Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire 712 LB Yellowstone Grizz

Just did a Google search and found one of the 8-volume set for $385.00--which isn't bad.

Eileen bought mine as a present around 20 years ago. Can't remember if birthday or Christmas present. (It might have been both, since I was born in December.) It has been a great and frequently used reference ever since.

Found this August 5, 1805 quote from Lewis's journal:

"the Fieldses killed 2 large bear this evening one of them measured nine feet from the extremity of the nose to that of his tail, this is the largest bear except one that I have seen."

If they'd skinned the bear and laid the hide out flat it might well have measured even longer--and Lewis also an even larger bear! This was at the mouth of the Milk River, near present-day Fort Peck, Montana--which is the northeastern corner, on the plains. No doubt the bear had been eating plenty of buffalo.

Haven't found any mention of Lewis and Clark weighing grizzlies yet, but am not done looking.

Nice story. Thanks

I think your search might be in vain. I found an entry on 5 May 1805 where Lewis said, "we had no means of weighing" a bear.

https://lewis-clark.org/sciences/mammals/bears/grizzly-bear-encounters/

JeffA, I enjoyed reading about those various bears. I think I met one of Gertie's decendants in the early '90s, at the bridge leading in to the Camass Creek entrance. It was a yearling cub, very light blond except for chocolate colored snout and paws; no other bear in sight. An idiot tourist with a camera was about twenty feet from it. I strongly warned him about the likelyhood mama was close by, ready to chomp and mangle him; he just acted like I was the fool! I didn't hear of anyone getting mauled there, so assume he remained in the gene pool. About 9 years later our office assistant and her husband saw a grown griz with the same color about two miles from that spot.

In the late '80s biologists were studying bears, both species, both sides of the border around the NW corner of Glacier National Park, and had gotten quite good at estimating weights by track size and body condition before weighing them.they saw one large male several times, saw his tracks often, but were never successful in trying to trap him. Their estimate was ~1000 lbs. One day a biologist was watching a large black bear which they had trapped two days earlier, which weighed 440 lbs. While watching it the big grizzly rushed it, chomped it's head, and commenced feeding on it. He said it looked like the grizzly had nearly the whole head in it's mouth.

Sad ending for that bear, as it had never caused any trouble. An outfitter had a camp in the area (S.E. B.C.); he had been warned twice to keep his camp cleaner. One evening he and two clients crossed the border, illegally, went to Polebridge and drank excessively. When they returned, the bear was in camp; he gut-shot it, never informed BC conservation, leaving a wounded huge predator wandering the woods during hunting season. About a week later he again went to Polebridge, got drunk, and told the story. This was reported, the story corroberated by clients, and the outfitter forfeited his outfitting license and his rights to the hunting area, for which he had paid over $1,000,000 Canadian. At least the penalty went well.

Yep, I ran across the same today.

Did find one mention of a "volume" measurement, where they got 4 gallons of rendered fat off what sounds like an average-sized bear.

I wish they had been able to weigh the bears, mostly to see what they rigged up to do it.

I've never hunted bears. Is that a lot of fat off one?

Interesting thread. The mention of grizzlies in the Choteau area really perked me up. My grandson and I hunted the last two seasons north of Choteau on Hutterite colonies and have been spending quite bit of time there. A young Hutterite man has kind of adopted us and takes us out frequently. The Hutterites up there never stop talking about the bears and I never realized what an issue they are for them.

A couple days before our first trip up there last year, a pheasant hunter got too close to a grizzly and ended up shooting it with bird shot. The wounded bear was killed after the encounter but I'm not sure on the details. I did see pics of the dead bear - one with it hanging in a Hutterite barn and dozens of Hutterites all around as if some kind of ritual/ceremony was going on. I believe FWP was involved with this incident so am not sure how the Hutterites ended up with the carcass. We hunted whitetails in the same location as the bear encounter but didn't have any issues.

We saw plenty of bear sign everywhere we went - as mentioned above, they hang out in the brushy river bottoms, and tree lines on the edges of the fields. We were repeatedly told to not go into the trees/brush alone or near dark. This photo was taken earlier this fall when we had our first snow - what I assume is a rancher checking on cows, feed, etc. They obviously don't stay in the thick stuff all the time.



I had quite a few bear pics (mostly grizzly and one black) from a year ago but can't find them, unfortunately.

OOOO - that;s a pretty one! Good action shot too.

dassa;
Good evening sir, I hope the day went acceptably for you and you're well, warm and dry tonight.

Regarding the question of how much fat one can expect from an "average bear", I'll throw out a small sampling of our relatively small for species BC black bears.

Over the years we helped friends and family process their game here as we are set up for it and without looking at the notes, I want to say we've done about a dozen black bears.

All male, all fall bears.

