Vermont's Bear Problem Is Now Too Big to Ignore — And the State Is Finally Doing Something About It
Vermont has a bear problem. Not the kind you read about in the abstract — the kind where a black bear breaks into a home in Jamaica, Vermont while the owners are away, ransacks the kitchen, empties the refrigerator, scatters food throughout the house, and somehow manages to turn on the electric stove before wandering back into the woods. This summer, that exact scenario played out when a black bear broke into a home in the town of Jamaica while the residents were away. They came home to a kitchen that had been ransacked — the fridge open and empty, food strewn all over the house, and most alarmingly of all, the electric stove was on. As Warden Kyle Isherwood put it: "The bear was no longer in the house when they got there, but it was very clear what had happened, and that could have been a tragedy."
That incident isn't an outlier. It's the new normal in Vermont. And with the state's black bear population sitting well above management goals for the fifth consecutive year, state wildlife officials have decided the current regulatory framework simply isn't built for the reality on the ground. The result: a sweeping set of proposed rule changes to Vermont's bear hunting regulations — changes that are drawing loud, conflicting opinions from hunters, conservationists, farmers, and ordinary citizens who are increasingly sharing their backyards with animals that were once seldom seen.
A Population That Outgrew Its Management Framework
To understand why these proposed rule changes matter, you have to start with the numbers. Vermont's black bear population has more than tripled over the past five decades. Black bears made a remarkable recovery in Vermont since the 1970s, when Vermont Fish and Wildlife estimated there were fewer than 2,000 left in the state. Today, that rebound has surpassed every benchmark the state set for itself.
Vermont's black bear population is estimated at 7,500 to 8,900 bears based on 2025 data — the most recent available — according to the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife. This marks the fifth consecutive year that the bear population estimate is above the state's objective of 3,500 to 5,500 bears. In other words, Vermont is managing nearly twice the number of bears it intended to have on the landscape. The gap between the population objective and the actual count isn't a rounding error — it represents thousands of additional animals, spread across a state with 645,000 people and a patchwork of small farms, rural communities, and forested hillsides.
"Bears have pretty much fully recolonized the state," said Jaclyn Comeau, Vermont Fish and Wildlife's black bear project leader since 2014. Comeau has been at the center of this issue for over a decade, and she's watched the population climb past every threshold her department had hoped to maintain. "Our model shows the bear population has remained above our goal of 3,500 to 5,500 bears since 2021," she said.
The population model itself is built on real-world inputs. The department uses a statistical model based on several parameters to generate its bear population estimate each year. These include hunter harvest data on the overall number, age and sex of harvested bears, as well as the number of bears killed outside of hunting season, including in vehicle collisions and severe human-wildlife conflicts. It isn't a guess — it's a data-driven picture, and that picture shows a population that has outpaced the management framework designed to govern it.
The Human Cost: Conflicts on the Rise
The population numbers would be concerning on their own, but the human dimension of this story makes it urgent. Vermont Public reports roughly 1,800 bear-related calls and reports so far in 2026, putting the state on track for a record. Conflicts include property damage, bears entering homes and vehicles, raided gardens and coops, and close encounters near houses.
The biggest concern about the surging population, Comeau says, is a sharp spike in bear-human interactions. "We're hearing from a lot of Vermonters who are stating to us, 'I've lived in this location for decades and never had issues with bears before, but now I'm dealing with bears on a regular basis,'" she said. That shift — from occasional wildlife encounter to chronic nuisance — reflects something deeper than just more bears in the woods. It signals a behavioral change, one that wildlife managers take seriously.
As Comeau explained, "The more opportunity they have to take advantage of those food sources, the more chance there is that it can start to change their behavior over time, and now they may be seeking out those foods, not just when their wild foods are scarce, but they're seeking them out as a regular part of their foraging strategy." That's the key distinction: a bear that raids a trash can once during a hard mast year is acting on instinct. A bear that does it every week because it has learned to associate neighborhoods with reliable calories is a fundamentally different problem.
