BEAR TRACKS

KENTUCKY BOY · 10-19-2003, 01:57 AM

CAN YOU TELL THE AGE OF A BEAR BY HIS TRACK? CAUSE I SEEN A GRAY LOOKING ONE, BUT HIS PAW WASNT NO BIGGER THEN A FIST.

plainsman · 10-19-2003, 02:14 AM

color of the bear is no indication of age.there is a paw size to weight ratio formula,I just can' t remember it offhand

KENTUCKY BOY · 10-19-2003, 02:40 AM

WHAT IS THE BIGGEST PAW YOU HAVE SEEN

Nicholal · 10-19-2003, 05:32 AM

i' ve been told that you are to take pepper spray and wear bells when your in GRIZZ country?

and i' ve been told that you can tell black bear dung cuz it has berries and such and GRIZZ dung smells like pepper spray and have shinny bells in it........

Colorado Bob · 10-19-2003, 08:02 AM

I think you are talking about black bears. The rough rule of thumb I have heard is
A front paw print of 4" is a small bear----5" is a anverage bear--probably about 5' 6" ---------a 6" paw print is a good bear---over 6' . Weights would change on time of year. These are front paws. Hope this helps.

plainsman · 10-19-2003, 09:47 AM

Now I remember,width of front paw ,divide by 2 and add 2 zero' s to the end. Lets say a 6" paw ,now divide, would take us down to 3. Now add the zero' s and we have a 300lb. bruin. I' m fairly sure that' s the basic math,but something still doesn' t seem right to me. I' m sure somebody on this site knows the formula I' m talking about.Largest print I' ve seen was a griz print of about 8-10" , which was big enough at the time, considering I had no rifle and the water in the print still had mud swirling in it[

][

][:-]

Coastie · 10-20-2003, 04:46 AM

The one hanging on the wall in the living room has a paw about 4" and was right around 200# the two I field dressed for friends last year were each over 300# one field dressed right at 300 and the other was bigger but was never weighed on an official scale, I' d say he dressed at about 350. We never did measure the paws but the larger one green scored a 19" skull.
Plainsmans formula seems reasonable but I have never heard of it before, but that doesn' t mean anything. There are a lot of things I have never heard of before.
Black Bears range in color from jet black to pure white with just about every shade of black and brown in between. The wife of a friend killed one in CO years back that was a beautiful cinnamon shade.
There is one in the area that guys swear has a 9" track which would put him in the 450# range which is not extraordinary for this area. Some lady killed one on the road with her Toyota a few years back that went right around 560 which was the largest killed in the state.