Pennsylvania Game News - September 2015 - 40

County in 2011 by Robert Christian, of
East Stroudsburg - weighed in at 733
pounds.
And the No. 5 bear on the state's list -
the No. 13 Boone & Crockett bear -had
a skull that scored 22 12/16, and ranks as
the state's second-heaviest bear, as well, at
864 pounds. That bear was taken in Pike
County in 2003 by Douglas Kristiansen,
of Milford.
Northeastern Pennsylvania has produced nine of Pennsylvania's 10 heaviest
bears, and four of the top five bears with
the largest skulls.
Ternent identified two reasons northeastern Pennsylvania grows so many
heavy bears. One is abundantly available
food, which, in part, is supplemented by
foods associated with the high human
population in that part of the state. There's
a lot of thick, swampy habitat there, as
well. It can make for tough bear hunting,
but it bodes well for bears surviving long
enough to grow to massive weights.
Typically, Pennsylvania's bears take
about nine years to reach the 500-pound
mark, and only males grow that heavy,
Ternent said.
Scanning the rankings of top bears by
skull measurement, one might conclude
that Pennsylvania's bears are getting
bigger. There certainly has been an explosion of record-book entries.
In 1986, a Lycoming County bear
taken a few years earlier by John Whyne,
of Ashland, was called "the outstanding
trophy of the 1986 program." At 22 6/16
inches, the bear's skull left no doubt in
overtaking the previous leaders that had
tied at 21 12/16.
Today, Whyne's trophy is in a threeway tie for No. 22 all-time. And of the 21
bears that hold one of the top 19 positions
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on the all-time list, none was harvested
prior to 1991, and 12 were taken from
2000 forward.
Ternent said while the bear population
statewide has remained stable over several
consecutive years, it's grown considerably since Whyne's 1983 harvest. Just
look at the harvest totals. In 1980, there
were 921 bears taken. In recent years,
particularly as bear-hunting opportunities
have increased, the harvest has more than
quadrupled that. In 2011, a record 4,350
bears were taken.
So you'd expect a greater number of
large bears to turn up as part of the harvest,
Ternent said. There's no evidence more of
Pennsylvania's bears are growing larger
today compared to the past, he said.
And in each of the past two years, only
one bear bigger than Whyne's has been
added to the all-time list.
While every hunter might dream of
taking a record-book animal, few if any
hunt for that, and practically all of them
would tell you the deer, bears and elk
they might harvest are trophies regardless
their size.
Those record-book animals certainly
are special; often a rarity. That said, they
are out there, and they're taken every year.
The recently published 2015 Pennsylvania Big Game Records Book includes
123 new deer entries - up from 111 the
previous year - and 22 bears and 10 bull
elk have been added to the all-time lists.
So be ready. This hunting season holds
the opportunity for encounters with animals that have the right mix of age, nutrition and genetics. Some of them might be
all-time records. And if you're in the right
place at the right time, and you make good
on your shot, your name could be the next
one to top the state's list.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Pennsylvania Game News - September 2015