To better understand what's driving the population trend, biologists launched a study on black bear reproduction, but results are not expected until 2031. In the meantime, officials urge residents to redouble efforts to lock up trash, protect backyard chickens, and keep bird feeders down until winter. Waiting five years for reproductive data, however, isn't a management strategy. Which is why the Fish and Wildlife Board started looking at the hunt itself.
What the Proposed Rule Changes Actually Do
The rule changes under consideration represent the most significant structural overhaul of Vermont's bear hunting regulations in recent memory. The core proposal is straightforward but consequential in its downstream effects.
One Unified Season Replacing the Two-Season System
The changes, proposed by the Fish and Wildlife Board, would eliminate the consecutive "early" and "late" bear seasons in favor of one longer season extending from September 1 through the last day of the regulated deer seasons. Under the previous framework, Vermont's bear season was divided into two parts: the Early Season, running from September 1 through November 14, and the Late Season, which ran from November 15 through November 23. The proposed unified season would push that end date out significantly — extending hunting opportunity through mid-December, when deer muzzleloader season wraps up.
That's a meaningful addition of time in the field. Hunters who have historically had to manage their bear hunting around the seams between early and late season no longer need to. The consolidated structure removes an artificial division that didn't reflect how bears actually move and behave on the landscape as autumn deepens.
A New Bear Tag Requirement
Under the proposed rule, hunters would be required to purchase a bear tag to take a bear during the season. This is a meaningful administrative change — it creates a direct data-collection mechanism tied to bear harvest, giving wildlife managers better harvest-specific information than they currently capture through the broader license framework. Tag systems also make it easier to regulate second-tag opportunities in a targeted way.
Second Bear Tag in High-Density Units
The proposal would also permit a second bear tag in annually specified Wildlife Management Units. This is a surgical tool, not a blanket expansion. Rather than opening up a two-bear harvest statewide, the department would identify units where bear density is highest and human-conflict rates are most severe, then authorize additional harvest specifically in those zones. The "annually specified" language gives managers the flexibility to adjust unit designations from year to year as population data and conflict reports evolve.
To generate a modest increase in bear harvest, the Fish and Wildlife Board is considering proposals to increase the length of bear season through the end of regulated deer hunting in mid-December and to allow hunters in certain parts of the state with high bear numbers to harvest two bears each season. The framing here — "modest increase" — is important. Wildlife managers aren't proposing to dramatically reduce the population in a single season. They're trying to apply incremental pressure that bends the growth curve over time.
Hounding Season Details
The bear hounding season would run from September 1 for Vermont residents and September 15 for nonresidents, through the second Sunday after the start of the regular November deer season. The two-week head start for residents over nonresidents reflects a priority Vermont has long maintained in its fish and wildlife statutes — giving in-state hunters first access to the resource before opening it to out-of-state participants.
Prohibiting the Take of Sows With Cubs
Perhaps the most widely discussed single element of the proposal is also the one that has earned the broadest cross-ideological support. The proposal would also prohibit the intentional taking of a sow accompanied by a cub or cubs. As state wildlife managers propose extending the bear season, they are also seeking to ban the killing of bear sows with cubs — a move that has garnered broad support from hunters and advocacy groups like Protect Our Wildlife. That kind of rare alignment between hunting interests and wildlife protection organizations tells you something about the intuitive logic of the restriction: killing a nursing or accompanying mother bear produces a cascade of consequences for dependent cubs, and most people — regardless of where they stand on hunting broadly — find that outcome difficult to defend.
The Hearings: A Divided Public Gets Its Say
The Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife didn't simply publish a rule and wait for it to take effect. They took the process into communities directly. The department held a two-hour hearing at the Elks Lodge in Bennington on proposed rule changes governing bear hunting — one of two statewide meetings on the measure. The first took place August 24 in St. Johnsbury.
