Here's a local story for ya. This was shot not far from me... now it has me wondering about the bears that used to get into my trash!

One of the PA monster blak bear my grandfather used to talk about.

Hunter Bags 772-pound Black Bear in Lackawanna County | WNEP.com

Now THAT would be hard to get out of the woods!

I was watching a show on TV last night about Feds hunting fugitives in Alaska. They said that everyone there "had a high-powered rifle", so it made the Feds more wary of serving warrants. They went on to say that most of these folks had "AR-15 assault rifles" which were so "devastatingly powerful" that they could "stop a bear in its tracks".

Yeah, right.

The only way an AR-15 is going to do that is if you tied it to the bumper of a bulldozer and ran the bear over.

That bear was HUGE. It scares me just looking at it, and I ain't afraid of nuthin !

But that bear is SUMPIN', not nuthin'!

Looking at all the Alaska shows though everyone and his brother is carrying an AR type rifle or a 30-06. I guess cheap bullets and a 30 round mag makes up for size. Interesting how the real world is so different from the internet.......

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Forum consigliere

back when i was a child our local land fill was just that, people went to the dump and threw their garbage in a pile that the bears would use as a buffet. we spent lots of time watching them dine. Then during "early bear" some guys would kill a 550-600 lb'er a mile from the dump. We called them "dump Bears".

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UNDER THE CONE OF SILENCE

I find it odd none of the locals had spotted it up until now. Maybe it came down from Canada or even New Yaark. I'm about 150 miles south of Scranton and almost every year the news makes a big deal about some juvenile bear being spotted. What the heck would that thing be eating to get that big. Anything it wants I guess.

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Dennis
He's got a gun!

We grow 'em big in PA!

Why, he is eating juvenile bears, of course!

Just goes to show that locals may also not be seeing Bigfoot!

Not that that TV show is going to find one, either.

What interests me more is that the local news is covering it! Never happen up here any more, sadly.

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Even older, even crankier....

Yeah but, they WOULD cover a Big Foot sighting. Ive a friend in Longview who used to work for a logging company and said he saw one one time driving a logging truck. I dont know where in Wash/ it was but, he said it scared the bejesus out of him and he quit being a logger and now works for Lumberman's--or: the other end of the logging industry. :-))

Our local paper always has a page dedicated to the local people and what size deer they harvest on opening day of buck season here. In fact most of our schools are closed on the opening Monday of buck season.

On ARs vs bears: We get some decent sized bears here in NM. The Navajo Fish and Game guys I know have to kill nuisance bears (sheep and cattle killers) pretty regularly, and they use their .223 ARs. They shoot them in the head or stick a bunch of rounds in their ribs and down they go.

When I was working the Blackfeet rez in Montana I knew plenty of guys who killed their yearly moose and elk with their ARs or Mini-14s. They'd just shoot them in the ribs and follow them til they dropped.

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“What you got, ain’t new.”

Of course, our NM Fish Cops sometimes go as low as .22 LR . . . with unfortunate results:

Video shows Game and Fish shooting bear

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Now go make God proud...

Just noticed your signature line. Shouldn't it read "I need bad men? "

Let's face it without bad men both you and I would be selling insurance

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Forum consigliere

PA has a great black bear program. We sure do grow them big and beautiful!

I stole it from Matthew McCounaghy. Can't wait for this new series:

True Detective | HBO

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“What you got, ain’t new.”

Hey! I resemble that remark. What's wrong with selling insurance?!?!

The bear population in PA has sure changed over the years. When I first started hunting (1960), bear season was one week, then down to two days, then nothing, back to two days and now all the way through rifle deer season.
The population must be thriving as my niece spooked a 200 pounder out of her deer watch in Mercer county during bow season.

Yep it's doing well although I've NEVER seen one while hunting at our place in Clarion county. Everyone else that hunts with us has at one time or another though. My buddy had a close call with a big momma bear and 3 (yes three) babies last year during archery season. He's carried his Sig P220 with him ever since during archery season.

In my 40 years of owning a cabin in NWPA I have had numerous encounters with bears, so far all have been drama free.

( he saw one one time driving a logging truck. )
I didn't know Big Foot could drive, I bet they had to space the pedals far apart.

One time bird hunting in NH a guy renting the cabin next to me shot a 350 lb black bear and it took up the whole bed of his truck, 772 lbs WOW.

What was it doing driving a logging truck?

This PA bear was trying to get my birdfeeder about 20' from my cabin, he would try to jump while standing up, he got about 4" off the ground.

Attached Images

bigbear.jpg (40.5 KB, 63 views)

Pretty darned cute, VAPA.

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Now go make God proud...

Biggest bear I've ever seen up close and personal was Dick Butkus. He was H-U-G-E, but that Lackawanna bruin is a monster. That's why I upgraded to a .44 Special in the PA woods when hiking.

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I'm with the banned ...

Yikes.

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Shoot like a pro!

