"Continued research is also an important component in the New Hampshire bear management program," he noted. "Recent research initiatives have included estimating bear abundance via genetic tagging, study of the ecology and behavior of nuisance bears and assessing the impacts of various aversive conditioning techniques on the behavior and activity patterns of nuisance bears."

Currently, Timmins said, the greatest bear-management challenge continues to be minimizing New Hampshire's bear-human conflicts.

"As the human population in the state continues to increase, it becomes an increasing management challenge to keep human-bear conflicts at socially acceptable levels," he said.

"Human development continues to increase in more remote regions of the state. This puts humans in closer proximity to bears and increases the likelihood of conflicts."

The 2007 black bear season was a perfect example of how the food supply drives hunter success.

"There were 614 bears harvested," Timmins said. "This was the third-highest harvest historically and 18 percent above the preceding five-year average of 521 bears. The increase in harvest appeared to be mostly due to poor fall mast production during 2007. However, some select soft-mast crops -- specifically, apples -- had excellent production.

"Bears concentrated around these food sources and spent a lot of time in wild apple orchards, which increased their vulnerability to hunters."

When multiple mast-producing trees experience good production, bears are less vulnerable, and the harvest decreases, Timmins pointed out.

"When overall production is poor, or a specific species has good production and remaining species produce poorly, the harvest tends to increase.

"Additionally, the growing interest in bait hunting in New Hampshire seems to be influencing harvest rates to some degree. Bait hunting is more successful compared to other methods of bear harvest, so as bait hunters' efforts increase, bait harvest tends to increase also."

Season dates were not yet finalized as of press time.

"We are currently in our season-setting process," Timmins said.

"However, the season will start on Sept. 1 and likely run through Nov. 11. Season dates will vary by method.

"Hunter success should be good in 2008," he concluded. "In many parts of the state, bear populations are at or near the population-management goals. Therefore, we continue to have a strong statewide population, and hunters stand a strong chance of finding a bear during the hunting season. However, success will depend largely on annual food distribution and abundance."

For more information about bear-hunting opportunities in New Hampshire, visit www.wildlife.state.nh.usand click on "Hunting." Season dates, harvest rates by year and WMU, the Big Game Plan, a link to licenses hunting guides and more may all be found on this Web site.

For travel planning, call 1-800-386-4664 to order a vacation guidebook, or (603) 271-2665 to speak to New Hampshire Department of Tourism staff. Or visit www.visitnh.gov.