Jaclyn Comeau, Vermont's bear biologist, opened the meeting with a presentation on the state's bear population and the rationale for the proposed changes. After the data presentation, the department structured the public engagement thoughtfully. The roughly 55 members of the public present broke into six discussion groups, each facilitated by a staff member of Fish and Wildlife. The seven discussion questions dealt with each aspect of the proposed regulation changes, including the proposal to make it illegal to intentionally kill a sow with cubs present. Then, each facilitator summarized for all present the questions and responses of their group members.
That format — small groups, structured questions, full-room summary — was designed to surface genuine perspectives rather than let the room be dominated by whoever has the loudest voice or most organized constituency. But no format can fully contain a debate this charged.
The Safety Argument: Bears Are More Dangerous Than They Used to Be
Comeau addressed public safety concerns directly and put them in historical context. "There's been one bear fatality in the state. That was in 1943. We had less than 3,000 bears in the state of Vermont when that happened," she said. The implication is clear: Vermont has never experienced a modern-era fatal bear attack, even with a dramatically larger population. But the incidents that are happening now — ransacked homes, livestock predation, increasingly bold behavior in residential areas — represent a quality-of-life and property-damage issue that the state can no longer dismiss as background noise.
Farmers Want More
Among the most vocal attendees were landowners and agricultural workers dealing with direct, tangible losses. The most pointed observations came during public comment, at which about 10 people spoke. Keith Armstrong said there needs to be a bounty put on black bears, citing "the damage that (they do) to my tap line, my sweet corn." Armstrong's call for a bounty is unlikely to gain regulatory traction — bounty systems have largely been abandoned by wildlife management agencies across North America as crude, data-destroying tools that undermine population modeling. But his frustration reflects a real constituency: farmers and maple syrup producers who are absorbing losses season after season with no direct recourse.
Hunters: Supportive, But With Reservations
The hunting community's response has been largely positive, though not without pragmatic skepticism about the extended season's practical utility. Many bear hunters in the state support the proposal, says Mike Covey, with the local hunting and trapping advocacy group Vermont Traditions Coalition — though he says the late season will prove a challenging time to hunt the animals, which he says are elusive that time of year and difficult to track in the snow.
"There are some that don't think what they're proposing is enough, and that will remain to be seen," Covey said. "The steps they're taking, I think, are reasonable stepping off points." That's measured praise — an acknowledgment that the regulatory adjustment is pointed in the right direction, without overstating its likely impact. Hunting bears in December in Vermont, with snow on the ground and animals potentially in or near den sites, is a fundamentally different enterprise than hunting in early September when bears are active and moving to feed on mast.
Conservation Groups Push Back
Not everyone at the table thinks expanded hunting is the right lever to pull. Brenna Galdenzi of Protect Our Wildlife opposes the season expansion and grounds her opposition in research rather than sentiment. She points to research from Canada and Minnesota that suggests increased hunting doesn't always reduce bear conflicts. She also notes that the proposed later season dates overlap with a period of the year when many bears are hibernating, and she wants to see Vermont explicitly ban hunting bears in their dens. Galdenzi says Vermont should double down on stricter rules about how people store their garbage and other potential food.
The den-hunting concern deserves serious consideration. If the expanded season runs through mid-December, and bears in Vermont typically begin denning in late November or early December depending on conditions, there's a legitimate question about whether the late portion of the extended season would result in bears being taken at or near dens — something that most hunters and non-hunters alike find ethically uncomfortable. The department has not yet explicitly addressed den-hunting prohibition as a companion measure to the extended season.
The Baiting Question: Already Settled, For Now
The current rule changes didn't emerge from a vacuum. Earlier in 2026, the Fish and Wildlife Board had already worked through one of the most contentious bear hunting debates in recent Vermont history: whether to allow baiting. Vermont's Fish and Wildlife Board voted 11-1 to reject two controversial bids from hunters to establish a season for hunting black bears with bait.
Baiting — setting out food with the intention of enticing an animal into a particular location — is not allowed for large game species like deer, bear, and moose in Vermont. However, the state does allow hunters to hunt coyotes with bait and set traps with bait for furbearing species like beaver. The board's lopsided rejection of baiting proposals suggests that even in a regulatory environment moving toward expanded bear harvest, there are lines the board isn't willing to cross. Baiting fundamentally alters the nature of hunting as Vermont has traditionally defined it, and it raises serious concerns about habituation — training bears to associate specific sites with food, which is precisely the behavioral pattern the department is trying to reverse.
