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No you are not having dejavu. In 2024, a north Idaho bear hunter killed a young grizzly bear during the spring black bear hunting season
This sparked a change for Idaho black bear hunters. This new change was a mandatory Bear Identification Test in order to hunt black bears in the State. I wrote about this new requirement back in March of 2025. (https://blog.eastmans.com/idaho-bear-id-test-shed-antler-license/).
This test was an attempt to stop the accidental killing of grizzly bears in Idaho. The grizzly bear population in Idaho is growing and it’s becoming more frequent that hunters are encountering these bears. Even with the population of grizzly bears being well above the management objectives, set forth when the grizzly was placed on the Federal Endangered Species list, they are still protected legally by the State and Federally.
Recently, there was a push to get the grizzly bears delisted (taken off the Endangered Species List) but those efforts failed. Some might also recall that in areas where the grizzly bear populations are dense, wolf trappers have been hamstringed by a Federal judge.
On May 9th 2025, a north Idaho black bear hunter shot a young female grizzly bear. This occurred in the Panhandle Region (in Unit-1) near the Priest Lake drainage area. When that hunter recovered the bear, the hunter identified the bear as a grizzly. The hunter called the Citizen’s Against Poaching hotline and self reported the incident. No charges have been filed at this time and the investigation is ongoing.
This is another black eye for bear hunters in Idaho. Even if this was an honest mistake (which everything is pointing to), incidents like this will draw unwanted attention on bear hunters. Wolf trappers were recently limited, in March of 2024, by a Federal judge. The judge ruled that because of the possibility of trapping grizzly bears in wolf traps, even though there has never been a documented case of a grizzly being injured or caught in a wolf trap, the season dates were drastically reduced.
This type of Federal ruling is a bad precedent to set for hunters. What is to stop a Federal judge from ruling that Idaho hunters will be forbidden from black bear hunting in areas where grizzly bears inhabit? I hope that question never gets answered. Nonetheless, we must do a better job as hunters of positively identifying the animal we are shooting at.
