Big black bears over 300 pounds are almost always males. The heads grow large and the ears stay the same size as when they were fully grown cubs. On a large bear the ears are way to the side of the head, appear small and look round like cookies. The head grows but the ears don't so they look small and round. The bear we are talking about is a very nice bear but I would say it is a female and the ears look too large for me to consider it that huge. Just my opinion of course. It is hard to get any type of scale since there aren't any trees or other identifiable things next to it. To show what I mean here are a couple of pictures we took on our last Colorado trip. It is a black bear but in a brown color phase.
we saw this one hanging around the cabin and later that night got one of my game bags which were hung up on the porch.
Here is a picture I took of the same bear when he came back the day after he climbed that pillar in back of him to try and get the remaining game bags that we moved up to the second floor porch. I heard him climbing the wall and chased him off just as he was coming up over the railing at 2:30 in the morning. Another 10 seconds and he would have had another bag filled with my deer quarters and that was on the porch above the one pictured. The next day after butchering the deer while watching out for the bear I was having a beer and had the screen door open and he returned and I took these pictuires of him. He is next to a 48 qt cooler for scale and I estimate him at around 200 to 250 pounds. It is a male and at least to me his head looks bigger than the one in the first post and the space between and small size of the ears would indicate at least to me that the Colorado bear was bigger.
Incidentally the last time we saw him he was up on my back bumper trying to get into the rear of my pickup where we had left a couple of bloody pack frames from packing out my partners’ mulie. We scared him off just before he bashed in the door to the cap. I am glad we were looking outside when we did.
