From remote Alaska...Hi from Robert

[naturerules1]

Well that is a nice critter to wake up next to....

It will make for a nice carpet in front of the fireplace!

What did it square out at?

You know what...I am not sure. I really do not know how to measure
The taxidermist will be charging by the foot so I will find out then. I kind of measured it's length on the ground, 8 1/2 ft nose to tip of tail. When I skinned it and fleshed it I think it grew to 9 ft square if not alittle larger. I was told each inch across the front paw = 1 ft sq.?? I can not wait to get it back. I got the skull getting cleaned too and I may try the rug making myself. The boss here says to just get it tanned first to see how it turns out. It had some goo, almost like gear lube on it's head so that may be a good idea.
I can not wait to get that fireplace of my own too. That is why I came here to Alaska but it takes time and $. Running out of both
Robert

 

[fogtender]

You know what...I am not sure. I really do not know how to measure
The taxidermist will be charging by the foot so I will find out then. I kind of measured it's length on the ground, 8 1/2 ft nose to tip of tail. When I skinned it and fleshed it I think it grew to 9 ft square if not alittle larger. I was told each inch across the front paw = 1 ft sq.?? I can not wait to get it back. I got the skull getting cleaned too and I may try the rug making myself. The boss here says to just get it tanned first to see how it turns out. It had some goo, almost like gear lube on it's head so that may be a good idea.
I can not wait to get that fireplace of my own too. That is why I came here to Alaska but it takes time and $. Running out of both
Robert

They seem to get quite a bit smaller once they are tanned. Had a Black bear that lost a foot or more... Seems that the guy that was making it into a rug for me cut a wide swath out of the back for later resale.... He said it "Srunk", but the stitches seem to bear out my view of the missing fur... He packed up and left town, seems there was a bunch of cases for the same thing pending in court before I could get in line....

 

[naturerules1]

They seem to get quite a bit smaller once they are tanned. Had a Black bear that lost a foot or more... Seems that the guy that was making it into a rug for me cut a wide swath out of the back for later resale.... He said it "Srunk", but the stitches seem to bear out my view of the missing fur... He packed up and left town, seems there was a bunch of cases for the same thing pending in court before I could get in line....

Sounds like a story told me from (Larry of Ruby, AK). He said a taxidermist took his brown bear hide to the lower 48 and was being sued by many.
So when you square a bear hide, how is it measured? After skinning and fleshing. You just square the hide flat on the ground and measure the body part side to side and end to end? Hope I do not sound too stupid!
Robert

 

[fogtender]

Sounds like a story told me from (Larry of Ruby, AK). He said a taxidermist took his brown bear hide to the lower 48 and was being sued by many.
So when you square a bear hide, how is it measured? After skinning and fleshing. You just square the hide flat on the ground and measure the body part side to side and end to end? Hope I do not sound too stupid!
Robert

Here is some stuff to help out... By the way, Dennis Harms was my shop teacher a long time ago in HS and was/is a guide during the summer... geeze he has to be really old now...

http://www.larryrivers.com/brownbearsize.htm

http://www.sportscomet.com/Hunting/179370.htm

http://www.wildlife.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=kodiak_bear.kodiakfaqs

I was thinking your bear looked to be about 7 1/2' or a bit bigger by the photos. The paws weren't all that big as for a 9 footer and such. If the bear was starving, then that makes them look a lot smaller too for a fall bear. Must have been chased off the salmon streams by the bigger bears...

Oh, and for what it is worth, a Brown Bear is a bear that is within 60 miles of the Coast, when he goes inland past the 60 mile mark, he becomes a Grizzly by deffinition... Interior bears are smaller (not always) normally because they don't get the same foods as the Coastal bears do with the high fat content of fish and such.

 

[naturerules1]

I was thinking your bear looked to be about 7 1/2' or a bit bigger by the photos. The paws weren't all that big as for a 9 footer and such. If the bear was starving, then that makes them look a lot smaller too for a fall bear. Must have been chased off the salmon streams by the bigger bears...

