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Another good measure is a log on the ground cut to 5 feet, a good boar will be as long as the log, a female bear will never be as long as the log.

Stats on the bear: hide squared 7ft 0 inch, 6 ft 10 in long by 7 ft 2 in wide, weighed 335 lbs, 18 14/16 skull, 4 6/8 inch front pad, 49 in chest girth and 5 ft 8 in tip of nose to base of tail on carcass. My half educated guess on age is 5 1/2 yrs old. This exactly the kind of bear we are trying to take for every hunter, it ain't easy though!

Stats: squared 6 ft 10 in, 6 ft 8 in wide by 7 ft 2 in long, 325 lbs, 19 4/16 skull, 48 in chest, 5 ft 8 in long on carcass, 4 4/8 in front pad

His back height laying down is as tall as some mature sows standing on all four legs!

To hdaman's question, if your hunter would so desire, would he have the option of sitting in a tree stand instead of the enclosed blind? I have deer hunted out of an enclosed blind a very few times, and I much prefer sitting in a tree stand over the blind. Just curious.

We also set a new bait last year in a spot that I thought was great. We don't have any other baits in the whole township, 36 square miles. It sat for 2 months with 250 lbs of rotting meat and all the other goodies, never got touched by a bear. Guess I was wrong on that one.

I'm getting that big boy mounted full body and hope to have it back before spring bear season is over in which case I'll try to post a pic of him.

I have to say that they worked incredibly well. They are very comfortable - can spread your gear out however you'd like and have much more freedom of movement. A few minutes running a thermocell would clear the skeeters out for quite a while and, as Mike said, if the weather isn't great you won't really care as you'll be protected. While I hunt turkeys out of ground blinds here in IL I spend all fall in treestands and also thought I might feel a little too contained in a ground blind but this was not the case. First off, in many spots you hunt the canopy may actually limit your visibility more from a treestand than what you have from the ground as the understory tends to often be less thick with decent visibility. Bring binoculars and you'll have plenty of viewing plus Mike has a lot of bears so there were rarely long periods of inaction - bear activity was fairly consistent.

I also like the ground blinds as you feel up close and personal with the bear. You are plenty safe inside them but I had bear right outside the blind with one pushing on the back door and another sticking his nose through a window. Being that close to bear on the ground is frankly an awesome experience!

Lastly, I like the angle they give you on shots as you have the full lungs available to you and don't have to worry about the downward angle. I do think it helps increase the shot effectiveness for many. With my first bear he literally didn't go 10 yards before he stopped and stood there while I watched blood pour out of both sides before he tipped over (he was 18 14/16" on the skull). The giant (20 4/16" skull) I also double lunged but he ran full speed away - don't think he made it more than 50 yards though on a dead run. Both shots were broadside just inside of 20 yards and both bear were dead within seconds. Mike's setups are ideal for bowhunters as they are close shots and the cages steer the bears into a broadside position.

So worry not about the ground blinds - I think they are probably the most effective way to hunt those big bear and I know they were quite an investment of time, money and labor for Mike to build and set up. Needless to say, he wouldn't have done so if he wasn't convinced they would be an enhancement to the success of his clients - and like I said, Mike is an expert with this bear hunting stuff. Based on the success of his hunters last year I'd say they worked quite well.

Good luck to all of the hunters this year and I'll be keeping an eye on this thread to see all the great bears that hit the ground.

Well, we have had a few shots fired the last 3 days but no more kills. 2 more days to go for this group of hunters, all great guys to have in camp.

To keep it real here, these trail cam pics are the best bears we have on 30 baits spread over 1200 sq miles. Right now we have 6 big bears, 7 footers, on all of those baits in all that country and some baits that were great last year, 10-20+ bears have very few bears so far and no big ones. It really changes year to year. And this is on well established 10-25 yr old sites. You could personally put out a half dozen baits in well chosen spots in a great bear area and maybe only have one big bear to hunt, maybe none. Killing big bears over bait isn't easy, especially when you include the bait collection and manual labor involved. And even when that big boy appears in front of you and won't stop moving around, you have to keep your act together enough to make the shot!

Nice pics you're posting up. What are you guestimating the weight is on the big chocolate and black right above? I was thinking 390-410 on the big chocolate and 370-390 on the black.

Thanks....John

There might be a reason the chocolate is so smart though?

Day off today, no hunters. New guys coming in tomorrow.

