Column: A possible bear season in North Dakota?

It was a sunny morning in early June when I visited Jeb Williams, director of the North Dakota Game and Fish Department, at its headquarters in Bismarck. While we talked, we saw outside the spacious window of his office a young family walk to a trail near the parking lot. Some of them were carrying fishing poles.

I inquired about it, and Williams told me that Game and Fish manages a pond it stocks with fish on the property and families come to use it often during the summer months. He said I should check it out after our meeting. I said I would, but first we had other things to discuss.

It’s not the first time that Williams and I have met like this. We try to meet once every few weeks to catch up on news and events from the department and the outdoors community. This time, he spoke about the advisory meetings Game and Fish held this spring across the state and some of the things that came out of the meetings.

One item is talk of possibly proposing a bear season, a first for North Dakota.

It would be in the Walhalla area, where Williams said people are seeing more of the animals to the point “where landowners might like to harvest a bear,” he said. “Individual hunters are also seeing enough of them that they’re starting to feel maybe it’s time.”

He said the department will take time this summer to do its due diligence in determining if a bear season would be positive for North Dakota.

“We’re a data-based agency that likes to have more than anecdotal stories when it comes to setting seasons or regulations, those types of things, and I think the public expects that of us. I think having some baseline information is important and the responsible thing for us to do, and so we’re going to be doing that this summer and discussing it with the public this fall and next spring for a potential bear season in fall 2027.”

Williams also addressed the Governor’s Soil Health and Habitat Program, a $6.5 million, state-funded initiative designed to improve soil, create wildlife habitat and support farmers. It also will benefit hunters. The program, funded by the Outdoor Heritage Fund and through in-kind donations, was developed with input from agricultural and conservation partners and is administered through North Dakota Association of Soil Conservation Districts. The North Dakota Game and Fish Department serves as a co-applicant.

The pilot program provides five-year contracts to approved private landowners who put habitat on their property, who will then be compensated in the form of annual rental payments, cost-share for grass establishment, and a first-of-its-kind $10 per acre crop insurance credit for unproductive cropland converted to grassland habitat. Producers who enroll acres into the North Dakota Game and Fish’s Private Land Open To Sportsmen (PLOTS) program receive additional incentives. The department provides the crop insurance premium reduction for converting marginal, unproductive cropland into perennial grass habitat.

Williams said not all agricultural land is productive, and those lands that are not could become important areas for conservation. “There are pieces of land that can be utilized in other ways — improving the soil health and putting habitat and grass on the landscape. Any time you can put habitat on the land in the form of grass and wetlands and trees, those are features that wildlife respond to.”

Williams said there have been a lot of conversations about the program since it was announced by Gov. Kelly Armstrong during a press conference in late January, and those discussions will continue. It’s good to clear the air.

“It’s not like us taking a township and putting it all in grass,” Williams said. “It’s taking chunks that a particular producer or landowner looks at as being unproductive acres and turning it into productive wildlife habitat for pheasants and other animals.”

Williams is excited about the initial response for the program and said Game and Fish and its partners are working on ways to keep the program funded for the years ahead.

As our meeting wrapped up, we saw more people in the parking lot heading to the trail that would take them to the pond. Williams said sometimes on days when things haven’t gone as well as he had hoped, and he sees young people and their parents show up to use the pond, it brightens his mood. It reminds him of the department’s overall mission.

He said, “that’s what we’re here for” — to provide natural resources to North Dakota residents, now and into the future.

As promised, once I left Williams’ office, I walked to the pond and encountered a prairie snake on my walkabout. Soon, I met up with the fishing family we saw from his window — Christy Hosek, of Bismarck, and seven of her 15 children. She said they visit the pond every week, and most every time the kids catch fish. While I was there, 10-year-old Cole caught a small walleye. He held it up so I could take a picture of him with the fish before he released it back into the water. The pond is a catch-and-release-only water.

For those who have the need or interest in visiting the Game and Fish headquarters, a modern building in a quiet area on the outskirts of Bismarck, check out its catch-and-release pond. It’s a pleasant spot with a mowed grassy trail around it and some wildlife to view as well. There’s even a picnic area at the trailhead where parents and their young anglers can relax with a sandwich and drink. Visitors must bring their own lunch, of course.

As I began my walk back to my car, I heard shouting from the pond. Another young angler caught a white bass.

Do you have a story idea or outdoors news tip? Reach out to Andrew Weeks, outdoors editor for the Grand Forks Herald, at aweeks@gfherald.com.

Andrew Weeks is an award-winning journalist who has reported for newspapers and magazines. Prior to joining the Grand Forks Herald as its outdoors editor, Weeks was editor for several years of Prairie Business, a publication of the Grand Forks Herald and Forum Communications Co. Before that role, he was outdoors editor for a daily newspaper in Idaho.