Controversy over a proposed $25 bear hunting license backed by the Virginia Bear Hunters Association recently has grabbed the hunting headlines and divided sportsmen, but it isn’t the first time the subject has caused major growling.

In the late 1960s and early '70s there was even greater dissent over bear hunting issues, and it wasn’t just hunter against hunter. Anti-hunting interests were involved, and the discord spilled over into the General Assembly.

The debates back then evolved at a time when the bear population was dwindling and some people, including many hunters, were fearful for the well-being of this magnificent animal. The reported kill in 1966 had plunged to an alarming 122 bears, the lowest since 1943.

The current debate follows last season’s record kill when hunters reported taking 2,204 bears, a number so great that Department of Game and Inland Fisheries biologists wonder if the population is getting out of hand in some areas.

While wildlife biologists attempted to direct attention to the need for more liberal bear hunting regulations, hound hunters managed to grab the spotlight with their drive to establish a bear hunting license. The license concept drew several hundred comments on the DGIF public input site, the majority of them in opposition to the idea. The issue is scheduled for a final vote at a DGIF board meeting in Richmond on June 2.

Back to the previous days of debate, at the March 24, 1972, meeting of the then-Virginia Commission of Game and Inland Fisheries, the topic wasn’t too many bears, but too few. That’s when Joyce Wilkinson appeared amid a roomful of bear hunters.

It was such a rarity for a woman to attend a game commission meeting, much less say anything, that a reporter representing a Washington newspaper waxed a bit sexist. He described Wilkinson as “the pretty brunette from Fairfax” who “very calmly and firmly outlined to a fairly stunned male crowd that it was her firm conviction that Virginia’s black bear would eventually dwindle away to nothing.”

Wilkinson didn’t arrive to rail against bear hunting; rather, she came with a shopping list of four things that she said would take pressure off bears: an end to a weeklong early bear season that preceded the deer season; a heavier minimum weight on bears that could be killed; a ban on the use to two-way radios and -- get this --  a bear hunting license.

The Washington reporter had this to say about the bear license: “As it stands now, anyone, especially deer hunters, can shoot a bear as long as a hunter possesses a simple big game license. Why not license hunters with a special stamp at a high enough rate to allow only the real bear hunters to pursue their prey? The occasional and accidental bear sighting and consequent shooting during the deer season would cease and help immensely.”

Some things don’t change.

Wilkinson got 50 percent of what she requested. A regulation was approved that year to protect cubs by boosting the minimum weight of a bear that legally could be killed from 75 to 100 pounds.

Two years later the early season was eliminated at a time when the General Assembly threatened to take away the game commission’s authority to set bear hunting regulations.

With the early season gone, the number of sow bears in the kill decreased from 46 to 38 percent, saving females to produce cubs. Many people view this as the single most important factor in helping bears turn the corner and rebuild their population to the current record levels.

As for the license that Wilkinson requested, it never came to be, nor did the ban on two-way radios. Wilkinson quickly passed from the scene, but to this day hunters continue to debate bear regulations. It makes no difference that in 30-plus years bear have gone from lean times to boom times, the license concept remains a controversial subject.