Originally Posted by
grizzly 2
When I lived in NJ in the 50's thru 1970, bears were pretty much unheard of. They were farther north in upstate NY. Years later, I began to hear of them. One hunter from my old area in Sussex County told me that he would see more bears than deer. The problem was that tree huggers were interfering with the Conservation Dept and putting a stop to the bear hunting seasons. I don't have all the facts, but this went on for years - probably allowing many to grow in size and age. In another state, like many have said, they would have been hunted and killed off before they grew that large. But I imagine in this unusual circumstance in NJ, they were coming into backyards and playing on the kids swing sets and swimming in their pools while not being hunted and overly protected. It appears the hunting seasons are back in full swing. The Northern part of the state was more rural and wooded with many dairy farms and even a few ski resorts. The valley I hunted as a young man was eventually sold and became one of those ski resorts which now is out of business. The road I lived on was named Breakneck Road and bordered the ski resort. I tried it on an old 3 speed English bicycle along time ago and wiped out going down it when I hit some gravel in a turn at speed. Ah, the good old days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sMiieotB6c
now I am not saying that having had NO bear season for a while didn;'t help any bears get older or larger
the facts are, Many bears in this bears weight, are killed often in places that have had bear seasons for decades
like in PA
a 700 lb bear is or so sized , are killed almost every yr in PA, and many live in PA that don;t get killed, (NOT saying there super common but there are many out there in this weight class, just don't have the skull sizes , PA seems to have FAT beats at younger ages)) due to many get smarter and den sooner or just lucky, or worse
many live in places where folks feed them and DON"T hunt them, creating places they can get FAT real fast, or faster than in a bear just being a bear in the wild on natural foods!
feeding bears is a common occurrence in many places they live, and shoudln't be done, but it does happen a lot more than I think lost know about!
Heck, just look the heaviest bear is from down in a southern state, that isn;t really known as a BIG bear state!
Heaviest Black Bear Ever
the largest black bear ever killed was killed over 100 years ago in Arizona. It weighed 902 pounds, which has been challenged. For bears that have been reliably weighed on certified scales, the biggest black bear ever killed is an 880 pound, 10 year old male bear that was shot in North Carolina in November
1998.
heaviest again and largest skull are two totally different things
But the one that holds heaviest record was aged at just 10 yrs old, imagine what a skull or weight it could have had if it lived longer, and bears have been known to live close to 30 yrs, so it was still a young bear at just 10 yrs old!