The heaviest was one that went a couple pounds either way of 200lb hanging carcass weight and had the most body fat of any we processed in terms of both thickness on the butt and back and how far forward it extended.

There as a lot of internal fat as well, but none of that was saved, just the carcass fat.

One of the friends helping cut it up took home the fat and made two large coffee cans of lard from it. Again hopefully someone can correct me but I don't think those Maxwell House cans would be quite a gallon, though perhaps not far off?

Anyways from a fairly small sampling - again of fall black bears - I'd go out on a limb and suggest that the grizzly that made 4 gallons of lard would be at least twice as big as the one we did.

Hope that made some sense and was useful even though there's admittedly gaps in my math and method.

All the best.

Dwayne

Edit to add;
His wife reported it was absolutely the best pastry lard she'd ever used and they were quite sad when those two cans ran out.

It's been years since we've shot a bear to process so I'm going off of memory from at least a dozen years back.

Thank you.

dassa;
Most welcome sir.

Another thought that came to me is that bears seem to vary the most in flavor of any other meat we've processed.

The ones that came out of orchards or vineyards had meat that smelled almost sweet and tasted somewhat that way too. Was wonderful table fare.

The ones that smelled off - for lack of a better way to describe it - were definitely that too and ended up as sausage or something heavily spiced.

The last spring bear I shot was in early spring and was rail thin. It was one that we just couldn't eat and it was given to a friend to process for dog food.

The last problem neighborhood bear ended up as cooked cat food for our ancient tabby before she finally went onto her reward for rodent control on our rural place for two decades.

Bear needs to be cooked enough to kill possible trichinosis of course, so a meat thermometer is a good idea with it I'd think.

A good friend used to guide for both black bears and grizzly on the north BC coast back before they ended the grizzly hunt here. He reported that a few clients did eat grizzly meat and he tried it from a few bears.

His opinion was that if a coastal bear, grizzly or black, ate much fish, it was better to not try to eat it. He was quite firm about that opinion, almost animated now that I recall the conversation.

All the best once more.

Dwayne

Solid info Dwayne....as per your normal.

I believe I have read that bears fresh out of the den often have a 'toxin' for lack of a better way to describe it in their blood/muscle, so that may explain the off taste of that early spring bear. Just a guess. If so, I presume that toxin fades away quickly as the bear moves around, starts eating and gets all of his systems running and back to normal.

As far as fish eating bears...that is my (limited) experience too. I shot a small boar in Idaho on the South Fork of the Salmon that had been gorging on dead salmon. I took a backstrap and promptly threw it out at home. Thankfully Idaho doesn't require bear meat to be salvaged. I've eaten two grizzlies that were full of berries, and both were perfectly fine tasting.

Have a great rest of your week my man...

T Inman;
Good evening my cyber friend, I hope you're finer than frog's hair tonight and keeping warm, well and dry too.

Thanks for the kind words and additional information.

It makes sense that anything coming out of hibernation might have toxins or at least internal chemicals to purge.

We wondered about that, but again as mentioned it was super thin and as you know that's never something we want to see when we peel the hide off of anything.

Indeed, buddy was pretty firm about "fish bears". There might/could have been some colorful adjectives attached to the description of the flavor too T, you know, for emphasis....

Thanks again and all the best.

Dwayne

Edit to add;

Here in BC, we have a requirement to remove "all edible portions" of a bear, which is further described as the four quarters but not including organ meat.

The hunter is required to take said portions home, but then it's perfectly legal to take it to the landfill if it proves to be inedible.

When that rule came into effect, I'd suggest we lost a few of the older bear hunters who'd tried to eat one too many off tasting ones, but most of that generation are no longer hunting.

Dwayne,

That has been my general experience with bear lard as well: If from a bear that tastes good, it's great stuff for pie crusts, or any other use of lard.

The big problem with bear-meat flavor here is when they've been consistently eating gutpiles, which in Montana tends to be after the firearms big game season starts in the fall. Though sometimes they can also get into livestock carcasses in spring, though that isn't as common consistent as "gutpile season" in fall.

John

Mule Deer;
Good morning John, I hope the coffee is on and the fire it lit down your way and all is well as can be with you both.

Thanks for the additional info, I appreciate it.

After the last few tough winters combined with too many large predators, we don't seem to have enough ungulates being killed to make for a steady food supply for bears.

I'm guessing that's why so many are down in the valleys becoming a nuisance, but again that's a guess.

We're always leery of eating the "locals" as they raid garbage cans and such, so might have been dining on the neighbor's diaper pail, which happened this summer.

Thanks again for your input in this interesting thread.

All the best to you both as we head into the winter season.

Dwayne

That is one of the best bear pics EVER. Thanks for posting JGray.

He's looking a little frisky!