South Carolina · Bear · 2026 Edition
South Carolina Bear Season 2026: Dates, Zones & Bag Limits
01 — Seasons
| Season | Zone | Dates |
|---|---|---|
| Still hunt (no dogs) — private land | Game Zone 1 (Mountain) | Oct 11 – Oct 23 |
| Still hunt (no dogs) — WMA land | Game Zone 1 WMAs | Oct 12 – Oct 16 |
| Dog hunts | Game Zone 1 — private and WMA land | Oct 17 – Oct 30 |
| Still hunt (no dogs) | Game Zone 2 — private land only, in Greenville, Oconee, Pickens counties south of Zone 1, and all of Anderson and Spartanburg counties | Oct 17 – Oct 30 |
| Still hunt (no dogs) | Game Zone 4 — Florence, Georgetown, Horry, Marion, Williamsburg counties; WMA weapons limited to whatever is legal for that WMA's current deer season | Oct 17 – Oct 30 |
02 — Bag limits & check-in
| Statewide | 1 bear per season regardless of how many zones are hunted; no sow with cubs, no bear weighing 100 lbs. or less |
|---|---|
| Game Zone 2 quota | Hard quota of 20 bears, all counties combined — season closes 24 hours after SCDNR posts a quota-met notice; monitor status at dnr.sc.gov or 1-844-SC1-BEAR (1-844-721-2327) |
| Game Zone 4 quota | Hard quota of 40 bears, all counties combined — same 24-hour closure mechanism as Zone 2 |
| Game Zone 4 bait exception | On private land only, bears may be hunted over unprocessed natural bait (unmodified grains, fruits, nuts, vegetables) — baiting bear is otherwise illegal statewide |
| Harvest reporting | Must be reported by midnight on day of harvest via SC Game Check — Go Outdoors SC app, GoOutdoorsSouthCarolina.com, the 1-833-472-4263 phone line, or texting 'Harvest' to that number; tag must be attached to the bear before it is moved from the kill site |
03 — Shooting hours
No shooting-hours rule published for bear — SCDNR states none.
Rule: No shooting-hours restriction published for bear. SCDNR's regulations guide states hours for deer and small game (S.C. Code 50-11-710, one hour before official sunrise to one hour after official sunset) but carries no comparable clause anywhere in its Bear section, so no offset is asserted here.
04 — License
Bear hunters in South Carolina need a South Carolina hunting license — a Big Game Permit plus a bear tag ($25 resident / $100 nonresident, free for hunters under 16), in addition to the general SC hunting license Check-in or reporting a harvest is typically mandatory; see the row above for South Carolina's specific rule.
South Carolina hunting license cost →
Where to hunt public land in South Carolina — WMAs by county & access rules →
05 — Scouting gear
Patterning bear activity before South Carolina's opener usually means glassing feeding areas and running a trail camera through summer — check the state's own rules on baiting before you set one over bait.
- Hunting binoculars on Amazon →
- Trail cameras on Amazon →
- Trail camera SD cards — class, capacity & format explained →
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. These are category links, not a single named pick — we run no product tests of our own.
06 — FAQ
When does bear season open in South Carolina?
The earliest 2026 opener is October 11, 2026. See the table above for each method and zone.
When does bear season end in South Carolina?
The latest 2026 closing date is October 30, 2026. Individual segments and zones can close earlier — see the table above.
Do I need a separate bear license or tag in South Carolina?
a Big Game Permit plus a bear tag ($25 resident / $100 nonresident, free for hunters under 16), in addition to the general SC hunting license
How many bears can you shoot in South Carolina?
2026 bag limits: Statewide — 1 bear per season regardless of how many zones are hunted; no sow with cubs, no bear weighing 100 lbs. or less. Game Zone 2 quota — Hard quota of 20 bears, all counties combined — season closes 24 hours after SCDNR posts a quota-met notice; monitor status at dnr.sc.gov or 1-844-SC1-BEAR (1-844-721-2327). Game Zone 4 quota — Hard quota of 40 bears, all counties combined — same 24-hour closure mechanism as Zone 2. Game Zone 4 bait exception — On private land only, bears may be hunted over unprocessed natural bait (unmodified grains, fruits, nuts, vegetables) — baiting bear is otherwise illegal statewide. Harvest reporting — Must be reported by midnight on day of harvest via SC Game Check — Go Outdoors SC app, GoOutdoorsSouthCarolina.com, the 1-833-472-4263 phone line, or texting 'Harvest' to that number; tag must be attached to the bear before it is moved from the kill site. Limits are set per zone and per permit — check the agency's own regulations before you hunt.
