According to New Jersey officials, a total of 510 bears were killed in this year’s annual bear hunt at the state. This high number of killing makes it the second-highest harvest since 2010, when the bear hunt resumed after a five-year of pause.

After the hunt failed to meet the target set by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), official’s decided to extend the hunt for four more days. The target set by DEP was to kill around 20% to 30% of tagged bears, but only 18% of the tagged bears were killed during the harvest.

Officials said that although the number of bears killed was quite less than that of 2010, still the yield was significantly higher in number than the hunts in 2012, 2013 and 2014. In all these years the numbers of bears killed were less than 300 per year.

According to DEP spokesman, Bob Considine, some areas of Sussex County have as many as three bears per square mile. He also said that other states with health bear populations have a population density of one bear per three square miles.

As per records, some parts of Sussex have a population density which is almost nine times greater than other states with healthy bear populations.

Gov. Chris Christie said, “This year, we killed more bear than ever before (and) I extended it to make it longer because we've gotten more and more reports of bears coming into suburban neighborhoods”.