Bocajnala

Check station told me the age results for PA would be available around September. So that's possible.

-Jake

mrbb

Yeah I know how they age a tooth, I was just thinking that due to the bear being a record breaker at first and now sure of things, maybe they would have had the info also, or speed things up for it it not just being a basic bear , but a record book contender!
I gather more will be on this as time goes by and more media forums run stories on it!
so maybe the age will come to life yet,a s I know I would be curious to know how old it is!
have been about a lot of bears over the yrs both live and dead one's being weighted and teeth being pulled too!
and been lucky enough to watch many grow from a cub to very ,mature bears over 500+ lbs!

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.

mrbb

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!

grizzly 2

mrbb, interesting information. Not having hunted bears or even studied them, I was only guessing. I'd moved away long before they became established in Northern NJ.

mrbb

yeah bears are pretty interesting animals IMO
they live in many places folks wouldn;t think they are and turn up in many major cities all over where there at too, from NY City, to Philly and so on

and the record heaviest bear was from down south, where odds are it might NEVER den up, like black bears do else where
the # 2 heaviest bear is from PA< and just a few lbs shy of breaking the record, and bears in PA< den up for winter

just think how heavy they might get if they didn't den for a few months out of the yr and were able to eat all yr round??
as many BIG bears like these will loose a good 100-150+ lbs over a winter sleeping
if they just kept adding LB's yr round>> be some real fatties out there.
The Pa game commission might have to start an obesity program for them then LOL

But again, I do hope they do tell the age of this bear, I would be interested in knowing how old it was to get that BIG a skull, over just how heavy it was!

BOWHUNTERCOP

grizzly2 your old area of Vernon is loaded with bears.....back in the day the area was great for deer, but many hunters under NJ law have killed off the deer herd to the point of seeing a deer is great......friend of mine loves in Vernon he does't even bother to hunt deer in the area anymore.....he's been after the same bear for 4 years, not sure of the skull size but body wise it's bigger then this one