Oh, and for what it is worth, a Brown Bear is a bear that is within 60 miles of the Coast, when he goes inland past the 60 mile mark, he becomes a Grizzly by deffinition... Interior bears are smaller (not always) normally because they don't get the same foods as the Coastal bears do with the high fat content of fish and such.

fogtender,
Thanks for the information. It is very good!

"So, how do we measure our bears. Skin 'um, flesh 'um, split the hide clear up to 1" from the chin. Lay them on the ground. Pull on ONE PAW until the other paw moves, let go and measure from claw tip to claw tip. Pull on the nose until the tail moves, let go and measure tip of the nose, to tip of the tail. (or tip of the hair on the tail if I think Clark is watching over my shoulder. "Hell Larry, the hair is part of the bear!" Ok, I always measure to the tip of the hair ... go away Clark. Now add those two numbers together, and divide by two. Presto, the square of the bear."
from: http://www.larryrivers.com/brownbearsize.htm

I did not have much space to spread the bear hide out but I would imagine that the bear is 7 1/2...8 1/2 ft. I see where a bear loses size when tanned.

As far as the definitions of brown/grizzly bear (which the hunting regs. use's "brown bear" for both) I was under the impression that if the bear used salmon as a primary diet it would be a brown bear. Meaning if it got it's main food source from a river with salmon it would be a brown bear. Except black bears and barren ground "grizzly bears" (usually with silver tips on its fur) that roamed in. Being 60 miles from the coast would more define it as a "coastal brown bear" and it would still be a costal brown bear if it roamed out of it's 60 mile limit for a bit. I imagine that a bear that lived on the coast with fresher salmon would be bigger than an inland brown bear that got it's salmon from a river with more spent salmon. "Interior grizzlies" would not have the nutrients that a brown bear would and would not get as big.
I was told by a Fish and Game officer that the grizzlies and brown bears overlap in this area but the lodge calls everything "GRIZZLIES" for the clients. Boone and Crocket just draws a line and everything north of it is a grizzly. I find alot of diferent definitions from many people. But I go with the food source/growth rate as a defineing factor. Around here I see a definate diference in the bears that come around. Some small and with small heads and some large with large heads. Young bears seem to have the big head thing going on in both types.
Then there is the Kodiak brown bear.
And least we forget the bears which are in Canada, lower 48, Russia...Wow... it does get complicated!
Just my opinion.
Robert

http://www.adfg.state.ak.us/pubs/notebook/biggame/brnbear.php

http://www.alaskan-adventures.com/alaska-brown-bear.htm

http://www.boone-crockett.org/bgRecords/records_boundaries.asp?area=bgRecords

 

[fogtender]

I was told by a Fish and Game officer that the grizzlies and brown bears overlap in this area but the lodge calls everything "GRIZZLIES" for the clients. Boone and Crocket just draws a line and everything north of it is a grizzly. I find alot of diferent definitions from many people. But I go with the food source/growth rate as a defineing factor. Around here I see a definate diference in the bears that come around. Some small and with small heads and some large with large heads. Young bears seem to have the big head thing going on in both types.
Then there is the Kodiak brown bear.

Well the sixty mile of the Coast has always been a rule of thumb for where you are at. When I was younger, that was the accepted rule, I guess I am getting Old...

In Katmai National Park, the Bears swim between the Shelikoff Straight to Kodiak and the Park on the mainland. When I was in the Coast Guard, we pulled up to some bears in the middle of the water and they were just cruising along with the 60 miles trek as if it was a walk in the park...

The Bears in Katmai National Park is where Timothy Treadwell got himself and his girlfriend eaten. They rival any of the bears on Kodiak, but nobody hunts them dispite what Treadwell use to spout out that he was protecting them... Since nobody hunts them, there is no "Record" bears listed from the Mainland directly accross from Kodiak, although the Dillingham area has had some monsters taken as well as Hitchenbrook Island in the Prince William Sound of the EXXON Valdez fame that match anything from Kodiak Island.

Here North of Mt. McKinley Park, where my cabin is located just a few miles from the Toklat River, is some of the largest bears in the Interior and they match the size of many of the Coastal Bears. They have some heavy salmon runs and since there is open water into the winter and late runs, they eat pretty well and get larger that many.

