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And Sam Willet from Texas kicked it into high gear on the first day of our hunts with this melon headed beast! More to come…

It was a bit light in body weight compared to it’s skull size but the bait site, Picnic, has been dominated by a big, old giant bear that we hadn’t been able to kill for the last 5-10 years. Sam’s bear took over the bait this spring so the big boy must have died. Sam’s bear may have come from the nearby big woods area, away from the prime crop farmland so he wasn’t getting great feed, didn’t pack on the pounds like our farm bears. Normally our 20 inch bears weigh well over 300 lbs.

Fortunately bears don’t get to choose their own gender so you get to make that judgement for them.

Hunter, AJ took the photo on Tuesday evening, he knew it was a big boar but the bear never quit moving around for the perfect bow shot. Looks to be a solid 350 pounder? Hopefully we get to find out soon? Bear sightings have been slow with the heat wave we’ve been experiencing, highs of 80 F, never seen it this warm in the first week…

For the spot and stalk spring bear hunter with no barrels or posts I say to look for a rectangular shape body on a mature boar, light bulb shape on a big sow. Long and tall versus short and fat. (I did lots of spot and stalk in my pre-baiting years back in the 80’s)

AJ’s beast did break 20 inches at 20 1/16, and weighed 385 lbs and the hide was 6 ft 11 inches. Both bears went less than 100 yds after perfect shots.

The term gets used all the time, 7 ft black bear, 10 or even a 11 foot brown bear etc, and most hunters don’t even know what it means or how it is measured?! And hunting industry “professionals” will argue exactly how it should be done, me included. I only learned it from other guides and did what seems to make sense to me and is fair for comparing bear size.

So to me in simple terms, it is the average measurement of the greatest width and length of a skinned out bear hide. The hide gets stretched out flat on the ground and NOT touched/pulled while doing the measurements.

So we measure the length from the tip of the nose to the tip of most of the tail hairs, not to the last longest one, and the width from the tip of the claws to the tip of the claws, then average out those two measurements. A typical 7 footer would be 6 ft 8 in long and 7 ft 4 in wide, 7 ft average. We have the head out, paws in, if we took the paws out we could gain another inch.

If you left the head in and the paws in and only measured to the base of the tail it would shrink the “square of the hide” measurement by about 6 inches. Clay Newcombe from Bear Hunting Magazine says that’s how it should be done so he has never seen a 7 foot black bear. We would still get a couple of 7 footers each year, the ones that we measure at 7 ft 6 in or better.

But hunters tell me also about the 6 inch wide front pad on a black bear, and I've never seen one even close to that, 5 1/2 inches is the biggest one I've ever measured. I've also never even seen a picture of a 6 inch pad or a track in the mud though?

I do wonder if some of those gigantic, 700-800 lb PA bears have a 6 inch pad in the fall? Would all that weight that make a difference? I’ve never seen a bear bigger than 515 lbs so I don’t know…

I leave next Saturday. I’m in the same area general of Alberta I believe. Fires have caused major issues with road closures getting in and out of camp. My camp opens Sunday so no bear reports yet

I’ve been MIA on bowsite because of the fires, but still operating basically as usual. It’s been causing us some logistical problems so I’m helping my guides anyway I can, which means no time to post on bowsite. Hot temps have slowed bear activity too but still killed 6 bears for 6 hunters this past week. I’ll get caught up posting soon.

This bear was 320 lbs, 19 4/16 skull and 6 ft 10 inch square hide, exactly the size of bear we want all of our hunters to hold out for, a mature, probable 5 1/2 yr old male bear.

I don’t normally ever call a hunter out on stuff like this, especially if it’s an honest mistake but this was no mistake, he had no care about our mature bear management program. He wanted it, so he shot it.

And then to top it off, a few days after the cinammon kill, Troy said he missed a big black bear, at 16 yds with a crossbow. We didn’t believe him and we went back the next day to check it out and found a broken, bloody bolt laying 20 yds from the bait, it looked to have about 3-4 inches of penetration. We couldn’t find the bear. He was along on the tracking job and made no apologies, he had nothing to say about either bear. Greg had nothing to say about it all too. AND then Troy bitched to the other hunters in camp that it wasn’t fair that he had to pay the 2nd bear kill/wound fee. He didn’t even go look for the bear after shooting it, or he would have found the broken arrow!

I would’ve thought those giant bears were a lot older than that. My Montana bears have ranged from 5’ 6”-6’7” and have all been 7-15 year old boars based off of cementum aging.

Nice to see some big bears hitting the dirt. Good luck with the fires.

