MADISON -- Wisconsin bear hunters appear to have easily set a new harvest record this fall.
Preliminary figures indicate at least 3,800 bear were registered during the recently completed fall hunting season, which would be an increase of more than 26 percent from the existing record.
"We won't know the final bear kill until all the registration stubs have been counted," said Keith Warnke, Department of Natural Resources deer and bear ecologist. "We're still contacting a few remaining registrations to get their results in."
The previous bear kill record was set in 1998 when hunters registered 3,184 bear. The bear harvest is known to have topped the 3,000 mark only two other times: in 2,000 (3,075) and 2004 (3,063).
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