Another day, a couple more Wisconsin black bear

[Feanor]

We have the nations(lower-forty eight unofficial)largest population of black bear, IMO its also the strongest genetically. Anyhoo, we have by some estimates in excess of 40,000 black bear roaming Wisconsin, and two thirds of them are up here, in the Indianhead region(Northwest)!

As I'm in the field every day, I see a lot of them, its not uncommon to run into three to five different bears each week. Today I bumped into two, one litte yearling, and "well" I'll just let the pictures do the talking. I apologize for the photos of the big guy, he was moving at about mach II by the time I brought a camera into action. I first saw him at a distance of 12-15 yards, by the time I was snapping images he was a good 250 yards out in the farmers field! Images were captured at about 5FPS.

I can tell you, at fifteen yards, looking directly at me, he was one of the biggest black bear I've ever run across, and one of the very biggest bears period, since my days living in the Goldstream Valley outside of Fairbanks AK. The images do no justice to his size!

 

[Texan Scott]

beautiful... and very typical behavior for these fellas. another reason i usually look askance at "He was headed right for us!" shootings.

 

[Feanor]

This ends up being the best shot of his head, too damn bad I didn't have that camera in hand when I first came up on him, he had offered a perfect profile, his head squared up, looking directly at me from no more then fifteen yards, his head and neck were spectacular.

I'm comfortablly certain that if he gets harvested this autumn, it'll be news worthy.

 

[bikerdoc]

Beautiful creature, thanks for sharing.

 

[HB]

How can you go outside with that many bears!? Surely you carry at least a shotgun with slugs everywhere. What gun for backup???

Jokes aside, cool pics of cool animals. Sometimes its a lot more interesting to shoot wildlife with a camera.

HB

 

[T Bran]

These days I too have shot more than my fair share with a gun and am toting a camera more and more in the field.
I still cull a few of the injured or sickly critters and a few hogs for the pot but I get a lot of pleasure out of just watching.
My place has quite a few bears as well as it is the area that nuisance bears are released by the state. Have never had a problem with them aside from a bit of vandalism around camp. Oh and tripod feeders are worthless in bear country lol gotta hang them at least 10' up on cable.
T