Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game How Big Is This Bear?

You guys with experience.....how big do you THINK this bear is? We don't get to see many where I hunt.......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNRdtc48Xbc

https://youtu.be/rNRdtc48Xbc

That's a difficult one. Bad angle.

His demeanor makes him look mature, but his ears say he's young. If I had to guess, I'd say his physique and head profile for that second you can see it make me say he's somewhat young, but for sure not a cub.

A broadside shot would help, but I assume if you had one it would have been posted.

That is a tough one...but I'd say 250...

👍

5’x 7’.5” Rug 😁😎

T Inman & ingwe:
Good evening to you both, hopefully this finds both of you gentlemen well.

Although by no means do I profess or pretend to be a bear expert, we see a fair few out here every year - sometimes in the yard - so I'd agree with you both.

The ears look a wee bit too long to be a real oldster and though he's got a bit of a double chin starting, the really mature guys appear to have even less neck.

This guy - I believe - is about the size of the one in the video.


On the other hand, this one has the short ears, double chin, no neck look and also telling - appears to lack ground clearance.


Here in our part of BC, the black bears don't get super long, but they get rounder, closer to the ground looking and the ears get shorter looking.

Anyway I hope that was useful information and as always is only one old Canuck's thoughts on the matter and nothing more. All the best to you both this Fourth of July too.

Dwayne

Yes sir...the neck thing is often a reliable sign of a bear's maturity...as is the double chin and ground clearance but unfortunately there's no good shot of any of those in the video.

That's a really nice bear in your second picture...

Agreed on the 250.

T Inman;
Good evening again and thanks for the reply.

Yes, he's a pretty good one for an Okanagan bear - though for a Vancouver Island bear he'd not be considered that big.

Anyway this guy and I have a bit of a history - or at least I think he's the same one I bump into every few years in the same spot. When I next bumped into him it was 4 years later when the kinickinick crop was more bountiful than I've ever seen.

He'd just flop down into a heavy patch, eat off his belly for awhile, then stand up, shuffle over and flop down again.



It was really early in the morning and I tried to use the digital zoom on the camera to get a closer shot and it didn't really work, but one can kinda/sorta see his size.



Anyway I was up there trying to sweet talk a 6 point elk into rifle range and though I carry a bear tag, I've not decided to shoot one for many decades now and as long as they behave like the one in the photos - that's to say leave when they wind me, then I'll be happy to just watch them eat kinickinick henceforth.

That said, I don't have any issues whatsoever with folks who do want to turn them into hams and European Weiners either! Our eldest daughter still has designs on doing that and when we see "the one" that's what's going to happen to it - hopefully!

Thanks again and Happy Fourth of July to you sir.

Dwayne

Funny thing about bears is how the basic frame makes all the difference in how big the bear really is and all the character marks just supply the local knowledge. Spring bears and fall bears in the berries of legal status are all pretty much shot on sight for food, so the markers for trophy judging are usually wasted here... and with limits of at least three per year...

I always hesitate to guess a weight because we simply do not ever weigh one so the numbers never get verified to show how close the estimate was. But in western NY you are close to the hogs of PA and I would guess the frames run a little larger than average. If I were a betting man I would suggest 250 was low. But I have seen obese small-framed bears and skinny large framed bears.

between 250 300

I guess I'm the odd guy out, I'd say about 200 pounds.

If you don't get many bears in your country, I'd shoot him in a heartbeat.

Guessing a bear's weight from photos, even moving ones, is kind of like guessing the weight of a fish that is swimming in the open ocean. Without something in the pic for specific size reference, it is even harder, like guessing the weight of a salmon in a burlap bag. We see LOTS of bears where I live but I've never weighed one nor know anyone who has. So I'd trust the judgment of someone in your area who does weigh bears after seeing them on video and shooting them, especially someone who has done it on a number of bears.

Sitka has it right that frame is critical, then maturity characteristics on that particular frame. Is that a body beginning to show some blocky maturity on a dwarfy frame, an average frame, or a huge frame? I've been in on one bear with a hide over 7' that turned out much bigger on the ground than he looked when alive. He was an enormous bear but was still young enough to not show all of the massive old body characteristics. Like most humans, however, most bears are not exceptionally big.

So I'll guess 350 unless we actually weigh the critter on a scale, and then I'll play ordinary probabilities and say 205... or a smidge under.

Dwayne, good pics.

I'm with Steelhead, around 200# though that would be at the most. My initial thought upon seeing it was more in the 160-180 range at the time of the photo. It does not appear to be a young bear though it is not an old boar. My guess it is a mature female without cubs as that would satisfy the majority of the visual cues. Such bears tend to run in the 180-220# range through their fertile years which would meet the mature looks and smaller size criteria. Going out on a small limb, I would place its age from 5-10 years of age based on a lot of time sitting over baits and a few years working a big game check station where I got to see a couple dozen dead bears a year.

As mentioned, the physical dimensions of the bear would help. There are some decent reference points in the picture but the angle of the bear and not knowing the actual dimensions of the tree nor distance from the tree of the trail makes for a lot of guessing.

Yeah, 175-200 was my first thunk. Still is

~250# 6' tip of nose to tip of tail. About a $1000 rug and might just barely make Pope and Young minimum 18" skull.

