https://www.thelocal.se/201908...s-annual-hunt-begins

Link has map with quota areas.



Swedish hunters shoot nearly 50 bears as annual hunt begins

The Local
news@thelocal.se
@thelocalsweden
21 August 2019
16:03 CEST+02:00

Thousands of hunters in Sweden were out in the forests from the crack of dawn on Wednesday, racing to shoot one of the 300 bears that can legally be shot before the season ends in October.

The bear-hunting season was already over by 10am in the county of Värmland, with the two bears in the regional hunters' quota already shot. By 3pm, 20 of the 48 bears to be shot in Dalarna had already been killed and 19 out of 50 permitted by authorities in Gävleborg.

"Yes, it's definitely a record," Per Larsson, a wildlife official with the Värmland county government, told Swedish broadcaster SVT. He said the bears shot were both male, with the first weighing some 200 kilos.

"It's gone pretty quickly," Martin Källberg, managing editor of Sweden's leading hunting magazine Svensk Jakt, told The Local.

"Everyone knows that it's going to go fast and that the quota will be finished quickly, so everyone's raring to go right from the start to shoot some bears before the hunt is over."

"I don't know exactly how many, but I imagine there are a lot of hunters out today."




This year, Sweden's regional authorities are allowing hunters to shoot a total of 300 bears, with the police keeping a watchful eye over them to ensure that they don't use illegal hunting aids.

"I believe that there's a big enthusiasm for bear hunting," Joacim Lundqvist, who is responsible for overseeing game hunting for the Västerbotten police, told Sweden's public radio. "A lot of people want to get a part of it, and so they'll use any means possible."

Gun Fahlander, chairman of the Mitt Norrland hunting association, said she supported the police scrutiny.

"It's positive that someone's out checking that people are behaving themselves, and following the laws and respecting the ethical issues," she told the broadcaster.

https://www.thelocal.se/201908...t-day-of-annual-cull



Hunter bitten in head by bear on first day of Swedish cull


The Local
news@thelocal.se
@thelocalsweden
22 August 2019
13:08 CEST+02:00

A hunter who was bitten in the head on the first day of Sweden's annual bear hunt now faces potential charges for hunting crimes, a Swedish prosecutor has told The Local.

The man, who is in his 50s, was surprised by the bear, which managed to bite his head and upper body before it was killed by his hunting group.

"He was taken to hospital with serious, but not life-threatening, injuries," Christina Hallin from the Dalarna police told Sweden's TT newswire. The man was discharged and sent home on Wednesday evening.

Åse Schoultz, a prosecutor at the National Unit for Environment and Working Environment Cases, would not give any details on why the man could now be facing charges.

"When you are on a licensed hunt for bears, there are requirements for how the hunt needs be conducted to be legal," she told The Local. "And there are suspicions that the hunt was carried out in contravention of these requirements."

Schoultz said other members of the man's hunting group also faced potential charges.

According to the Jaktjournalen hunting magazine the bear was discovered with bread in its stomach.

"Partly it's the laws that say that you can't lure game with processed food like bread," Filip Ånöstam from the Dalarna Hunting Association, told the Expressen newspaper. "It's simply unethical to use bread because bears have trouble digesting it. It becomes like a hard lump in their stomachs."

The case is not the only potential hunting crime committed on the first day of Sweden's bear-hunting season, which will see 300 bears killed over the next two months.

Another hunting team face charges for shooting a bear mother with cubs. "This is not permitted under the current rules," Hallin told Expressen.

Man Bitten in the Head Charged with Illegal Baiting
Details at 10...

Baiting for bear are illegal in Sweden but its accepted among many hunters to do it to be able to release a dog on a fresh track.