 |
| Russian brown enjoys a soak |
The practice was not sport, and downright cruel. Hunting a dazed, sleeping bear, some with nursing cubs in the middle of winter by rousting it out of its den and shooting it. Russia has finally outlawed the barbaric practice by passing "The Rules of the Hunt" legislation. Many cubs were left to
starve to death once their mother became an oligarch's trophy. In 2009 the International Fund for Animal Welfare gathered more than 400,000 signatures against the winter den hunt as an expression of the Russian people's desire to protect bears from man's cruelty. The new law significantly shortens the hunting season for bears and excludes the winter season when bear are hibernating in a semi-conscious state. It is also illegal now to hunt females with cubs under a year old and cubs less than a year old. Now its a question of enforcing the good intent.