I do not hunt bears, but wonder what the meat tastes like? Do bear hunters actually eat bear or just hunt it for the Fur? I always hunt for what I like to eat, but Bear ??

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Free people ought to be armed

Practicing for his role in a new Jack Links "Messin' with Sasquatch" commercial.

FWIW,the existing world record black bear is 880 lbs,taken in NC in 1998.
f.t.

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South Carolina-God's country

I hear its greasy (never had it yet) like Javalina is.

It eats wild hogs, lots of 'em.

It's pretty good. Have had it quite a few times.
A bear is a different kind of animal; they are not 'designed' for steaks and chops like a pig, cow, or elk. Their pats break down similarly, but they are more prevalent as meat in stews, chilis, sausage, jerky and other dishes of the like. Bear steaks are not really common, as it were.

Flavor and fat content is highly dependent on the food sources they are eating. And, being more omnivore/ predator, their meat does taste different than a grain eater.

For those expecting encounters with grizzly bears, the 30-06 is marginal............
An AR that was a 308 would still be pretty under-gunned, but at least you would have 10-20 rounds which might help ease the tension of the situation.

Have a friend who lives up there and guides folks. His answer about caliber is 'minimum- 300winmag.' He's not into dealing with bears at real close range with a smaller rifle.

I agree. I live in bear country in Maine. I use a 12ga with a 1oz slug. and 8 more behind it :-)

I would never pick up a AR and go after even a 300lb blackbear. Not if i didnt wanna end up as lunch haha

That's a big Yogi. A hunter here in Massachusetts took a 650-pound bear last year. Here in western MA they're everywhere. One of them tore up a screen door on our porch after I spilled some bird seed on the steps. Another put some claw marks high up on our neighbor's siding after they hung their bird feeder out the second floor window. This is on a suburban street, not out in the woods.
They cause a lot of accidents, and a few weeks ago one of them ran onto a state highway and crashed into a man riding his motorcycle to work, fatally injuring the guy.

I Know this is going to jump the guys thread about a big bear, but it still makes me laugh when I think of it. ( Don't seem like I'm alone in the jump)

My boss,( an ex-Marine), when I was a youngster, just out of the Army, only had three passions outside his family. The job, Vodka,and bear hunting. I hesitate to arrange them in order, but I reckon his family fit in there somewhere.

The job was construction and he was double hard, but fair. The bear hunt only came for three days a year, cause he was so dedicated to the job, he just did not take time off. From where he lived, it took the first day to get to the hunting area, and one day to return. I was too new at work to be invited yet, but I always heard the "tales" later.

He had hunted bears in this location for better than five years with no success, but with his buddies,the hunt, and the earlier mentioned VODKA, these trips were looked forward to from one year to the next.

Finally, he bagged ......from all accounts, a little weasel of a bear, no more than 115 to 130 pounds. Since no one else had ever had any luck on the great bear hunt, it was considered to be quite a feat, especially by him. So....before heading to the check station, there was a right smart of the, you guessed it, VODKA celebrating.

The check station,(I understand that is not what you do these days!)was a little country store with the general gathering of hang-a bouts gathered on the porch to observe, and give their general ok for all the things going on.

"How big a bear you got there young fella" is the way it got started..."Aah,..... bout 350,370 pounds I reckon" was the reply from Vodka talker. Well, that was met with instant psshaw, and aww nough, that bear don't weigh nothing like that.

A little red-eyed,from the VODKA, and, as I said before, an ex Marine, my old boss fired back at the three or four loungers in turn. "You ever killed a bear?"pointing his finger at each in turn. " Well no," was the unanimous answer.

"Well,...by God I have, so that makes me the bear expert here!!"

I heard later, the buddies had to take the bear a little over 30 miles away to the nearest check station, so no locals could see the scales.

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wanna do right-- not right now

This is something I don't know a lot about. There's not a lot of bears in Mississippi. I'm 65 and I've only seen two in my lifetime. One was while I was deer hunting when I was a teenager. I saw it while on a deer stand and later that night it apparently got into some of the trucks at the deer camp. It wasn't very big. The other was a small bear that had been run over by a car. I was the officer dispatched to do a report. The bear might have weighed 150 lbs. I called Game and Fish and they came and took him away. I don't know what they did with him but he might have made a nice coat or something. 200 years ago Mississippi had a lot of bears, buffalo, cougar, wolves, and other animals that no longer live here. The Yankees came down and bought land for pennies and acre and clear cut everything. It hasn't been the same since. After stripping the forests they bugged out without paying property taxes and the feds took over millions of acres and still own it. The land is "managed" so there's no such thing as old growth forests anymore. We've got plenty of forests, just not the kind the old animals liked. There's lots of federal forest land near me. It gives me a place to go play.

Zombear????

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Even older, even crankier....

No shortage of good sized black bears here in FL these days. I really think they are getting bigger everywhere from eating better at all the dumps or garbage in general. Bears certainly don't get well fed and fat from foraging poke berries and the like. Black bears I have seen far from civilization have always been scrawny and emaciated.