed and the animals were driven out of the state before conservation efforts led to the species rebound. According to the conservation department, early studies showed that overharvest and large scale habitat changes drove bear numbers to the point that they were near local extinction. In the 1950 and 60’s, the Arkansas Game and Fish began a series of reintroductions in the Washita and Ozark Mountains. As that population grew, it expanded into the state of Missouri.
Though areas of Missouri were home to native bears before this, the population began increasing in numbers in the last several decades. With extensive research, MDC looked at the black bear population plan, population levels at the time and determined the Missouri bear population could sustain a limited and highly-regulated 10-day bear hunting season. These regulations included the rule of no bait or dogs were allowed, a harvest quota was put in place at 40 bears statewide, and a limited number of permits were available, chosen through a lottery.
Each year, the Missouri Department of Conservation issues just 400 hunting permits. The first season, more than 6,300 hunters applied. Since then, the number of applicants has been around 5,500. It costs each hunter $10 to apply for a permit and another $25 if your number is drawn in the spring ahead of the fall season.
Nate Bowersock, a biologist at the Missouri Department of Conservation who specializes in black bears and other fur-bearing game animals, explained on the MDC website that bear hunting application and permit fees have generated over $65,000 for their general fund each year and go towards operating expenses.
“We couldn’t believe we were picked to hunt this year,” Fannen said. “We put in for the lottery in March and as soon as we found out we were going to get to hunt, we started preparing for the fall season.”
This year, lottery applicants had roughly a 7% chance of being drawn, and the chosen hunters were required to call in each morning that they hunt to make sure the quota hadn't been reached.
The state is broken up into three Bear Management Zones with a harvest quota ranging from five to 20 bears for each zone depending on the number of bears found there, to keep the harvest equally distributed.
“It’s much different than hunting other wildlife… Every morning you’d wake up and drink a cup of coffee while you make that phone call to see if you can hunt,” he explained. “Then you head out and sit in a stand for 13 hours a day… We had 11 trail cams put up and we knew there were nine bears living around our farm. We see them all the time but it took me three days to harvest one.”
“The Fannen’s have a piece of property, like many folks in Missouri, that’s been a very good location for black bears and has a very healthy population,” Henry added. “So it wasn’t extremely shocking because of how many black bears we have in that area… but they still had to put in the work to line up those opportunities. It wasn’t going to just happen, but these guys made it happen.”
While rules and regulations were the same as previous years, external conditions did see a reported change. In 2022, the Department of Conservation saw a lower-than-average number of reports of human-bear encounters: only 37, down 86 from 2021 and 98 in 2020. According to Henry, this is because bears emerged from hibernation last spring in good health after a mild winter and an abundance in food the fall before. This year, changing conditions in Missouri’s woodlands may have played a part in the decline of bear encounters. This year’s acorn crop was less abundant due to drought, which could have caused bears to cover more ground to find them, giving hunters a greater chance of spotting one than when acorns were plentiful.
Acorns and other tree nuts are rich in protein and fat, which are important staples for the bear species, and influences their movement. When acorns are in less supply, bears have to wander further to search for food rather than staying deep in the woods to fatten up for winter.
“They follow those acorns. They’ll be eating and all of a sudden, they hear acorns drop and they move… That’s one of the big things you have to keep in mind when hunting bears,” Fannen said. “We spent literally all summer trying to figure out where they were moving to and it kind of paid off to know the kind of pattern they follow when searching for food.”
When it comes to future years, Fannen hopes he and his family have more opportunities to participate in this hunt. The amount of time put into preparing for and hunting bears was also time that he spent bonding with his son.
“There’s no other feeling like completing a successful hunt with your son. We were hoping that we would both come out of the season with a bear, but this was our first time and you never know how it will go,” he added.
“It’s something that we’ll be talking about for the rest of our lives. It was truly just such a special experience.”
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