Posted on 02/01/2022 6:21:26 AM PST by FLNittany
The largest bear reported was a 722-pound male taken with a shotgun in the extended season, on Dec. 4, in Letterkenny Township in Franklin County, by Wade Glessner, of Shippensburg.
The heaviest bear ever taken in Pennsylvania was an 875-pounder harvested in 2010 in Middle Smithfield Township, Pike County.
Bears were taken in 59 of 67 counties and 22 of Pennsylvania’s 23 Wildlife Management Units in the 2021 seasons.
Lycoming County gave up 212 bears to rank first among counties for bear harvest. Potter County ranked second with 180, Pike County third with 167, Tioga County fourth with 166 and Clinton County fifth with 156. Rounding out the top 10 were Bradford County (136), Sullivan County (127), Wayne County (120), Centre County (118), and Huntingdon County (115).
The regular bear season accounted for the largest part of the harvest, with hunters taking 1,315 bears in that four-day hunt.
The extended bear season, which last year for the first time allowed hunters to harvest bears throughout the opening weekend of deer season in some Wildlife Management Units, contributed 1,128 animals to the harvest.
The archery bear season added another 680 bears.
The muzzleloader/special firearms bear season harvest was 536.
"That Pennsylvania continues to produce so many bears across so many seasons, year after year, speaks to the health of the state's bear population," said Emily Carrollo, the Game Commission's black bear biologist. "Pennsylvania has a long history of supporting a lot of black bears, many of truly impressive size, across most of the state ... Best of all, the future continues to look bright for this resource, too."
There were 215,219 people who bought bear licenses in 2021. That was down slightly from 220,471 in 2020, but still the second-highest number of bear licenses ever sold in any one year.
"Pennsylvania has been a popular bear hunting destination for years, and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon," Carrollo said.
Check-in stations weigh field-dressed deer because everybody guts the deer to start the cooling and to make it easier to drag the carcass out of the woods. I wonder what the bear weights are like after being field-dressed. I would like to see gutted vs. whole weights.
Was the Boar fit to be eaten, if so how was it?
Is bear meat good? I have had venison, which I enjoyed, but I have never had bear.
Correcto. Bears are really becoming a nuance in the Orlando area.
Ain’t no black bear that big, must be a brown bear with a dye job.
Prolly went to Elvis’s hairdresser and told her, “Make me look like ‘The King.’”
Thank you for your map. A couple of weeks ago I was out for a walk in the woods. I came across a large bear cage/trap and it made me wonder if I was stumbling into a bad area. I already had hogs and gators! Nope, I’m in a “rare” zone (east of Lake O.)
Bear is very good, cooked correctly.
45-70 405gr hardcast. Accept no substitute.
Yeah, nuanced bears can be a series problem.................
Bear meat is very good as long as you trim ALL the fat off...
Bear fat when cooking will stink out your house...
We got some very well fed black bears in Florida that would take issue with that................
4 wheelers likely,, either that or they packed out the good meat first, then went back for,hide and the stew meat second, or even third trip
Do they hunt bear with dogs in Pennsylvania???
I used to hunt East Tennessee bears with Plott Hounds...A bunch of us also used to take our Plotts to Haliburton, Ontario to hunt in the fall and to Vermilion Bay, Ontario to hunt in the spring...
Is bear meat good? Depends on how old and tough the bear is and how it is cooked I’ve had some that was terrific (tastes a lot like pork the way it was cooked), and I had some that would drive a maggot off a gutpile- same for moose too.
Had bear burgers MANY years ago. Delicious!!
“I would like to see gutted vs. whole weights.”
I field dressed it and was shocked to see how small the gut pile was. A whitetail gut pile is about 20% of the live weight. I suspect the bear gut pile is much lower.
The meat was very good. We ate it mostly as roasts with a lot of the fat trimmed off.
Bear had a massive jaw abscess that was likely causing it a lot of pain.
722 pounds is enough for two big black bears, in my neck of the woods.
William “the Fridge” Perry was a black Bear of good size. But only half as big.
Not to my knowledge. Don't think the state would go for that.
We have feral hogs in Texas about 1/2 that weight. They are such a nuisance and so destructive, that is why some counties are placing a bounty on them.
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