So far, 163,459 applications have been submitted to take part in Florida's first bear hunt in a decade.

Avid hunters like Chuck Echenique submitted multiple.

"I ended up submitting 50 applications across a couple of different locations," Echenique said.

But it's not just hunters who submitted applications, but also those opposed to it.

"I bought 105 applications or tickets myself, and we, along with the Sierra Club, had a large pitch around the state," said Chuck O'Neal, president of Speak Up Wekiva and Speak Up for Wildlife.

He is one of the people who participated in a campaign to purchase permit applications in the hopes of preventing them from being allocated to actual hunters.

The Sierra Club used the slogan "Bag a tag and spare a bear," encouraging and instructing people on how

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