Help me judge these bears!
 

I have a few bears coming to my baits on a regular basis...need some help figuring out if they are shooters or not....thanks

Hey Passthrough,

bears are the hardest animal to judge, need something to compare them to for size, at a bait you look at the barrel but at a pile of bait there's nothing unless you mark the tree or put a 4 foot peg in the ground?? the first and 3rd pic look like decent bears, head size is also tough, good rule of thumb is, if ears look too small, bears good, it ears look big and floppy, hasn't grown into them yet

I agree that 1 and 3 are definately the best bears of the four. 1 looks like it is a pretty good size bear. 4 looks like it is just a cub.

All look pretty small to me.

Not real big ,depends on what you want. A big bear will have bellyclose to ground but if they are close you will be able to tell
Redclub

left to right 275 80 190 80

the first one is a shooter the other are all 100-150

again, bears are so tough to judge, here's a couple of bears we shot this spring, i don't know weight as we don't weight them, more interested in how they sqaure out and skull size, I know what they'll both go, let's see what some of the guesses are (i have a rough idea what they'd weight too.

bear #1


bear #2

320 and 75

All dressed weights.

1. 175lbs
2. 90lbs
3. 150lbs
4. 60lbs

225 pound range dressed. Nice looking head on him!!


80 to 90 pound range dressed.

as i said, we shot both of these bears so I know what they went, it's easy to misjudge a bear.

the first bear went 18 9/16th, likely in around 250 pounds (that's spring weight mind you), the second bear was much bigger, skull went 19 10/16th, likely weighed at least 50 pounds more than other bear.

You are smokin crack if that bear on the bottom is 300 pounds! Ur not talkin to the guys at work now! Lol

you got me, think it was actually 289 lbs:) as i said earlier, we don't weight the bears so i was guessing by how heavy he was as we were moving him around, he was very close to that i would say, my point was more, he was a bigger bear than the first pic, sometimes the angle of the bear, the way it's headis turned in a pic, makes it tough to be sure, here he is on the ground, almost a 20" skull

Your saying the bear In this picture Is the same bear as the one below?

theres NO WAY! THE SECOND BEAR IS A CUB!FOR CHRIST SAKE!

Hey first things first, Passthru24, so sorry for hijacking your post, only meant to show how hard it is to judge bears!!!

yes it is the same bear and no it's not a cub, if it is a cub it's a really big one :), see the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wipD7twW4s

That's definitely the same bear Ron, no doubt. I agree that at certain angles a person can really be fooled at the size of bear. We have 10 camera's out on our baits so I've saw a ton of pictures of bear. Some pictures look huge and then the next picture of the same bear looks allot smaller. This just goes to show, a guy really never knows. In your video that bear grew Immensely when he was at different angles. Great bear, congratulation's to the hunter!!!

you were right! i stand corrected. P.s and here i thought i finally could judge em! lol even with 9 yrs of bear hunting(very close range)with a bow.

Thanks, the first bear was the one my 14 year old son shot, from my archery stand with my lever action 30/30, we actually passed on it and watched it for some time, got some great video before we realized it was a pretty good bear especially for a 14 year old who had yet to shot a bear, made a great shot!

Here's the one i was waiting for but he never made an appearance during daylight hours, let's hear some guesses???

Thats awesome! I think i have my dad talked into going next year! Hes stuck on waterfowl and deer! Lol its always fun to see the look on a face after the first encounter! The walk out of the stand is huge the first time 2! Lol

ya no kidding, check this out, was videoing him when we walked up to it, tells the whole story!!!

hey again Passthru, sorry we have totally hijacked your post

Oh my god! That is so funny! Lol priceless!

check out the video of his hunt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asTRXVevo3Y

Great video Ron, congratulation's to your son!!!

Hey Passthrough24, gonna get this post back on track, in my humble opinion, bears 2 and 4 are very young, bears 1 and 4 look to be better bears but very hard to judge without seeing more of them, where are you located, what's a "good bear" in your area weigh? any more recent pics?

Bears
 

Judging bears is like judging trophy mule deer with a gunny sack on their head!

As far as the bears in the post that opened this thread, the first shows some potential, but the rest you will wonder what you did after you experience the wonderful ground shrinkage of bears!

they all look small to me but it's hard to judge with nothing in the picture to reference to