Black Bear Hunting in Florida: Latest on Proposed New Season

Floridians will find out next month whether black bear hunting will return to the state this year.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission approved in May proposed amendments to bear-hunting rules that would open hunting as early as this season. A final vote on the matter is expected to be considered in the Commission’s August meeting.

If approved, most changes would take effect during the 2025-26 hunting season. It would be the first regulated bear-hunting season in Florida in 10 years; the last time was 2015, when hunting was reopened for one year after eight decades of being closed. Read more below

Bear Hunting in Florida, U.S.

In the early days of the 20th Century, black bears became viral news across the nation long before there was even a thought of a computer or smartphone. That, of course, was the famous, or infamous, incident where President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt refused to shoot a Mississippi black bear on what was ostensibly as canned hunt for publicity purposes. Roosevelt had no qualms about bear hunting under fair-chase methods—the same methods that still guide the Boone and Crockett Club—because he was a hunter through and through.

While this year might not approach the level of scrutiny that Teddy’s famous Mississippi bear hunt did, it’s still safe to say that in Florida, the year 2025 is the “Year of the Bear.” And that year shows no signs of slowing down as summer starts to wane.

Florida Bear Biology

Bears have always been relatively commonplace on the Florida landscape, which might surprise some of the millions of beach-goers and anglers who arrive from other states. In the 1970s, when the population of black bears was considerably less than it is today, officials indicate that black bear numbers in the Sunshine State were only in the hundreds. But according to FWC biologists, since then the population has steadily rebounded and there are now approximately 4,500 black bears in the state.

While adult black bears get larger in northern states, Florida's adult males typically weigh between 250 and 350 pounds. Adult females are typically smaller, with most weighing between 130 and 180 pounds, according to FWC. 

With the bear's breeding season running through the summer months, female bears are able to have their first litters at 3 1/2 years of age, having a litter each year after that. As those bear populations expand, encounters have been going up, particularly since adult males have a larger core area, living in a 60-square-mile area while females live in a much smaller 15 square miles.

While most bear encounters aren’t newsmakers, the potential is still there. Still, bear/human contact incidents aren't commonplace in Florida, averaging a small number per year. To date (July 2025), in addition to a fatal bear attack in Collier County, there has been only one other documented report of a human/bear encounter where some sort of physical contact took place. That occurred in Marion County near Silver Springs on Feb. 15, 2025 when an individual with a dog encountered an adult female bear with a cub.

This year’s number of physical encounters mirrors recent years according to a FWC data base. In fact, there were only two bear/human contact incidents in the state in 2024, both involving dogs and both happening later in the year (Nov. 13 and Dec. 20). In 2023, FWC reports that there were three such bear/human contacts, one in the spring, two in the fall, and all three involving dogs.

State’s First Lethal Bear Attack

Despite the relatively low number of human/bear physical encounters, this year has been historic in this department for grim reasons. The first known lethal bear attack in history was reported on Tuesday, May 6, 2025 when 89-year old Robert Markel of Jerome, Fla. was attacked and killed by a black bear just south of Big Cypress Wildlife Management Area on State Road 29.

Markel's dog was also killed by a bear, but that took place in a separate attack "some time apart," according to law enforcement officers. Those officers were summoned to the scene by Markel's granddaughter, who witnessed the bear attack on the dog. When law enforcement arrived a short while later, they found some of Markel's belongings scattered nearby and ultimately found the deceased victim about 100 yards away. After three bears were trapped near the incident's scene and euthanized according to FWC policy, lab tests later connected a 263-pound black bear to the fatal attack. While the full sequence of events remained unclear, authorities said that the same bear's DNA was also confirmed on Markel's body, on the deceased dog, and even inside Markel's home according to various news reports including one on NPR's WUSF.

Online records indicate that the Florida fatal bear attack was the first such attack in the state’s history dating back to at least 1900. It’s also just the third time in reported history that a fatal black bear attack has taken place in the American South with this year’s Florida fatality, another in Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains National Park back in May 2000 and another one in April 2006 in the Volunteer State's Cherokee National Forest.

Bear Sightings in the Florida Surf

While the danger from human/bear interactions is present in the following stories, there’s also been a lighter side to Florida’s black bear population and its interaction with the state’s burgeoning population. In fact, seeing a black bear cooling off in the Florida surf isn’t anything particularly new since such headlines often occur a time or two each year.

When Matt Devitt, the lead meteorologist for Fort Myers television news station WINK, showed a video of a large black bear frolicking in the Gulf of America surf off a southwestern Florida beach on Friday, May 30, 2025. "BEAR IN THE GULF!", wrote Devitt on his Facebook page, along with sharing a video from a TV viewer of the late May bear-in-the-surf sighting. "This big guy was spotted going for a dip on Friday to cool off in the Park Shore community. Only in Florida!" 

After the bear got out of the warm Gulf waters, it took a hike through a condominium under construction, eventually curling up nearby for a nap prior to game wardens and biologists with the FWC's Bear Management office to corral the bear and start the relocation process.

In early June, video surfaced of a black bear crashing the surf party not too far from Destin as the bruin sought some cooling off in the turquoise waters of the Emerald Coast. On June 8, 2025, reports surfaced of a bear soaking in a Punta Gorda hot tub at a local residence. Othe bear sightings have been noted in various news reports and social media posts this year with Gulf Breeze and Fort Myers being mentioned in such reports.

Vote on Bear Hunting Season Looms

All of the recent bear news across Florida paints a backdrop as the state prepares to make changes to its bear management efforts. As we've noted above, it appears that the legal hunting of bears will be returning to Florida. The FWC has initially approved regulated hunting in the state, with FWC Commissioners voting 4-1 back in May to approve proposed amendments to the state's bear hunting rules. If it receives final Commission approval at the Aug. 13, 2025 meeting, a bear hunting season in portions of Florida will be the result later this year in December. 

Why a bear hunt in Florida? To better manage the population, for one thing. State officials note that as the state has grown over the decades, regulated bear hunting occurred from the 1930s until the season was closed in 1994. Hunting for bears remained closed from 1994 until 2015, when the season was reopened for one year. But with more than 300 bears being taken, including some 38 females, the season was closed several days early in 2015, and over the past decade, there have been no open bear hunting seasons, according to FWC.

While there may be angst and public opposition to the proposed hunt later this year, it’s worth noting that there is also ample public support for legally hunting bears in Florida according to FWC data. And regardless of the side that Floridians come down on the bear hunting issue, it's definitely creating a big stir across the state and generating a lot of questions for FWC to try and answer.

If the vote in mid-August goes as anticipated by some, for the first time in a decade, there will be the chance to legally hunt bears. And unlike the hunt in 2015, this time around, permits would be limited (to less than 200) and the hunt will be much more regulated from start to finish.

Even so, as bears become more and more a part of the Florida landscape—in 2023, a black bear wandered onto grounds of Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom—the probability of a bear hunt seems high.

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