We have a female subquota (8) here that closes the season early every year once we reach that number of females "harvested". This doesn't count the females shot by bee keepers all summer.

My questions are;
Why not shoot open females that either didn't breed, failed to settle, didn't raise cubs or was a poor mother for some other reason?

Also, wouldn't the early closing leave more male bears to kill cubs throughout the summer resulting in more cubless females showing up and being shot the following year?

We were taught to always send an open female to market in the livestock industry no matter what the reason leaving only reproductively sound animals.

This is also an area that has a lot of bears and bear problems to home owners and beekeepers.

What should we be doing to manage this population properly?

Just going by a somewhat senile memory here, but seems like I remember reading somewhere that female bears may not begin breeding until they are fairly mature in age.

How do you know whether a female has cubs or not? Just because you don't see cubs around, doesn't mean they don't exist. For that matter, how do you know whether the bear in your gun sight is a female or a male?

In my state they judge the health of the bear population by the average age, based on tooth analysis from harvested bears. According to this theory, the older the average age, the healthier the population. Problem is, some of our heavily forested units that have a lot of bears have a low average age while some desert units that have almost no bears have a high average age. What a crock.....

I judge the bear population in a given area based on how many bears and how much bear sign I see while walking around in the woods. That's not very scientific, but I believe what I see with my own eyes. What my eyes tell me is that areas with lots of food and habitat (the thick forests of N. Idaho) have a lot of bears while areas with scarce food and habitat (the dry desert of S. Idaho) have only a few bears. Duh.

But don't hold your breath waithing for the state wildlife managers to actually get out in the woods.

Around here, we can only shoot females without cubs. By watching the bear for a period of time, a hunter decides to take the bear. Maybe the bear moves across and opening into another clearing and if you don't see cubs following, assume it's a shooter bear.

A friend of mine watched a bear for sometime before shooting it thinking it was a large male bear. It turned out to be a large female without cubs.

shooting a female with cubs would make the local news.

We have a lot of bears in CA but we don't have to do a gyn exam before shooting. Some locals in siskiyou county shot a female then her yearling cub it wasn't a contest,we saw it within handgun range when it stopped to look at us but it was too young to shoot imo.