Clint had some great video of a 7 foot, 19 inch skull, 300+ lb type bear at his bait for 3 hrs yesterday. We asked him not to shoot it because there is a bigger one but after we all looked at the video footage, we changed our minds and told him he better take it this eve! He came as close as one foot away to him, exciting stuff!

This year we upped our already big volume and variety of our bait with several different spots to eat at the one site, this has really helped to allow more bears to feed in front of the hunter at the same time. As long as they can get some separation between each other, even just 5 or 10 feet they will eat together, at least sows and younger bears will. The big male bears will try to keep it to themselves early in May but it's tough with so many bears around, which is great because he has to spend more time at the site than he may want to and end up putting himself in front of our hunter in broad daylight. Then when the breeding season hits he knows exactly where to go to find a hot sow, or 2 or 3 or 5.

We want to get some big ones pictured here with happy hunters!!!!

Great Looking Bear!!

God Bless, Scar

Scar Finga, it would be great to have you come up in 2019. We are booking for then already, getting pretty full for 2018. Booking now with 25% down will hold the 2017 price. Let me know, thanks!

We've been slow for kills this year due to accidental and on purpose pass ups of low 300 pound bears, guys going for the upper 300-400 pounders, and unfortunately a few missed shots. 8 out of 9 hunters so far have had an opportunity to kill a 7 foot, 300+ pounder which is our mission to provide.

The bear has a nasty little cut on his leg from a previous walk-by-shooting. I do like to advise guys to wait for the bear to BE in proper, broadside only, shooting position BEFORE drawing your bow. Then just draw back and shoot, let down if he moves before the shot can be taken, wait longer but not at full draw. Never draw before he is in position or it commits you to the shot and you'll be too tempted to take a marginal shot as you get the shakes from holding too long. These bears are not like a whitetail passing through, giving you a fleeting chance. Be ready to draw for the first 100% good opportunity but don't draw till the bear is in position!

We've been dealing with a monsoon type rain the last 2 days which hasn't helped the hunting, thank goodness for weather proof box blinds! The hunters have been hardcore with some 10-12 hour all day sits.

Ed killed a 420 pound chocolate one in 2016 with us and killed a 21+ inch head monster in Alaska. The bear man!

We had a fun week with some late nights bs'ing around the dining room table. Great group of bow hunters! Killed a few big ones and should have killed a few more, couple misses on big and huge ones and a couple accidental and on purpose pass ups of other big ones. New crew in now, lots of big bears on baits, should be great!

She is now after a legend, the Church Bear. Giant chocolate who was shot at with a rifle and missed, got pushed into night time hitting. Has shown some almost daylight pics so he's a long shot, but who knows?!

I guess part of it that I find interesting is that I've been basically called a liar for saying how many of our bears break the 7 ft mark and I've explained that it can simply be due to long legs, long body, just a long lanky frame. Then take that lanky bear and give him 10 years of great farmland food, tons of bait and he blows up into a 440+ pounder. That may not even be possible in some areas where they don't have the genetics for big framed bears, their biggest bears will very rarely ever break 7 feet and then they will have a hard time getting over 350 lbs too, even at an old age, but they can have 20+ inch heads or not have the genetics for that either. I love the details of it all. But you may not care about any of that and just want a fun, adventurous hunt for bears, maybe even get a little one so he is good eating. Each to his own.

Are the white chest markings pretty common, or is it unusual to see many with them?

Congratulations to all!

Scar.

That green and white metal stake is 34 inches tall, 2 inch above like him is huge!

A big color phase like that one is on the top of my bear "wish list"! A big blaze on him would just be icing on the cake.

Mature bears, boars or sows will have the similar looking round head, little ears on the side of their head, hanging belly, waddling walk, all the things that you hear repeated over and over to judge what a big boar looks like!? Go by those subjective things and ignore shoulder height and body length and be prepared to screw up and kill a big fat sow sometimes.

Bob said he saw somewhere between 50 and 60 different bears on 4 different baits. Just never saw a for sure 300+ pounder. As they say that's why it's called hunting. Out of 20 hunters so far on a 6 day hunt we have only had 4 evenings in total where a hunter did not see a bear. So 4 zero bear hunts out of over 100 hunts is pretty good I would say!

Repeat hunter Mark Holbrook got it on his first evenings hunt yesterday. (Just kidding on the free bear hunt, but you'll get an "attaboy, good guessing" from me! Haha)

Also a 5 inch front pad. (Measured straight across, same way you would measure a track in the mud, not wrapped around to get a 6 inch measure out of it.) The only reliable correlation I have found on track size and bear size is that if the front pad is over 5 1/4 inches it is a 300 plus pound, 19+ skull bear. 5 1/2 is huge, 6 doesn't exist in my world, never seen it. And a 400 pounder could have only a 4 5/8 inch pad.

