Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire More Grizzly Pictures On A Carcass

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Grizzlies can get pretty big in MT/BC area.

In the late '80s biologists were studying bears in the area around the NW corner of Glacier Park, both sides of the border, for three years. There was an especially large male in the area, mostly on the B.C. side, which they never succeeded in trapping, but sometimes saw and quite often found and measured his tracks. They claimed that with the experience they had, they were able to judge autumn weight pretty closely by track dimensions, and estimated this one at very close to 1100 pounds. One day a biologist was watching a black bear which three days earlier had been trapped, weighed and otherwise probed, then tagged. It weighd 440 pounds. While watching, the huge grizzly rushed from the timber and killed the black and proceedede to devour it. The biologist said the grizzly had nearly the black's whole head in it's mouth.

The big guy was not normally known to cause problems, but the hunting outfitter in the area kept a messy camp and had been warned by BC conservation to clean it up. One evening he and some clients crossed the border (illegally), spent some time at the Northern Lights saloon in Polebridge. When they returned to camp the big griz was there eating trash, the outfitter gut shot it, probably hoping it would wander off before dying and thus avoiding scrutiny on himself; but leaving a wounded, huge grizzly wandering the woods during hunting season. A few days later the group returned to Polebridge, got drunk, and one of them told other patrons the story; as a result, BC conservation investigated, fined him and he forfeited the hunting/guiding license, for which he reportedly paid $1.5 million Canadian dollars. I don't remember the exchange rate at the time.

A large black grizzly was caught during that study period which was weighed at 880 lbs, but I don't remember what time of year.

The biggest I ever encountered in that general area was, according to FWP, around 750lbs fall fat.

How do they know? What method are they using for estimation? They could have 3,000 or more, maybe. Unless..

Alaska was using a method developed and used for Montana bear pop studies - admittedly not a good fit but all they had until they figured out how to do it more accurately. (And got the funding for it- always important)

Set up bait stations with barbed wire hair snatchers arounbd it, then DNA the suckers. Over a 3 or 4 year period of "capture and recapture" of the samples, they could make a far better estimate of the bear population.

We wound up with almost twice as many bears as with originally used Montana methodology. I'm thinking Montana probably is doing the same DNA-based method now, but don't know.

So they could be right.

There is plenty of bad advice anyway.

We've had some big ones in Eastern Idaho. Idmilton got a big griz on tral cam at his blackbear bait a few years back. Iirc they had shot and skinned out a 350ish pound black bear and left the carcas near the bait. They were headed back to the bait a day or 2 later and something had carried the 350 carcas quite a ways down the trail. They went and checked their cams and it was a huge grizzly. I think it wasn't too far up the hill just east of rigby. If he sees this hopefully he can tell the story for us correctly.

Bb

It was far better than using a no longer valid model with different parameters than the KP!

Cool pics, bears are some big bad muthers,.. but I notice that the crows ain’t goin away hungry either!!

las - At least 10 years ago I heard that Montana used the same barbed wire hair snatcher/DNA gathering technique in a rather limited area around Glacier National Park and likewise found they had twice as many grizzlies as previously estimated. They tried to get a federal grant to expand the study to all of northwestern MT, but were turned down. The biologist who told me this suspected the reason was that it would provide data supporting re-opening grizzly hunting, something the DC politicians/political hacks were against.

Way cool, Kirk. Scary predators. I can't even imagine walking up on one of those big beasts. Thanks for sharing.

I shot a Grizz once upon a time

My favorite line about grizzlies came out of a Sackett novel. Tell, I think it was, opined that it was amazing how filled up a country could get with just you and a griz in it.

Pretty much true, sometimes.

Along with Big Sky's fish pic, some dog threads and such.

That's easy....................................



MORE!

Congratulations on the grizz with a bow, not many can say they accomplished that.

Takes a pretty big pair to do it.

lol

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Large male grizzly kills another grizzly

I'll take your word for it, but in that photo the head, ears and paws look a lot like a black bear.

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