After rejecting the bear baiting proposals, the board voted unanimously to advance the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife's recommendation that the state allow hunters to purchase two bear tags each year and to extend the fall bear hunting season into December, through deer muzzleloader season. Unanimous. That's a rare signal of consensus from a board that had just rejected proposals 11-1 moments earlier — and it tells you that among the wildlife management community, the case for a longer season and potential second-tag opportunity is well understood.
What History Says About Managing Recovering Bear Populations
Vermont's situation is unusual in degree but not in kind. Across North America, states and provinces that successfully rebuilt depleted black bear populations in the latter half of the 20th century have faced a common second-act challenge: once the population recovers, the regulatory framework designed for a stressed population needs to be updated for a thriving one. Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and several New England states have all navigated versions of this reckoning.
The key lesson from other jurisdictions is that incremental harvest adjustments, applied consistently over multiple seasons, are more effective at stabilizing populations than dramatic one-year interventions. Extended seasons, targeted additional tags in high-density zones, and refined hounding rules — all elements of Vermont's current proposal — mirror the toolkit that wildlife managers elsewhere have used to thread the needle between biological sustainability and public tolerance for bear conflicts.
What's distinctive about Vermont's approach is its emphasis on data transparency. "Our model shows the bear population has remained above our goal of 3,500 to 5,500 bears since 2021," Comeau said. "Increasing frequency and severity of human-bear conflicts during this time also support the model results of a growing bear population." The department is building its case on dual evidence streams — population modeling and conflict reporting — rather than relying solely on harvest data. That's a more defensible approach, and it's likely to make the final rule more durable against legal and advocacy challenges.
The Bigger Picture: What This Means for Hunters and the Future of Bear Management
For the bear hunter planning a Vermont trip, the proposed changes are unambiguously positive. A longer season, the possibility of a second tag in certain units, and a more coherent season structure all add up to better opportunity. Season structure, bag limits, and conflict zones shift as wildlife managers balance conservation goals against public safety. Understanding where bears concentrate and why encounters spike helps hunters navigate both the regulatory changes and field realities.
But the broader implications reach beyond individual harvest opportunity. Vermont is effectively asking: how should a state manage a wild animal that has become too successful? The black bear's recovery is a genuine conservation victory — their story is one of fluctuation, a population bouncing back from a major decline roughly 50 years ago. Nobody in this debate is calling for a return to the depleted populations of the 1970s. The argument is about where to set the dial between too few and too many, and who bears the costs and benefits of that decision.
Farmers absorbing crop damage and maple syrup producers watching bears strip their tap lines have a direct financial stake. Homeowners in towns like Jamaica, coming back to a ransacked kitchen and a burning stove, have a safety stake. Hunters have a sporting and cultural stake. And conservation advocates have an ecological stake in making sure any harvest expansion is grounded in science rather than political pressure from whatever constituency is loudest at the public hearing.
Public comments on the proposed rule changes could be submitted via email through September 4, 2026. The comment period has now closed, and the board will work through the formal rulemaking process before any changes take effect. The board was expected to discuss other aspects of the bear regulations, including a potential ban on killing sows with cubs in sight and changes to the rules governing hunting bears with hounds. Lawmakers will next get to review the proposed updates to the bear rule to make sure they comply with state law, at which point there will be further opportunities for public comment.
Vermont's black bear debate is ultimately a story about success — and the complicated obligations that come with it. The state grew its bear population back from the edge of regional disappearance. Now it has to govern it. The hunters, farmers, wildlife managers, and conservationists crowding into Elks lodges and church basements across the state are all grappling, in their own ways, with that same underlying question. The proposed rule changes won't resolve the tension. But they're a serious attempt to manage it — and in wildlife management, that's usually the most you can ask for.
