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The Grizzly Book by Jack Samson - page 241 - The Big Skull by Grancel Fitz.
In the case of bears, it wasn't hard to find. The world's record grizzly skull is in the National Museum in Washington. The measurements of skulls give us the only accurate basis for comparison, and it is worth noting that this one was inaccurately reported for the last edition of the records. When the figures were found to vary from those on the same bear in earlier editions, the Washington authorities made a careful recheck. The length of that skull is 16 inches. The width is 9 and nine sixteenths. Combining these gives the record "score" of 25 and nine sixteenths. But far more important is the fact that this bear was shot near the Missouri River in Montana, away back in 1890, and it is highly significant that E.S. Cameron bagged him as early as the 4th of April. Since bears live for 40 years or more, unless somebody shoots them, and since they keep on getting bigger until they die, it is a fairly safe bet that this old monster was born in the great days of the bison, at least a century ago. With the passing of the bison and the settling of the plains, all this was changed. Those huge old buffalo-eaters turned to killing cattle, and were wiped out by the ranchers. The grizzlies that survived were in the high mountain country, where the heavy snows and lack of winter feed forced them to hibernate for as much as six or seven months of the year. If a bear can eat only half of his life, and has to sleep throughout the rest, it just doesn't make sense that he can never grow as big as one who is out and eating well for nine months, and hibernates for only three. 
Massive Brown bear fang.
 *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author
BEARS of the last frontier by Chris Morgan... At every turn there seems to be a bear and that's why we chose this part of Alaska ( peninsula ) as our first location. Although the same species ( Ursus arctos ) as their grizzly bear cousins dwelling inland and along the Arctic, these coastal brown bears differ in several ways. But it mostly comes down to size. A large male can weigh in at 1,500 pounds, double that of even a large grizzly. Quite logically, the size of a bear partly depends upon diet, and the enormous differential in coastal brown bears comes down to access to an abundance of calories in the form of salmon and the occasional wash-up whale carcass. On a good day, a bear on the Alaskan Peninsula can consume 25,000 calories - about the equivalent of ninety Snicker bars, or fifty personal-sized pizzas for a human.
http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news...ional-park
The Boss, one of the largest and best known grizzly bears in Banff National Park, is back. No. 122, an approximately 300-kilogram male bear, has left his den and was spotted by a local photographer travelling along the railway tracks near Muleshoe, an area along the Bow Valley Parkway, on Saturday. “This is really what we’d expect,” said Steve Michel, human/wildlife conflict specialist with Banff National Park. “We’ve been anticipating seeing bears in the first week of March. “That’s typically what we see or certainly what we have seen for the last several years with respect to the large male grizzly bears.” Last year, the same bear was spotted on March 19 when he was caught on a remote camera at a research site. In 2014, he was first seen by a train crew near the railway tracks on March 16. No. 122 is often the first bear out in Banff National Park, but he became famous a couple of years ago for eating a black bear and, more recently, for fathering at least five of the younger bears in the park. Michel said other males will also emerge shortly, followed by the females. A collared female grizzly, No. 148, was already “somewhat active” near her den site last week, he said.
"The Boss" is one of the largest ( not nessasarily the largest ) grizzly bears of Banff National Park of Canada. At roughly 660 pounds, he is one of the dominant male bears.
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Giant Grizzlies are right up there with giant bull elephants as the most impressive creatures on earth.
