CROATIA: European Brown Bear Hunting

[Africa is calling]

My good friend from the U.K., whom uses me to organise his European hunting recently came and hunted with me in the mountains of Croatia.

Croatia is a bit of an unknown, but in my opinion is an up and coming desitination,for both business and hunting. Anyway back to the story...

I arranged a 4 day/ night hunt for him and an easy 2 hour drive from Zagreb airport and we where there. The guides have around 35,000 acres at their disposal, and shoot about 12 Bears a year. There are two seasons, Autumn and Spring. During the winter the Bears obviously hibernate.

The method of hunting is always from a tower, normally deep in the woods, miles from man or beast. They have bait around 100 metres from the tower to feed the bears all year round ( plus other animals benefit from it).

We had bad wind (the weather form) so we were not lucky until the 3rd night when we harvested an old, 267kg Bear at 11pm. Sitting from 4pm to 4am in the cold, whilst sitting silent gets old fast.

The official cic score was 437cic. Gold medal starts at 300cic. We saw other species such as Wolf, Roe deer, Fox, Badger.

 

[BRICKBURN]

Nice bear.

 

[gillettehunter]

Good looking bear. Congrats to your friend. 12 hrs per sit in the cold. Better have good clothes! Bruce

 

[gizmo]

Wow that's a monster bear

 

[CAustin]

No that is a great bear! Look at that Paw

 

[enysse]

Congrats, it will make a great rug or full mount!

 

[Africa is calling]

He's chosen to go for a full mount.

 

[Chago]

I'm Croatian background and would love to go hunt there. They have great bear, mouflon and red stag hunting.

 

[Deleted member 15212]

Are you not allowed to hunt the other species or did you not shoot as your target was bear?

 

[mark-hunter]

@Deleted member 15212

OP was not on the forum since 2016.
But,
wolf is protected by law, not shootable.

Others can be hunted, but it will depend on hunting season, if the hunting season of bear in this case is overlapping with other species.

Bear (2 hunting seasons during year):
In spring: from 01.03 till 15.05
In fall: from 16.09 till 15.12

Roe dear (buck) season:
Buck: from 16.04 till 31.09 (two weeks of season overlapping in september)

badger hunting season:
From 01.08 till 31.12 (not overlapping with spring bear hunting season)

Fox
Year around. (overlapping 100%)

But, if i am hunting a bear, I would not shoot in vicinity of bear, nothing smaller, even in a overlapping hunting season with other game, not to disturb brown bear, who is generally baited, in Croatia. it could spoil the bear hunt. If I shoot the bear, then remaining of the days I could spend hunting something else.

I made a thread on hunting in Croatia, should you be interested for more details on game species and seasons, and other details:
https://www.africahunting.com/threads/croatia-hunting-information.51783/