Another aspect of bruin hunting that is not surprising is that public land is often essential for the pastime, especially if hunters go afield with canines. Bear hunting with dogs typically requires vast chunks of real estate, and although some farms cover many hundreds of acres, most do not. Thus, hunters typically turn to the national forests and to the larger state WMAs.

"Public land is very popular for bear hunting in West Virginia because of the large amounts of national forest that we have," Ryan said. "The Monongahela and George Washington and Jefferson national forests are major destinations."

For sportsmen who live along the Virginia border in the southeastern part of the state, two units of the George Washington National Forest remain major draws. The Shenandoah WMA (49,106 acres) lies in Pendleton County and contains the high elevations (up to nearly 4,400 feet) that give bruins favorable sanctuaries. Covered primarily with oak-hickory forests, the Shenandoah in good mast years brims with food.

In Hardy and Hampshire counties lies another unit of the George Washington, namely the Wardensville WMA (55,327 acres). A sister public land in both habitat and terrain types to the Shenandoah WMA, the Wardensville offers plenty of the proverbial elbowroom that bear hunters using dogs need.

For sheer expanse of land, the Monongahela National Forest, though, trumps every other public land in the Mountain State. To give an example, the Beaver Dam WMA is the smallest of the Mon's public lands with 37,674 acres in Randolph County. The largest one is the Cranberry WMA with 158,147 acres in Nicholas, Webster, Pocahontas and Greenbrier counties.

Other Monongahela possibilities include the Blackwater (58,978 acres) in Tucker and Preston counties, Cheat (80,771 acres) in Randolph County, Little River (124,483 acres) in Pocahontas County, Neola (104,750 acres) in Greenbrier and Pocahontas counties, Otter Creek (68,782 acres) in Randolph and Tucker counties, Potomac (39,786 acres) in Grant, Pendleton, Randolph and Tucker counties, Rimel (67,251 acres) in Pocahontas County, and Tea Creek (49,106 acres) in Pocahontas, Randolph and Webster counties. The majority of these WMAs feature forbidding isolated terrain and oak-hickory and oak-pine forests.

Chris Ryan emphasizes that a number of state WMAs also can provide superlative hunting. Among his choices are the Seneca State Forest (11,684 acres) in Pocahontas County, Calvin Price State Forest (9,482 acres) in Pocahontas County and Kumbrabow State Forest (9,474 acres) in Randolph County.

Seneca Forest features elevations ranging from 2,000 to 3,600 feet. Like almost all of Pocahontas, the state forest is heavily wooded, and the bear population gravitates toward the oak groves many years. Calvin Price has seen the benefit of some wildlife openings created this decade. Kumbrabow State Forest is one of the more isolated public lands in West Virginia, and the bear population there certainly does not receive undue human pressure.

Unfortunately, the number of bruins that had to be killed because of nuisance behavior showed a dramatic spike upward. In 2007, 155 animals were destroyed because of this trait. This high number is far more than twice that of any other yearly tally during the rest of the decade. For example, from 2000 through 2006, the number of marauding bears destroyed has been 8, 22, 28, 61, 22, 18 and 36, respectively.