There is considerable overlap among the top five gun and bow counties from last year. For instance, Randolph, Webster and Greenbrier made both lists. Pocahontas and Pendleton rounded out the top gun counties, while Fayette and Nicholas did the same for the bow domains. The reality is that all of these counties flaunt healthy bear populations, and one is not necessarily better than the other because of the harvest figures.

Any one of these seven counties will likely be an excellent place to go afield this season. And as is often the case, when we hunters read harvest statistics, a county's place at or near the top is often because of its large size. The top harvest counties are often the ones that contain the most miles of habitat per square mile.

A hunter might choose one or the other of these counties based on his or her individual hunting needs. Pocahontas County, for example, would be an ideal destination for someone without access to private land because so very much of the county is either part of the Monongahela National Forest or the Seneca and Calvin Price state forests.

Another county that offers charms similar to those of Pocahontas is Randolph. Just as mountainous, if not more so, Randolph contains units of the Monongahela National Forest, as well as the Kumbrabow State Forest.

Interestingly, on the day I finished writing this story, I went turkey hunting before going to the school where I teach. While afield and waiting for the sun to rise, I repeatedly heard the sounds of some creature scrabbling on the side of a tree. Finally, the sun did rise, and I was delighted to see a bear cub indecisively holding onto the trunk of a dead tree. A sow and second cub were on the ground, perhaps waiting for the wayward voyager to make his descent.

Perhaps tiring of her young charge's indecision, the sow then left behind her cub, and the mother and the earthbound cub began to walk away from the snag and up the mountain. The youngster remained affixed to the tree for another 10 seconds or so, but as its mother and sibling were about to disappear over the side of a hump, the cub decided that maybe the dead tree was not such a good place to spend the day after all. The animal quickly hitched down the tree and ran after its mother and sibling.

When I told my English 10 students about the sighting, they were, predictably, very ho hum about it. Bears are certainly not and never will be as common as deer or turkeys, but this big-game animal is certainly now a major player in the state's big-game brigade. Black bears are becoming increasingly common.