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/201...-far-east/
If you can get past the concept that all grizzlies are brown bears, but not all brown bears are grizzlies—a source of great confusion to some—there is an opportunity to learn about the most wide-ranging species of bear in the world, and one of the most wide-ranging mammals on Earth. Although “grizzly bear” is used interchangeably with “brown bear” up here in Alaska, “grizzly bear” really refers to any brown bear found in interior North America. Bears found within interior regions of Alaska and Canada as well as remnant interior populations in the western portion of the contiguous US are grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis). There are only about 1200 grizzly bears found in the lower 48. They primarily exist in designated Recovery Zones in Montana, Wyoming, Washington, and Idaho. Bears of other interior regions and sometime even coastal zones in Eurasia may be referred to as grizzlies, to add to the confusion. In contrast, there are approximately 32,000 brown bears living in Alaska. Some of Alaska’s islands like Admiralty Island in the Southeast part of the state and the Kodiak Archipelago off the southern coast of mainland Alaska are home to some of the densest populations of brown bears in the world. Kodiak is home to about 3400 brown bears of a particularly large subspecies. The the Kodiak brown bear (Ursus arctos middendorffi) is often touted as the largest terrestrial carnivore on the planet. Because of access to an abundance of fish Alaska’s coastal brown bears, similar to the Kodiak, can attain weights upwards of 1400 pounds. Here at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, we currently have Alaska coastal bears, a grizzly, and Kodiak brown bears, as well as two American black bears. Most of these are permanent residents at the facility.  *This image is copyright of its original author Kamchatka brown bear feeding on Pacific salmon (Nat Geo Archives)Just across the Bering Strait from Alaska lives another gigantic brown bear–the Kamchatka brown bear (Ursus arctos beringianus) or the Far Eastern brown bear. Considered to be the ancestor of the Kodiak, the Kamchatka brown bears are dark brown and the largest carnivorans in Eurasia. These are the bears that were featured in the PBS special Walking with Giants: The Grizzlies of Siberia. The film documents the work of Charlie Russel and Maureen Ebbs–two naturalists who sought to discover some insight into the lives of the bears of the famed Kamchatka Peninsula of Siberia. The black grizzly or Ussuri brown bear (Ursus arctos lasiotus) is another big bear occasionally attaining a size greater than the Kamchatka brown bear. These bears are found in the Amur and Ussuri River regions of the Russian Far East, northeastern China, the Korean Peninsula and Japan. In the Amur region these bears cross paths with Siberian (Aumr) tigers on rare occasions, primarily because there are so few Siberian tigers left in the world. Tiger attacks on bears have been reported when the bears were in hibernaculum as well while ambulatory. Supposedly, the brown bears are attacked with more frequency than the smaller Asiatic black bears because of habitat preference and an inability to climb trees. But these bears also attack the typically smaller tigers on occasion. The bears are more commonly known to track tigers, following the big cats’ foot prints to ungulate kills, where they ultimately force the cat off the carcass, taking possession of it. “Huang Di” which translates in Chinese to “King” is the name of the celebrity Ussuri brown bear (Manchurian brown bear) who calls the San Diego Zoo his home. Nicknamed “Blackie,” Huang Di is one of the largest and most beautiful bears I have ever seen. The black bear is a gentle giant, standing nearly 5 ft at the shoulders and weighing in at nearly 900 lbs. Today his enclosure sits adjacent to two young brother grizzlies. When I last visited Huang Di who was born at the Bejing Zoo in 1984 he lumbered over toward the large metal divider, that when closed, safely separated the younger bears from the big Ussuri brown bear in the adjacent bear grotto. Smell or sound of this gigantic boar in their proximity sent them scrambling to a distant hiding place on the other side of their enclosure. Click here for a photo of Huang Di (A.K.A. Blackie).
Huang Di also called Blackie
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 (03-11-2016, 08:15 PM)brotherbear Wrote: "The Boss" is one of the largest ( not nessasarily the largest ) grizzly bears of Banff National Park of Canada. At roughly 660 pounds, he is one of the dominant male bears. I was just at Banff a couple days ago, I really want to see this guy. i have failed miserably the last two years though...
I envy you Roflcopters, that you have been there. I wish you good luck if you make another attempt. Please keep a camera ready, and a can of bear spray.
Banff is just 8 hours away from my place so its not really a hassle getting there, I usually go there towards the end of April every year to search for bears that wake up from their hibernation. I have seen a female Grizzly from a 50 meter distance and a black wolf so far.
http://shaggygod.proboards.com/ - First posted by grraahh.
"A vegetative diet alone is not a sufficient stimulus to produce large size, as is illustrated by several successful taxa of small mammals. Small animals are more vulnerable to predation than are large ones so they need to remain adjacent to escape habitat such as holes in the ground, trees, or thick vegetation. To survive in open habitat, a mammal must be able to defend itself from predators or be fast enough to escape them. Consequently, as the body size of some bear species increased, they probably occupied more open habitat for longer periods, and were able to increase the proportion of vegetation in the diet. Their larger size also made them better able to defend themselves from predators. As the diet became progressively more vegetative, there would have been continuing pressure for body size to increase so enough vegetation could be ingested and processed to substitute for a high quality diet of animal material. Larger body size also made it possible to travel more in search of patchy food resources and to store and carry more fat with which to survive during periods of seasonal or unpredictable food shortage. With increased body size and well-developed canines, some bears were able to kill ungulates and other mammals, defend carrion from competitors, and protect themselves from other predators. Through this unique combination of being able to be predators, scavengers, and herbivores, they were able to exploit several food bases." "Small predators are restricted to small prey, so that one benefit of being large is that an animal can kill both small and large prey (Gittleman 1985). For example, brown bears are capable of taking advantage of relatively small animals such as ground squirrels and salmon in circumstances where their abundance makes such behavior energetically or nutritionally worthwhile (e.g., Stonorov and Stokes 1972, Murie 1981). Even so, the ratio between the size of the bear and its prey may be misleading since the predator's large size may be necessary to move heavy stones or earth to catch ground squirrels or to stay warm while standing in cold water for protracted periods while fishing for salmon. In the case of the more carnivorous bear species, their maximum size may have been influenced by the maximum size of generally available prey.
