Louisiana is set to expand its second black bear hunting season in two generations with 26 total permits to be granted and two more areas open to hunters in 2025.
Last year’s inaugural hunt in December 2025 was exclusively in the Management Area 4 with 10 bears harvested.
The Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission voted March 6 to both expand the number of permits issued by lottery in December 2025 and to include Management Area 1 (Coastal, eight permits) and Management Area 2 (Pointe Coupee, 3 permits) for hunting. Fifteen permits will be issued for Management Area 4 (northeastern Louisiana).
The season would begin on Dec. 6, 2025, and run through Dec. 21, 2025.
All successful applicants for the hunt will be required to attend a LDWF bear hunter training course. To see the complete Notice of Intent from the commission, go to https://www.wlf.louisiana.gov/resources/category/commission-action-items.
Last year’s hunt yielded perhaps the largest black in Louisiana when Deron Santiny of Lafayette landed the 696-pound male bear in Tensas Parish.
Louisiana’s black bear population all but disappeared in the 1950s and 1960s, but has recovered to include about 1,500 today and was removed from the Endangered Species List in 2016.
Louisiana’s fabled black bear became part of American culture in 1902 after President Teddy Roosevelt refused to shoot one that had been trapped and tied to a tree by members of his hunting party.
The episode was featured in a cartoon in The Washington Post, sparking the idea for a Brooklyn candy store owner to create the “Teddy” bear.
Today black bears roam the deep woods of the Tensas National Wildlife Refuge, Upper Atchafalaya Basin and other connecting corridors such as Three Rivers Wildlife Management Area, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The bear’s Louisiana recovery was celebrated in 2015 during an event at the Governor’s Mansion that Theodore Roosevelt IV attended and the following year during a ceremony at the Tensas National Wildlife Refuge that then U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewel attended.
“I like to think this is partially a result of one of the greatest hunting stories in American history,” Roosevelt told USA Today Network in 2015.
Greg Hilburn covers state politics for the USA TODAY Network of Louisiana. Follow him on Twitter @GregHilburn1.