Thanks for the replies and pics.

If I get additional video, I'll post it. Two years ago we had two around, one appeared to be a cub in the double digit weight and a bigger one that had a field day with one of my cameras. I believe he was shot the following spring for getting into a locals beehives?? NYS DEC granted a nuisance permit amazingly fast on that one I was told. I'll load that video.........(cool audio too!)

https://youtu.be/RN2CYqeN6zo

Another one from 30 yards further up the hill (same logging road) from this years bear but this clip is from two years ago. No damage to the camera from this one though.........

https://youtu.be/cD5gRE9Rr4o

Edit........date on camera is wrong. It isn't THAT green in WNY in February.

And no more. And probably less.

Only ones I've seen personally were young ones going out to seek a territory for themselves. That one looks like more of an adult but I'm not an authority on bears so I can't even take a guess on the weight. Very neat video though. Had a young one in the woods next to the house about 10 years ago. Caught him crossing the road at dusk a couple times, found his tracks in the woods along with bear scat, etc........ But this one must have been camera shy; as he refused show up in front of any trail cams. Dept. of Environmental Conservation guys eventually live trapped him and relocated him .

The ears look to big for one over 200

Yep

He's not big in inches but young and pretty well fleshed. I'd say not more than 220.

How much does this one weigh? No not the one in yellow.

Steelhead, he looks like a 375- 400 pound bear but I would not be too surprised if he was more. How's that for hedging my bet?

The one bear we got out whole so we had to weigh him.

287 pounds

He had a big head! I killed one a couple years ago that went 350 so I was going by that. Nice pelt!

People typically way overestimate a bear's size. .

Truth

Wow steelhead must be a beeg sumbitch!!! Grin

My younger son spent a couple of summers working where bears raided the cook tent, wandered through camp, sneaked up on him while he was working, etc. He developed an axiom for bears: All bears are huge, except for the ones that get shot and measured.

That bear is about an inch long on my computer screen , smaller as it went away from the camera. It would be bigger if I went full screen.


Mike

Someone has been talking....

Whats the old saying?
Bears are heaviest the farther from a scale.

I want to play!! How big is this one.

https://youtu.be/jPrK0_2wiY8

You have to get closer than that for an accurate guess........

I’ve seen a Pa 500 pound + up close and going away like the one in the first video. The owner of the property said the GC tagged and weighed him, which is where the weight came from. His rear waddling away looked like the back end of an F250. He got up at spitting range and there was no doubt he was exceptional. That one isnt even close.

We think 6’8” 430#. But we are rank amateurs. LOL.

Back in the late 1970's I was assigned an article by what was then a major outdoor magazine on the "bear rangers" of Glacier National Park. Their job was to prevent problems between tourists and grizzly bears, and I'd follow one of the rangers (a fellow student at the U. of Montana) around for a few days and see what happened.

It just so happened that a "sub-adult" male bear was hanging out near one of the back-country chalets, where a lot of tourists hiked in and stayed. He hadn't been causing any problems, but the rangers who'd seen the bear estimated his weight at anywhere from 175 to 300 pounds. These were people who'd often tranquilizer-darted grizzlies to move them out of heavy tourist-use areas.

We found the bear very soon, within sight of the chalet. In fact people lined up with binoculars and spotting scopes to watch him feeding on glacier lilies a quarter-mile away, but the bear soon wandered off, and my buddy and I followed him.

It turned out the other reason the bear was hanging out in the area--near one of the major trails into the chalet--was a mountain goat carcass near the main trail. We had an interesting encounter with the bear on the carcass, and the head bear ranger decided to dart and move him somewhere far, far away.

I got to go along and photograph the darting, which ended up with the bear running into nearby timber, and the rangers (with me right behind, armed with only a camera) not finding the bear until half an hour later, when the boar had started to recover from the tranquilizer. The bear couldn't stand up, but when one of the rangers poked him in the butt with the muzzle of the tranquilizer gun, the bear turned and bit the muzzle, growling loudly. Whereupon he was was darted again.

There's a lot more to the story, but it turned out the bear weighed 118 pounds.

Bumped into this one right before the season of 2016. He hung around long enough to get an idea of his size. Decided he would benefit from time if he hung around, but someone else thought different. He made just over 200.

I live in ag country and bears are a novelty, but I have two recent encounters.

These two came up on me on separate days while I was turkey hunting this spring. I don't think they are the same bear.

Can a bear "woof" and fart at the same time? The one in the first pic did.





Trail cam pics from last November.





Estimated weights would be appreciated.

There's a lot more to the story, but it turned out the bear weighed 118 pounds..............( Mule Deer).. You already stated you were armed with only a camera but what guns did the rangers utilize other than tranquilizer guns? I can't picture those rangers & their camera guy chasing after that bear with just tranquilizer guns. Even around here when they've darted bears they have "just in case" real guns but I'm not sure what they use.

The rangers all carried Model 29 S&W's, and one carried a 12-gauge pump loaded with slugs.

When they got serious about eliminating (not just moving) "trouble bears" they used .300 Winchester Magnums, as I recall. Though the Park Service wasn't very sophisticated back then about projectiles, but then neither were most hunters.

No expert, but maybe 200 lbs.

Never hunted a bear, but I'd say it went from claw to claw, and nasty on at least one end.