The other day, I was driving in western Wisconsin and saw a very large black bear. This surprised me greatly, but I knew that there had been many sightings in the area. After further thought, I realized that I did not know whether this was a large bear or not. This lead me to the question of: How do you score a black bear? Also, has anyone else seen a Blackbear lately in or near Wisconsin? Share your story here!!!
Out of hybernation I take it?
Its often very hard to accurately field judge a black bear’s size without a known size comparison nearby (ex barrel, baitpile logs, etc)
As far as official scoring goes, its skull width + skull length. WI record is just shy of 23 inches I believe. The one I shot last year in WI was a 200 lb boar and was 16″ plus change.
Mike
Agreed, it is very difficult for the average hunter to judge the size of a Bear without a “known” sized object relatively close, to judge against. 
Actually a friend of mine thinks its difficult for even an experienced person in the field or especially on a still cam photo. They use short movies to try to judge the animals they are seeing and many times he is still apt to say “its a nice one, but I just don’t know”. It seemed like the one I helped drag out last fall was much smaller than the 400# bear they were claiming, I was skeptical of the sow’s size, but it weighed out to be a very respectable weight (340 dressed), even though it was barely 60″ long.
Mark
I would agree.. I “thought” the one I shot last fall was H U G E …. one thing to consider… when a Bear is alive and walking, their coat is “out”, for lack of a better term. When they hit the ground, the hair lays against them more…. this definitely makes a live bear look bigger.
Maybe it was bigfoot? 
Bear are tough witout a standard of meusure to put them against. I use bait logs a certian length and put a marker on a tree X inches off the ground to try and help judge trail cam photos and it is still a guessing game. Such as these bear. Guess the weights of these four bear, they where harvested so I know the weights for sure…it will throw ya.
Jonny:
This will be kind of fun…
#1 400+
#2 200
#3 250
#4 300
We’ll see how bad my eye is…
Mark
1 = 290
2 = 210
3 = 230
4 = 250
1&4 is the same bear, a nice coco momma that was dry. She barely made 175lbs dressed out and 2&3 is the same bear that was a OLD pure black that not only came in 300lbs + but will also score Pope and Young. Here is the after shots.
Here is what got ya. In 1&4 that spruce centered in the shot is only about 7″ around. The stomach sag you see is common with dry sows or many sows in general. When she was up and facing away we got a great shot with her back arched and shoulders up, plus the sunshine always make them look bigger.
2&3 the cedar tree on the bait is about 22″ at the base. The boar is laying down on his side in pic and streched out and curled in the other shot making him look shorter and lean.
If you really want a surprise Big bear correct?
Ground shrinkage
Good posts Johnny P! Thanks for sharing.
That was severe ground shrinkage! 
Was the hunter disappointed?
Just goes to show….. hard to judge 
I don’t think anything can be substituted, for actual stand time and lots of practice judging. As shown, pictures can be very deceiving 
My first Bear I seen on stand, was coming down a big hill, I thought “here we go” I could have shot it at about 35 yards, when it was directly level with me in my stand, coming down the hill, but waited, for it to come into the bait. I am glad I did, as I would now guess its weight less than 100 lbs…
big G 
Quote:
That was severe ground shrinkage!
No he was happy as heck as that put his group of hunters at 100% succes. That old boy had one heck of a time getting busted and winded etc etc; it was his last night to hunt so he was pleased. As for the smaller coco that huter was also very satsified as all he wanted was a strong color phase to go with his pure black mounts at home, and he got it.
I will even tell a story about myself and misjudging.
Two years ago I had a HUGE boar coming into a bait that was beyond smart. He busted every guy I put on him. So after everyone went home for the year I figure I would fill my tag. It would be easy; the boar came in at 6:30 like clockwork every night. He would circle the bait to check for hunters before coming in from the north although he would not get his feet wet in a long skinny marsh heading off to the south. I wait for three days for a north wind and sneak in with my portable stand. When I say sneak I mean one step every twenty seconds for an hour through the water of the marsh; no way he is going to wind me or pick up my trail with my super smelly cover scent and the fact he hates wet feet.
I get up the tree and settled in before I wait for 6:30. Sure enough at 6:20 here comes a bear from the west lumbering along. Wrong direction but right on time! The bear breaks the fifty yard mark in the tall grass and I take a quick look and assure myself “yup that’s him” and I touch off the muzzleloader before I am noticed. The bear flips around and runs directly towards me and tips over at the base of my tree. I look down and question the size of this animal…nah has to be bigger. I get down and sure enough it is maybe a 250 and it’s a dry sow? Man it looked bigger on camera. I gut the bear and head home to get the Otter sled to drag it out. Well by time I went home, got the sled, found some help and got back out to the kill site a solid two hours had passed. We load the bear and on the way out I grab the trail camera and load it with everything else as I put that bait site to bed for the year. I shot a small bear and misjudged trail cam pics, it took awhile to accept but I did accept it until…I cleared the photos on the trail cam a week later.
As the photos revealed I walked out past the camera to get the sled, a big bear hits the bait then I walked back past the camera with the sled…hey wait! I killed that bear, how is it on the bait? Sure enough the HUGE boar waited for me to walk out before he hit the bait, I had shot the wrong bear. I was so very wrong in taking for granted this bear comes at 6:30 and the one that came in at 6:20 had to be the right bear I never truly sized up my target and it cost me a trophy boar. After later talking with another hunter I found out another bait about a 1/3 mile up the draw had this dry sow hitting it until the night I shot it. My super smelly secret scent was enough to invoke her curiosity and she just happened to come investigate it at 6:30 ish.
Moral of the story, never trust the camera or assume anything but your own eyes at the time of the shot and even then have some form of measure ready to compare a boar against.
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