I got him dragged and gutted and it took 8 guys to get him lifted 15" on to my hitch hauler.
8 Guys? To lift a bear really? Nice story. I think you mean 8 Bitches.
No, sir......………….. I meant exactly what I typed. 8 guys.
8 guys standing in a swamp......……..lifting nearly 600 lbs of dead bear. Yep. 8. In the process of re-habing from major back surgery at the time, all I got to do was watch and was DARN glad I had their help.
Too bad you weren't there to show my bitches how a MAN does with 600 lbs of dead chit in a swamp.
To no one in particular: Good morning to you all, I trust that wherever in the world this finds you that it's as bright and sunny as it is here.
After I'm done pecking away at the keyboard I do believe we'll fire up the midlife crisis - 40th Anniversary Mustang rag top - and slide into town to see the Moms in the care facility they're in - it's that nice of a day here!
Anyway I've posted enough black bear photos over the years to show that ours aren't huge here in the Okanagan. If we get an honest 6' black bear here it's considered pretty good and the heaviest I've personally weighed went 225lb carcass into the cooler. I'm not sure how to convert that into live weight on a bear though, sorry.
The black bears on Vancouver Island can be a full foot longer than here and of course would be correspondingly heavier.
That said, back east they get some seriously chunky black bears. This is a quote of an article about a road kill in Manitoba - just a bit northeast of where I grew up farming.
"Manitoba has some of the biggest black bears in the world. In 2001 a monster black bear was killed by a car in August. It weighed 856 pounds after loosing body fluid due to the collision with a car. Bears in Manitoba will slow down their eating in October to prepare for hibernation. Had that bear not been killed, he would have continued to eat for another 30-60 days. Biologists speculated that by hibernation time , the huge 15 year old trophy class black bear could have weighed between 900 and 1,000 pounds."
As I recall it took a fair crew to get that one onto the ATV trailer which the Ministry of Wildlife folks showed up with to pick it up too.
All the best to you all this weekend and Happy Victoria Day to those of us reading from north of the medicine line.
