Gunner Quinn
On October 15, Brian Melvin arrowed a massive 770-pound black bear in New Jersey. It was just the third hunting season since the bear hunt was restored in the state (the hunt was canceled by Governor Phil Murphy in 2018 but reinstated in 2022 after the Fish and Game Council declared an “emergency” with human-bear interaction on the rise). Melvin’s story of the hunt was widely publicized in outdoor media, but it resulted in some unusually heated backlash.
“The bear hunt is a very, very sensitive subject. It always has been; I guess it always will be—and the publicity behind this bear just made it that much worse.” Melvin told MeatEater. But the backlash went beyond criticism of just the bear hunt or regulations. Melvin received a slew of phone calls, including death threats, from angry animal rights activists.
“The first week was just nuts. I still don’t know to this day how they got my number, but those death threats were probably the roughest ones,” he said. “They were mentioning where I lived and that they were waiting for me and my kid—and that got crazy. I got a bunch of negative comments. Stuff like, ‘I hope you die,’ and ‘If I ever see you in the woods, I’ll gut you like you’re a bear,’ and all kinds of stupid stuff like that.”
Melvin says there were people driving past his parents’ house screaming, and people were trying to track down where he worked as well as where his wife worked. “They’re out there preaching that they don’t agree with hunting and about an animal that’s being used,” he pointed out, “and yet they’re okay with threatening human life. I just don’t see where the dots connect.”
Aside from the death threats and harmful phone calls, much of the backlash on social media, Melvin says, was based on a misunderstanding of the hunt. While people saw the bear and immediately assumed it was a trophy hunt, that couldn’t be further from the case. Melvin says he just got the meat back from the butcher—a total of about 270 pounds. In addition, he donated 200 pounds of fat to a local woman named Robin, who renders it to make soaps, lotions, candles, and other natural products.
To dispel the misconceptions, Melvin did interviews on several local radio stations, and said that the backlash has calmed down since. His story was even mentioned on Joe Rogan’s podcast with country star Luke Bryan. Several sportsmen’s groups even contacted Melvin after his radio appearances to thank him for representing the hunting community well.
“We do everything the right way, so nothing is going to change with any of the animals I chase,” Melvin said. “We do it because we love the hunt, and we do it because we love eating wild game. People are always going to have opinions out there, and unfortunately, I can’t change their minds, but I’m going to live my life the way it is, and so is my family.”
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