Originally Posted by
Bear Chaser
To answer your question regarding bears the short answer is people aren't killing them to the degree they once did.
It was legal to shoot sows, any age cubs and up to five tags per year per hunter with no meat retention laws up to the mid to late eighties. Back then if rural folk, farmers and ranchers decided there were too many bears they shot bears until the abundance went away. Licensed hunters who did not wish to deal with butchering a bear didn't have to even skin them.
When the laws began to change it became more cumbersome for law abiding hunters to bother with bears so they shot less.
I'm sure there are other reasons but those are the most evident to me.