Mark Holbrook Oklahoma

It is so great to go after certain big bears, and just watch the others come and go, no one has had a zero bear sighting hunt this week.

I posted a video of this bear on my INSTAGRAM account, just incredible bear. Follow us on it if you want. I sat lease bait because it's close to home, easy to get in to, with my wife and 2 noisy kids to just watch some bears. This guy strolled in and we about had a heart attack! He walked right up to 3 yds and stood staring at my 8 year old son, I thought he wanted to eat him. Intimidating but super cool. We survived the encounter and then we put a hunter on it the next day for an all day 12 hour sit. It eventually paid off.

As for broadheads as much as I am an old school, 50 year old bowhunter, who loves a fixed blade head for elk or moose matched with a heavy arrow. For bears I would shoot a big mechanical broadhead and you don't need to worry if you are a foot back, the bear is going to die within 200 yds or sometimes a lot less. Believe me I've seen hundreds of bears shot from nose to tail with all kinds of heads made over the last 30 years.

Congrats to you and your hunters Mike!

Mark

Last week was a big success, 11 bears killed for 6 hunters, 6 with skulls well over Pope and Young's 18 inch minimum, 4 of those 6 over 19 inches, 2 over 20. A few of the smaller bears were killed just for meat.

I age the others by past experience with tooth aging and that most bears in our area will fall into a small range of size at a certain age. This I believe is because of almost unlimited feed from a young age with both our 2 months of baiting and 4 months of farm crops to feed on. A two yr old boar will weigh around 150 lbs, 3 yrs old 230 lbs, 4 yrs old 280 lbs, 5 yrs old 320 lbs, 6+ yrs old 340+++. Now bears in the big woods can really vary depending on their food source, who gets the best habitat, feed etc. You can get a 275 lb bear with a 20 inch head or a 320 pounder with a 19 inch head, genetics are a big part of this too.

Blame my guide Gerard for the exaggerated picture setup, same sort of setup as the opening of the thread picture but these bears aren't quite as large as those two!

John's bear had some surprising stats on it, 260 lbs, squared 6 ft 5 inches and an outsized 19 4/16 skull! Crazy big head for a 260 pounder. My guess is this bear is originally a big woods, wilderness type bear that moved into our farmland for breeding, with a skull like that he should be a 325 pounder farmland bear. Maybe the bears first big rut cruise in his life? Probably a 5 yr old. This makes 23 boars for us over 18 inches and 14 of those over 19 in skull, 2 over 20, with 4 more days to hunt and 5 tags open.

Then two Calgary guys for the last 5 days. They bought the hunt when we donated it to Calgary SCI chapter.

The 3 hunters saw 25 bears but no big bears. They are not cooperating right now. Hopefully tonight!

Guides Gerard, Cody and Josh did a team retrieval for John.

Nathan was diligently holding out for a big 300 plus pounder like we ask all of hunters to do, but it just wasn't meant to be. They were on camera on every bait he sat, same for his brother Jacob but the buggers just wouldn't come in when they were sitting there. That's the way the rut hunt goes sometimes, big reward like John got with two big bears or nothing like Jacob.

Really nice guys and they rebooked for 2020, which is now our next openings, crazy enough. 2018 and 2019 are full.

And thanks to Mike for sharing another great season with us all. I enjoyed checking on a regular basis to see what bears were being brought in. As usual, lot of bears, lots of success and quite a few stud bears coming out of Mike's camp. Top notch bear hunting operation!

As always, awesome bears! Scar.

AND THAT'S A WRAP ON OUR SEASON! Thanks for following along. And yes it was our best season ever for big bears, some quick stats are 31 hunters killed 38 bears, 24 of those 38 bears had skulls over 18 inches, mostly 18 1/2+ inch skull bears, 18 of the 24 bears weighed over 300 lbs, 16 were over 19 inch skulls and 4 of them over 20, 1 over 21. Three bears weighed over 400 lbs. We had a few wounds on big bears too. Our only disappointment was the lack of killing big colored bears, we took several of them last year, and that will be corrected soon, we have a quite a crop of 2-4 yr old colored boars growing up on our baits now. These stats don't include bears killed by my guides, my family or me. These are all the paying hunter kills.

And we will do even better next year! We improve every year.

And congrats on a really nice bear Mike - he'll look good in the clubhouse along with the big chocolate.

Another amazing season in the books.