Cowboys, Mountain Men & Grizzly Bears by Matthew P. Mayo.
In his line of work as Yellowstone's superintendent ( 1877-1882 ), Philetus W. Norris routinely faced massive grizzlies. One unstoppable brute almost got the better of him. Norris held his pose, rifle to his shoulder, and touched the trigger one last time. It clicked on nothing. Slowly he pulled his face from the stock and let out the breath he'd been holding since the bear rose and charged. He stood from his kneeling position and finally lowered the rifle, but kept a firm grip on it. He knew the bear was dead, of course. It had to be - he'd pumped in more than a dozen regular shells and two exploding dynamite shells. But any creature that could rise again and again after being shot - in the shoulder, the lungs, and the spine - deserved nothing but caution. Later, Norris and one of his employees, Stephens, loaded up their pack animals with as much of the elk and bear as they could carry and trudged twenty miles back to their base at Mammoth Hot Springs, at the park's northern end. Two men spread the bear's hide flat and found it to measure nearly nine feet from snout tip to tail base, and six feet seven inches wide. "This has to be a record, Phil," said Stephens, measuring for a third time and shaking his head.
Post #155 shows me that the "caretakers" of Yellowstone in the 19th century were hunters rather than defenders of the wildlife there.
http://www.outdoorhub.com/stories/2014/1...n-hunters/
Polar bears, Kodiak bears, grizzly bears, black bears—hunters have taken some giants over the years. Ever wonder where the biggest bears come from? Here’s the lowdown on where the biggest bears are likely to be found. Some of the locations will surprise you. Bears are some of nature’s most fascinating creatures. I am sure there are many reasons why so many people have more than just a passing interest in them. Who hasn’t been lying in a tent at night when a strange noise suddenly brings the thought of a bear to the front of their consciousness? There are four species of bears in North America, and all of them have killed people; some more than others. That’s just one of the reasons why people get an adrenaline surge when they encounter one. Most bears, of course, won’t hurt you. But they could, and that’s enough. Black bears are the most common bear by far, and a tiny fraction of encounters with black bears have ended with an injury. Contrast that to the polar bear, most of which live out their entire lives without ever seeing a human. To a polar bear, anything that moves is potential food. Both subspecies of the brown bear, the Kodiak and grizzly, are dangerous creatures, though not so much as the polar bear. In some areas, these bears get really big—like as-big-as-a-Volkswagen big. That interests hunters who crave the difficulty of taking the premier specimens of any given species, and it interests those who just thing big bears are amazing creatures. We all seem to be fascinated by things that get really big. The biggest bears have some things going for them. First, they have to live in near-perfect habitat; second, they need to grow old enough to reach peak size; and third, to become a world-record size, they must hit the DNA lottery. They need the right genetic code to grow to outsized proportions. Let’s look at the biggest bears of all four species that have been shot by hunters or found and entered into the Boone and Crockett Records. We can learn some things about where the largest of each of these species can be found. Boone and Crockett scores bears by measuring the size of the skull, an accurate way of judging a bear’s size. Some bears may weigh more than others, but generally the bears with the biggest heads are the biggest bears. The score is simply the greatest length added to the widest portion measured in sixteenths of inches. Kodiak bear Kodiak bears (also known as Alaskan brown bears) are a subspecies of brown bear and are only found on the Kodiak Archipelago in Alaska. The biggest brown bears come from Kodiak Island itself. While bears are found on many islands off Alaska and the Alaskan peninsula, 17 of the top 25 Alaskan brown bears were taken from Kodiak. The world record was bagged by Roy Lindsley in 1952. Its score is 30 12/16. It’s the largest-scoring bear of any speices known. The skull is now owned by the Los Angeles County Museum. The largest specimens of brown bears commonly weigh more than half a ton, which is a predator that will make the knees of the most seasoned hunter shake.  *This image is copyright of its original author Larry Fitzgerald poses with the largest grizzly bear taken by a hunter. It was bagged in 2013 near the Totatlanika River, Alaska.
