I don;'t think he will go 500 lbs right now, can for sure break 500 by winter time, pending where he's at and what food he has access too

Right now he's got lots of blueberries to eat. And all the bear crap in our area has cherry pits now. We have beech tree. Acorns are a few miles away....but bears have no problem roaming. This picture was taken in a clearing in an over grown clear cut.

the average bears needs 20,000 calories a day to build up enough fat for winters
so thats a TON of berries and browse like foods

when I mean GOOD access to foods, I tend to think of if they live near good AG,(corn, beans fields) where they and gorge themselves silly and bulk up FASTER than they can in a forest like setting
this is a big reason PA< bears get so fat at such younger age;'s than most places
easy meals without much out put

when they live in the wild's many times they they burn a lot of the calories they intake, looking for more food, its way harder for them to get fat this way!
not impossible, just not as easy as farm land bears
or rural bears that get a lot of free handout's from people that feed them(very common here in many places bears live near people)

a BIG bear in a farm area can put on 200 lbs from spring to fall
a big reason many farmer dis like them so much, they can do massive amounts of crop damage
my one 50 acre corn field at one farm, on average gets about 4-5 acres of crop damage every time I plant corn there from bears, then add in deer and crows and?/
and I loose about 7+ acres a yr there to critters
some yrs a LOT more
its in a pretty deer/bear rich area

This bear was in the same area last year. Woods bear.

Yeah, there are flaws in the farm country bears v woods bears theory. The Pocono Mt area which certainly is not farm country produces some of the biggest black bears in the country, the in excess of 800 lbs bear that is now on Display at the Hamburg Cabelas store was killed in Lycoming county. Is it easier for a bear to find a free meal around a farm, sure once the crops are producing grain, however before that they eat what the wild land provides and the fact that they will eat pretty much anything, plant or animal gives them the opportunity to put on fat. Just like deer, age is a huge factor in very large bears, they must live long enough to get very large. There have been studies done and the biologists believe there is something in the genetic make up of PA bears that allows them to get so large with age and also allows them to be more prolific than most black bears, triplet cubs are not uncommon in PA.

We are in Sullivan County, one county over from Lycoming.

Also known as a high number bear kill county.

Man you got some big mothers in your neck of the woods!

a lot of back yard feeders sin the pocono's LOL
MOST of the BIG bears in the pocono's tend to be much older males
where in farm land you can get younger males just as heavy
that's why I said, a bear where it lives has a lot to do with HOW fast it can bulk up or not
but big bears are all over PA!

I hunted about the Promise land , PA< area for many many yrs,(80's and 90's) with a great group of guys, we averaged 4-5 bears a yr up there, out of our group,, they have some wild swamps up that way, its mostly all doing drives how ever to get them moving!

Also hunted a bunch on Sullivan co,
know a nice group of guy in Lycoming CO. they ran a local bar there, that did very well yr after yr on getting a bunch of bears every yr!

they also were big drivers of bears, to get as many as they did yr after yr

lots of bears honestly all over PA anymore, a very successful animal in the state, and the state did some awesome studies, they gave Gary Alt, a lot of wiggle room to get all the info he did over his yrs with the game dept
and he's a heck of a great guy to boot!