Black bear cub. Photo by Alan Vernon, via Flickr.
According to the New York State Department of Conservation's 2010 hunting numbers for bear and deer, which were released yesterday, the Catskills are the place to go if you're hunting black bear. Three Catskills counties -- Sullivan, Delaware, and Ulster -- ranked in the top five in the state for numbers of bears bagged within their borders last year.
In Sullivan County, which was second only to St. Lawrence County in its bear take, 92 bears were taken, compared to 85 bears in Delaware County and 72 in Ulster County, which came in fourth and fifth in the statewide rankings.
At the town-by-town level, Shandaken wins the title as the bear-iest town in the Catskills. Sixteen bears were harvested in Shandaken last year, the most in any town in the five-county region. Colchester, in Delaware County, comes in second, with 15 bears taken.
The Catskills are full of deer as well as bears, according to the DEC's deer statistics. Last fall, 6,715 deer were bagged in Delaware County, 3,994 in Sullivan, 3,521 in Ulster, 2,725 in Schoharie County, and 1,880 in Greene County. Those numbers don't beat Allegany County's 9,105-deer harvest, but aren't too shabby either, especially for Delaware County.
You can peruse the deer and bear statistics in full below:
