The idea of a bear season in Missouri was to make money for the Department of Conservation. It amounts to that and nothing else. There is no “wildlife management” or “For Nature and You” to it! To buy a bear tag you first had to get in the drawing and to do that you had to send the MDC ten non-refundable dollars. During the first year of that drawing about eight thousand very gullible would-be bear-hunters sent in their ten bucks and just like that the MDC made eighty thousand dollars.
From those eight thousand applicants, four hundred were selected to buy a bear tag. Seven thousand and six hundred applicants lost their ten-dollar applicant fee and got nothing for it. Then the chosen four hundred had to send twenty-five dollars more in order to hunt. So the MDC got another ten thousand dollars. Bear season made them a cool 90,000 dollars and there were only going to be eight bears killed. Chances are good that even though the MDC outlawed bear baiting, that’s exactly how most of them were taken. Who cares… for 90 grand the MDC would make a tag for mountain lions or tigers or giraffes. They do exactly that to sell a five or six elk tags each fall. It’s the economy stupid! Make money and to heck with anything else.
In a state, where there are a few hundred bears that have filtered in from Arkansas, we can surely sacrifice eight or ten. Last bear season there were a few more taken. This season there will surely be another eight or ten killed. So the MDC tells folks they figure we have about twelve hundred bears in the Ozarks, which is double what are really here. It’s a good practice; fool those gullible neophytes and the few bears killed won’t be missed. For that kind of money who cares if they all are killed. Who will miss them? Ninety thousand dollars for a handful of bears! Lets do this every year! In ten years or so, the MDC can make nearly a million dollars and probably not lose a hundred bears total.
**************************************
Twelve-year-old Wylie Williams sent in his 25 dollars in 2021 and got a bear tag, one of the 400 issued. His family owns land next to the National Forest and Wylie and his dad didn’t have to bait for bears. There is a marker tree there on the Williams property where a big male bear came to scratch his dominance over all other bears and Wylie waited there successfully. The male he killed was the largest one killed that year.
When the Powers That-Be found out how big Wylie’s bear was, they sent some agents there to investigate. But it was too late when they did try to find any bait, so they just assumed it had been there and they wrote a ticket anyway.
Wylie’s father said they came to him like old friends, wanting to know where the bear hide was. He wouldn’t tell them. So they said since they were buddies if he would tell them where the hide could be found they would make the fine a lot less money. They made the ticket out for littering and Mr. Williams told them the hide was at a taxidermists shop. That’s all they needed to know. They went to that taxidermist and confiscated it.
Wylie will never see it again. The MDC wanted it because it is worth a couple thousand dollars or more. My bet is it will wind up in one of Johnny Morris’s Bass Pro Shops or with a very rich friend of one of the Commissioners. The best lawyers in the country can never find out where it is or how much money the full mount will bring.
If Wylie's family had refused to talk to the agents, they would still have the bearskin. Let that be a lesson to all. Never ever cooperate with an agent, never let them in your home and never talk to one of them. That is the only protection you have, to keep a deer head, a bear hide or a firearm they might want.
The MDC is a corrupt organization, a Missouri mafia that is indeed above the law.
Their control of the media makes it impossible for this column to be printed in many newspapers or made known through radio and television stations. The director of radio station KWTO in Springfield told me…and I quote…”They pay us a lot of money to keep criticism of them off the air!”