In this Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World podcast episode from November 2019 with host Rob Keck he is focused on hunting and managing GIANT, record-book black bears.
Countless articles, books, and DVDs tell us how to age and score whitetail bucks in the field. However, you’ll very little advice is available on how to judge the age of a bear. That’s unfortunate because bears can be particularly difficult to judge for hunting.
Bears like to travel lake shores, river edges, and tidal inlets near oceans. All of these habitats offer food in the form of grasses, insects, flowers, crabs, fish, and animal carcasses.
That makes boats a great transportation method for bear hunting, either to reach prime territory or to actually conduct some of the hunt from the watercraft.
It was bear season and we were heaving ourselves to the ground after a 1,000 foot vertical climb up northwest Montana’s Cabinet Mountains. As we struggled to catch our breath we immediately grabbed our optics. We had scaled the steep terrain shortly after dawn to get a good vantage point for glassing across and down into canyon side hills and benches for foraging spring bears.
Whether it’s your first time or an every year ritual spring bear hunting is exciting. There’s something special about being out in the greening spring woods with the chance to come face-to-face with a bruiser bruin.
Selecting the right weapon for bear hunting is important, and knowing how to skillfully use it is even more important.
Bear hunting is an outdoor pursuit which gets the adrenaline pumping immediately when the action begins.
The Boone and Crockett Club recently announced a new No. 1 hunter-taken grizzly bear. This monster bruin was taken in 2013 by Larry Fitzgerald near Fairbanks, Alaska, and scored 27 6/16, missing the world record mark by just 7/16 of an inch (a bear found dead in Alaska in 1976). Bears are scored based on skull length and width measurements.
Ever since I saw a photo on the cover of Petersen's Hunting Annual of legendary outdoor writer Craig Boddington with a giant brown bear he'd taken in Alaska, I've been dreaming of the day when I too can hunt North America's largest land carnivore in the Land of the Midnight Sun. That photo was about 30 years ago. Alas, I haven't quite made it there yet, but I'm working on it. If this hunt is on your "bucket list" too, here's a quick summary of what you need to know.
American black bears live only in North America. These familiar bruins are primarily woodland animals, occupying forests as far north as forests grow in Alaska and Canada and as far south as Florida and northern Mexico.