A friend of mine took an almost ten footer Grizzly a number of years back just off the Kantishna River where the Toklat dumps into it.

Here is a story (true version) of a 10 and a half foot Brown Bear shot at Hitchenbrook Island that made the rounds as a monster bear that killed a bunch of people and took a lot of shots to kill it... It didn't..

http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/bearhunt.asp

http://www.forumsforums.com/3_9/#photo

 

[naturerules1]

Here is a story (true version) of a 10 and a half foot Brown Bear shot at Hitchenbrook Island that made the rounds as a monster bear that killed a bunch of people and took a lot of shots to kill it... It didn't..

http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/bearhunt.asp

fogtender,
Thanks for the story ...funny how bear stories get manipulated. That was a pretty gruesome pic there!

Bears scare the hell out of me. After seeing a video once of a bear attacking a moose calf (I actually seen a bear go after a moose calf but they went out of sight, then no more calf),That did not bother me as much as the video!...I just do not trust any feeling that bears are content. I get to see a few here, usually they are just moseying around and do not seem a threat but still they have my utmost respect.
Although they explain how the story had been altered by people...it adds to my fear!!!

I Love iT!
Robert

 

[fogtender]

fogtender,
Thanks for the story ...funny how bear stories get manipulated. That was a pretty gruesome pic there!

Bears scare the hell out of me. After seeing a video once of a bear attacking a moose calf (I actually seen a bear go after a moose calf but they went out of sight, then no more calf),That did not bother me as much as the video!...I just do not trust any feeling that bears are content. I get to see a few here, usually they are just moseying around and do not seem a threat but still they have my utmost respect.
Although they explain how the story had been altered by people...it adds to my fear!!!

I Love iT!
Robert

I have been around bears all my life, and I am not afraid of them in the sense of "Scared" but when I know they are about I do feel uneasy and don't really get into it is whatever I am doing. Pretty hard when you got one eye rolling along the yard or treeline and the other at the job at hand.
But I respect them alot.

This last summer we had to deal with the Polar Bears where I was at up on the Slope. Seems nobody got the memo to them they were endangered due to the "Sea Ice" Melting (although we had to shut down almost a month early due to early ice over last year). They swam back and forth over 60 miles of open ocean just to snack on a few Caribou then head back out. We had new bears wandering down the beach and had to shut down our boating operations until they left.

Anyway, where you are at, you won't see much of the critters until spring. Once in a while, one will get up and wander around, but they go back to bed after a few hours or days...

 

[roughwoods]

Robert nice bear! I lived on the Kantishna River for 16 years and had a fish camp at the mouth of the Toklat river.There are some real big bears around the area,one we named Nasty Lips and he liked to come into camp at night and eat the fresh fish we had split and hung up to dry. In the morning when we would get up the camp would be all rearranged,camp chairs, tore up, stuff all threw around. The GROUND would be PAWED and the BUSHES would be BIT and everything would be covered with GRIZZLY SHIT !!!! Hard critters to live around, I don't think he ever did really get used to me.

 

[cowgirl]

Polar Bear Attack. Gross Photos!!!!

Polar Bear Attack in the High Arctic


This is from up in the Yukon, this chap is lucky to be alive. The guy
survived the bear attack. The bear jumped on him while he was sleeping in
his tent and he managed to get it off of him and shoot it .

One tough camper!

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[NATO123]

Nice to meet you.I am from Sri Lanka.mohter of 2 children.Happily married.Seek friends all over the world to share knowledge.
Hope you will reply me.
Bye Hema

 

[naturerules1]

Polar Bear Attack. Gross Photos!!!!

Polar Bear Attack in the High Arctic


This is from up in the Yukon, this chap is lucky to be alive. The guy
survived the bear attack. The bear jumped on him while he was sleeping in
his tent and he managed to get it off of him and shoot it .

One tough camper!

***********************************************************************************

I tryed and tryed but I was not able to see the pics....
My computer is goofing up....