Three bears shot in Northern Karelia on first day of hunting season

By Jere Malinen in Lieksa
     
      What do a newspaper delivery man and a bear hunter have in common? The same working hours.
      At 4 a.m., six hunters are tilting their cups at the laavu [a kind of forest lean-to] of a local sports club in Vuonislahti, near Joensuu. The cups contain strong coffee, but absolutely nothing stronger.
      Hunting, particularly bear hunting, is a sport for the clear-headed only. Yet accidents do happen. A wounded brown bear could attack the hunters. This is what happened some weeks ago in Kajaani.
      However, unfortunate incidents like this are rare, as the hunters are an experienced bunch. Very few people start their hunting hobby at the deep end, shooting bear.
     
Approximately 10,000 hunters participate in bear hunting in Finland.
      ”The greatest mistake would be to behave foolhardily and to think that a bear which has been shot and is lying on the ground is dead”, advises Mikko Nieminen, the chairman of the local hunting club.
      Sound advice, when one considers the damage a wounded and decidedly angry bear can do.
     
At 5:00 a.m. there is enough light in the woods for bear hunting.
      A 3-year-old Karelian bear dog bitch, Kyykönmaan Linda, is making for an oats field under the guidance of her master.
      Bear hunting is forbidden in a grain field that has not yet been harvested and food lures are not permitted, but searching for recent signs that a bear has been in the vicinity is allowed.
      The field was clean out of smells to get Linda going. The local bears had apparently overnighted elsewhere.
      At 5:35 a.m. a rifle shot was heard. A neighbouring party shot a bear. It was the first bear kill for 16-year-old Timo Nieminen, who participated in his first bear hunt in 2006.
     
However, this was not the last bear in the village.
      Another bear walked into the stand of Olli Siponen 90 minutes later.
      Olli Siponen was the second successful hunter of the day, while a third animal was shot by Kimmo Nieminen in the evening of the opening hunting day.
      ”It is a hunter’s dream when a bear is shot after having been chased down by the bark of the hunter’s own dog”, said the man, whose second kill this was.
     
The Finnish bear hunting season began officially on August 20th, but some hunters in the northern part of Northern Karelia and Kuhmo with the greatest density of bear population decided to postpone the beginning of their season by 12 days, in order to avoid starting bear hunting at the same time as duck shooting was about to get going.
      Moreover, the use of dogs is easier when the weather is colder.
      The Game Management Districts in Eastern and Northern Finland have issued a total of 83 bear hunting licences for the current season. By Wednesday morning, a total of 63 bears had been shot.
     
”The cold weather has contributed to efficient hunting”, said Juha Kuittinen from the Game Management District of Northern Karelia.
      A total of 18 bears were shot in two days for example in Ilomantsi and Lieksa, which means that the number of bears living in the regions near Joensuu has been high.
      Bear hunting is estimated to end already in the next few days, even though the hunting season is set to run until the end of October.
      Only some 11 animals out of the quota of allocated bear hunting licences were left on Wednesday morning - all in the reindeer herding area.
     
Many of the shot bears end up in the hands of a taxidermist in order to be displayed as hunting trophies.
      In recent years, some 7 to 15 bears out of the 80 to 100 bears felled annually have been mounted by taxidermist Sami Karppinen in Juva near Mikkeli.
      Apart from mounting entire animals, he has done around 100 hide preparations as well as bleached a number of bear skulls and bear bacula (the penile bone or os penis).
     
The bear is the most highly-appreciated catch of hunters and they make good use of the animal.
      While the skin and the skull normally end up as trophies, the meat is eaten or sold unless it is found to be trichinous (containining the parasite worm Trichinella spiralis).
      Nothing gets thrown away. The fat and blood are used when training bear dogs.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 4.9.2008


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Seventeen bears shot in first two days of hunting season (28.8.2007)
  Use of food as bait prohibited (28.8.2007)
  Bear hunting season to start tomorrow (19.8.2008)

Links:
  The Brown Bear - King of the Wilds (Virtual Finland)
  Karelian bear dog (Wikipedia)
  Hunting in Finland
  Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute
  Game Species and Hunting Seasons