Pennsylvania Game News - February 2018 - 20

THE OLDEST BEAR
IN PENNSYLVANIA

20

Females

Average Age

In November 2011, a homeowner in Kidder
Township, Carbon County, called the Game
Commission to report an injured bear. The
bear was in the yard and unable to walk. A
game warden responded and the struggling
bear was put down.
Upon inspection, the field officer discovered a tag in the bear's right ear that revealed
it was first handled in 1982 in the same general
area. It was a female bear, and she was 6 years
old back then, based on cementum annuli
analysis of a tooth.
While it's often impossible to accurately
age a very old bear by examining the teeth,
because the rings are so close together, the
tagging record showed this bear was born in
January 1976. She was only eight weeks shy
of turning 36 when she died. This is Pennsylvania's oldest-known bear.
Her eyes were cloudy with cataracts, and
the hair on her paws had grayed and grown
long over the claws, which also had started
to curve back under her toes. Her teeth were
nearly worn flat, but she was in relatively good
condition with an estimated weight over 200
pounds. There was no obvious trauma, so the
paralysis was due to some other muscular or
neurologic condition, presumably related to
her age.
In the 30 years following her first capture,
she was handled only one more time: in September 1992, when she was caught in a trap
set for research tagging.
Otherwise, she had avoided being hit by
a vehicle, shot by a hunter, or recaptured as
a problem bear in a region where all three
outcomes are common.
Even more amazing is what she lived
through. In 1976, Pennsylvania had fewer
than 4,000 bears and concern for overharvest
led to a complete closure of the bear season
in 1977 and 1978; 1979 was not much better
with only a single day of bear hunting held in
mid-December.
Numbers were declining and we were
unsure what the future held for Pennsylvania's
bears. But over the next 3 1/2 decades, due to
a combination of management decisions and
exceptional reproductive output, Pennsylvania's bear population more than quadrupled,
reoccupying nearly every county in the state.
All in the span of this incredible bear's lifetime.

4

WMU 3D

Males

2
2004

2006

2008

2010

Population reconstruction estimates
the number of individuals in an age group
by summing all the individuals recovered
from that group in subsequent years.
For example, the number of 3-year-old
male bears alive in 2014 can be estimated
by adding together the number of 4-yearolds killed in 2015, 5-year-olds in 2016,
and 6-year-olds in 2017.
But to do that, you first must age all
dead bears handled over those three years
to determine which ones were indeed 5,
6, or 7 years old. That's where mandatory
check stations come in.
Bears have few mortality causes that
are not related to man; hunting and vehicle
collisions are the top two in Pennsylvania.
Through mandatory check stations and
by regularly examining other dead bears,
we eventually see most of the bears in a
local population.
It might take years. Still, with enough
years, population reconstruction can
accurately depict population size and age
composition, which can then be monitored for trend across time.

TAGGED BEARS
In Pennsylvania, we annually estimate
bear abundance in the 15 WMUs that
make up our core bear range.
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2018

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