The second- and third-place bears were also taken on Kodiak. Erling Hansen took one in 1961 that scored 30 11/16 and Fred Henton took one in 1938 that scored 30 9/16. Henton’s bear was the world’s record until Lindsley’s harvest overtook it in 1952. The most recent bear in the top 25 was bagged by Thomas Stago in Uyak Bay, Alaska in 2012. Grizzly bear Grizzly bears are another subspecies of brown bear. But while Alaskan brown bears live on the coast, grizzlies live inland and over time have adapted to the the unique environments they live in. These adaptations have led to smaller bears. North American brown bears that aren’t shot in coastal areas are considered grizzlies, and their recorded sizes show it. Seventeen of the top 25 grizzlies were taken in, you guessed it, Alaska. Seven were taken in British Columbia and the remaining one was taken in the Yukon. The largest Grizzly bear skull on record was not taken by a hunter, but was found dead near Lone Mountain, Alaska by Gordon Scott in 1976. It scored 27 13/16. The largest taken by a hunter, a 27 6/16 giant, was shot by Larry Fitzgerald in 2013 on the Totatlanika River, Alaska. In third place is Rodney Debias’ 27 3/16 bear shot on the Unalakleet River Alaska in 2009. Big grizzly bears are being shot every year in Alaska and British Columbia, and a new world’s record could show up at any time. Black bear Black bear hunting is popular across the United States and Canada. About half of US states offer black bear hunting, and with an expanding population nationwide, five states have added bear hunting seasons in the last decade. There are more to come. Alaska ranks high in producing giant black bears as well, led by the islands in the Pacific Ocean just off the state’s southeastern coast, but the most consistent producer of giant black bears is not what you would think. Twelve of the top 25 black bears in the record book came from Pennsylvania. Wisconsin comes in second. As stated earlier, a big bear is the result of two main aspects: excellent habitat and age. Both states have a mix of farm crops and big woods that create ideal bear habitat. Wisconsin and Pennsylvania take a very different approach to their bear hunting, but these approaches seem to lead to the same end. Wisconsin issues a very limited number of bear tags to hunters. It can take a decade to draw a tag in Wisconsin, but the success rates for those with tags is fairly high because both hounds and baiting are allowed. Contrast that to Pennsylvania, which issues tags for anyone that wants one for a small fee. But because the most successful methods of hunting bears (hounds and baits) are not allowed, most bears in the state are shot incidentally by deer hunters. To some degree, bears are shot when large groups of hunters get together and make large drives through blocks of timber. The success rate normally runs around two percent for bear hunters in Pennsylvania. Despite all this, the largest black bear skull on record came from a dead bear found in Sanpete County, Utah in 1975. That animal scored 23 10/16. The largest bear killed by a hunter was shot by Robert Christian in Monroe County, Pennsylvania in 2011; it scored 23 9/16. The second-largest found dead was discovered in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania and given to the state Game Commission in 1987. It scored 23 7/16. Polar bear The polar bear is the largest land carnivore in the world. A lot of bears have a nasty reputation, but polar bears back it up. More people have been killed and eaten by polar bears than by all other bears combined. The opportunity to hunt a huge polar bear has been turned upside down in the past couple decades. That’s not to say that you can’t shoot a huge polar bear because all adult polar bears are huge by bear standards, but the areas that produce the biggest ones are off-limits except to indigenous Alaskans. All of the top 25 white bears and more than 90 percent of all Boone and Crockett record book bears have been shot out of coastal Alaska. Most of them have been shot out of Kotzebue, with the Diomede Islands area a distant second place. Only indigenous natives are allowed to hunt these bears. It stands to reason that subsistence hunters are not looking for bears with big skulls, and if they shot one of record-book size, the odds that it would be entered would be low. All of the top 50 in the record book were taken before 1968. The world record, taken by Shelby Longoria, was taken off the coast of Kotzebue in 1963. It scored 29 15/16. Will there ever be a 30-inch polar bear entered in the record books? Not in the foreseeable future There are, however, opportunities to hunt smaller polar bears. In fact, the polar bear population has expanded in the past decade across its range. Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut offer excellent bear hunting, but they rarely reach the Boone and Crockett minimum of 27 inches. There is a catch in this scenario, too: non-Canadian residents are not allowed to take their bears across the border into the United States or any other country. You can hunt a polar bear and take photos (and even have it mounted), but you can’t bring it home. That’s a significant roadblock to many people who have an interest in hunting this bear, which can only be taken in the most harsh and unforgiving conditions imaginable. There has been significant effort by several parties and organizations to change this odd situation. Time will tell if it ever changes. In the meantime, there are a lot of bears in storage and on display at sporting goods stores, airports, and museums that may someday be allowed out of the country so they can go home to the hunters who bagged them. |
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