We have a lot of money into each bait site, especially with the wooden box blinds and an expensive trail camera, not to mention the hours of labor put into them too. Like we needed more losses after all the Covid lockdowns! Living the Dream

There is lots of proof that many, dozens of the fires were intentionally set in remote areas, near oil and gas facilities. You can speculate as to why, climate activists, a provincial election with a governing Conservative Party? The mainstream news is not covering the arson at all, surprise, surprise.

No wonder everyone on Bowsite talks so highly of you --- amidst all the devastation and financial loss, you still have a great attitude -- kudos to you.

I do have lots of bear pics to catch up on, I’ve got my extended family up here, some young hunters, working on taking a few sows out to reduce the bear population so the lodge is a busy place right now!

His 2nd bear went 500-600 yds because of a quartering towards hit. The bear shifted his body around while Marco was at full draw and he didn’t realize he moved into a quartering towards him position when he released. He got the shot on video so we left the bear till morning and some diligent tracking and guesswork by my bloodhound guides found the bear. Thank goodness!

From trail camera pics we thought this boar was big enough at 300+ lbs and we gave him the go ahead to take it. We were wrong with the bear weighing in at 280, 18 1/16 skull, 6 ft 6 in hide. But Richard was very happy with it being his largest bear to date. The coat was a beautiful, long haired bear so that’s our excuse for the misjudgment. Congrats Richard!

2024 is full. THANKS!

Thanks Dino!

Bret shot this 310 lb boar with an 18 12/16 skull, 6 ft 8 inch hide. A great bear killed in the burn. The guides Gerard and Tyson tracked him down in the ashes of the big forest fire.

As for age of the bear and size it’s an odd one for me, normally a 4 1/2 yr old boar will weigh 280 lbs, rarely over 300 and have an upper 18 inch head, upper 6 ft hide. The head and hide lines up but not the weight so much. A 5 1/2 yr old will have at least a 19 inch head in our area at least and easily weigh over 300 lbs, so is it a 5 1/2 yr old? I don’t think so, I’m going with it being a fat 4 1/2 yr old. I prefer to kill them the next age up at 5+ but it is really difficult to tell a fat 4 yr old from a leaner 5+ yr old. We’ve killed 300 lb bears with 20 inch heads too, so you just have to shoot them once their shoulders are 36 inches tall, and 300+ lbs and do the measuring later.

We had another repeat hunter from Japan that week pass on what he thought was a 320-330 lb, long legged, big framed bear. It was 38 inches to the shoulder in his video. I had to break it to him that it was probably a 380 lb bear with a probable 20+ inch head. It never came back that week and we shut the bait down once he left so that bear will be there for next year and he is also rebooked for 2024, redemption tour!

Bou’bound every hunter could kill two bears, easily, within the first day or two of their hunt. 200% success if that’s what we wanted, but we don’t.

No one saw less than 10 adult bears in a week of hunting, some had that many 2 1/2+ yr old bears on their bait at one time! And upwards of 40-50 different bears in a week, including cubs and yearlings. But we are trying to only kill, 19+ inch skull, 300+ lb, 7 footers or dam close to it. Our long term success average is that if all 6 hunters for the week hold out for the entire 6 hunting days only 1 or 2 hunters may not see a big bear of that calibre.

But we also encourage all hunters to shoot a big 200 lb sow, after the first 3 days of “Trophy” hunting if they want to make sure they go home with a bear. There is a 100% chance of doing that and it’s so much better than shooting a 150-200 lb, 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 yr old male. Those boars are off limits to shoot, no matter the color. Let them grow up to at least 4 yrs, 280 lbs, preferably 5 yrs old and 300+ lbs!

The bear had a lighter than usual body weight of only 255 lbs, not sure if he was sick or injured? Long fluffy coat, but a bit rubbed, you can see the brown tints. A poor coat can be the sign of sickness or just low body fat.

The bear weighed the same as Blake’s at 255 lbs which is more in line with the 18 9/16 skull of a 4 yr old boar.

The bear was another odd match up of body weight and skull. 285 lbs says it’s a 4 yr old, 18 2/16 skull says it’s a 3 yr old, so who knows? I’m going with 4 yrs, it’s tough to get a 3 1/2 yr old to 285 lbs, that would be some fast growth!

It was a giant 20 2/16 skull boar, 7 footer, 395 lbs! This was Emmarie’s 2nd 20 inch bear. She killed one in Alaska too.

(Randy runs a top notch whitetail outfit in Kansas for some big whitetails and Emmarie helps her dad with that operation. She is a real outdoors woman!)

Really enjoyed following along. Love to see professionals at work !!

Hopefully you guys start having more normal conditions for your hunting in the future, and don’t have as many curveballs as you’ve had deal with, the past few years.