What time can you start shooting bear in South Carolina?
No shooting-hours rule published for bear — SCDNR states none. The rule is: No shooting-hours restriction published for bear. SCDNR's regulations guide states hours for deer and small game (S.C. Code 50-11-710, one hour before official sunrise to one hour after official sunset) but carries no comparable clause anywhere in its Bear section, so no offset is asserted here.
Can I hunt bear on my own land in South Carolina without a license?
No — South Carolina requires anyone 16 or older to carry a valid license regardless of land ownership; the full licensing chapter lists no landowner exemption, despite a claim that circulates on several third-party sites.
Verified · South Carolina Department of Natural Resources · Last verified 2026-08-14
Publisher's note. Read directly from the official '2026-2027 South Carolina Hunting & Fishing Guide' PDF (found via dnr.sc.gov and downloaded because WebFetch's normal HTML-conversion path exceeded its size limit on this 44MB file; converted locally with pdftotext -layout). The dedicated 'ALLIGATOR & BEAR REGULATIONS' section (guide page 66) gives Game Zone 1 private-land Still Hunt (No Dogs) Oct. 11-23 and Dog Hunts Oct. 17-30, plus a separate WMA-lands chart later in the guide showing Game Zone 1 WMA Still Hunt (No Dogs) as the shorter Oct. 12-16 window (dog hunts on WMA land match the private-land Oct. 17-30 window). Game Zone 2 (private land only, in Greenville/Oconee/Pickens counties south of Zone 1 plus all of Anderson and Spartanburg) and Game Zone 4 (Florence, Georgetown, Horry, Marion, Williamsburg counties) both run Still Hunts (No Dogs) Oct. 17-30, each under a hard harvest quota (20 bears for Zone 2, 40 for Zone 4, all counties combined) that closes the zone 24 hours after SCDNR posts a quota-met notice — hunters are responsible for checking dnr.sc.gov or calling 1-844-SC1-BEAR for live status, so the printed Oct. 30 close is a maximum, not a guarantee. The guide also states Zone 4 WMA weapons are limited to whatever is legal for that WMA's current deer season, and that Zone 4 private land allows bears to be taken over unprocessed natural bait (an explicit exception to the statewide baiting ban). Cross-checked against S.C. Code Regs. §123-53 (read via the Cornell LII mirror of the SC Code of Regulations), which agreed on zone structure, the Oct. 17-30 window, and the Zone 2 quota of 20, but listed the Zone 4 quota as 30 rather than the guide's 40 — treated the current 2026-27 guide as authoritative for that number since regulation text can lag a season behind the annually-set guide. Bear tag fees ($25 resident / $100 nonresident, free under 16) and the midnight-of-harvest SC Game Check reporting requirement are quoted directly from the guide's Bear and Bear Harvest Reporting subsections. SHOOTING HOURS: read the full Bear section of the 2026-2027 guide (tags, still hunt/dog hunt dates by zone, quotas, harvest reporting) end to end — unlike deer, which states 'Legal hunting time for deer is the time between one hour before official sunrise until one hour after official sunset (50-11-710)' verbatim, no comparable clause appears anywhere in the Bear section. EXPLICIT shootingHours MARKER (2026-08-27): this file now carries shootingHours.unrestricted = true. Simply omitting the field did NOT work and had been silently wrong on the live page: the season templates read season.shootingHours ?? meta.shootingHours, so an absent block fell through to the state-level default in states.json and the page printed a computed sunrise/sunset window plus a rule the law does not impose - while the licence section right below it said the opposite. The templates now honour the marker and print the no-restriction sentence instead. The original reasoning stands: South Carolina's published guide sets no explicit hunting-hours rule for bear, so any offset — including the deer/small-game one-hour margin — would be an assumption the source does not support.