Pickup trucks carrying dead bears lined up in northwest New Jersey to get carcasses weighed and measured on Monday, the opening day of the state's first official black bear hunt in five years.
New Jersey is the most densely-populated state in the nation, but also has an area of forests and hills in the northwest where bears are doing so well that state officials authorized the hunt to control the population.
As about a dozen animal rights protesters stood in freezing temperatures in a designated area nearby, chains were attached to the bears' feet and they were lifted upside down on a cable hoist to be weighed.
Blood stained a patch of pavement below the weigh station, as well as the hunters' pickup trucks.
New Jersey's Division of Fish and Wildlife said there has been an unacceptable rise in the number of bear "incidents" in which bears typically forage for food in human garbage, or wander into residential yards.
Larry Herrighty, assistant director of the agency, said the number of complaints about bear activity had jumped from "a couple of hundred" in the early 1990s to "a couple of thousand" now.
New Jersey's only recorded instance of a bear killing a human was in the 1870s but in the last ten years there have been three or four cases of hikers being chased by bears, and one of a teenage girl being hit and knocked down. None of the incidents resulted in injury, he said.
Animal rights groups say officials exaggerate the bear problem and that the data showing an explosion of bear incidents is scientifically flawed.
The state has issued about 7,800 permits for the six-day hunt and expects to net between 500 and 700 bears out of an estimated population of 3,400, Herrighty said. Hunters are allowed to take one bear each.
Some hunters arriving at the weigh station were heckled by a handful of protesters shouting "shame on you" and "go home." One protester, who gave his name as Bill Crain, was arrested by state police after refusing to leave an area where the bears were being weighed.
"This is an atrocity, killing these bears," Crain said as he was pushed into a police car. "Don't you think citizens have a right to see what's going on?"
A state appeals court ruled on Monday that protesters could have no more than 25 people at the Whittingham Wildlife Management Area where, the dead bears were weighed.
Officials expected 60 to 80 bears at the Whittingham station on Monday. A biologist measured each one, checked for ticks, obtained a DNA sample, and extracted a tooth to determine its age.
One hunter had already skinned and quartered a bear so its parts had to be gathered into a red tarp to be weighed.
Hunter Chris Mott, a builder from Succasunna, New Jersey, said he shot a medium-sized male, after leaving bait for it. He said bears are becoming a nuisance around people.
"We need to control the population," he said. "They are moving into people's back yards and not wanting to move off trails when you approach them."
A hunter called Bill — who refused to give his last name because he was concerned that the clients of his insurance business might be upset — arrived at the weigh station with a 201-pound female bear stuffed into the trunk of his Volvo.
Bill, 44, from Lake Hopatcong, N.J., said the bear was the first he had ever shot, and that he was "very happy" because his wife can have the bear rug she always wanted.
Asked what he would do with the rest of the bear, he said, "I'm going to try to make pastrami out of it."
