At the conclusion of more than two and half hours of public testimony nearly evenly divided between proponents and opponents, commissioners voted 5–0 to reinstate the hunting season in hopes of slowing the growth of the state's bear population.

The board’s unanimous 5-0 vote — with two commissioners absent — followed more than two hours of rancorous public comment with hunters and wildlife defenders trading barbs and disagreeing about how much science the state used to craft rules for Florida’s first bear hunt in a decade,