“It took about eight of us to get him within the truck”
Brad Jones kneels with the black bear close to the place it was killed; Jones with the bear outdoors the meat processor the place it was weighed. Courtesy Brad Jones
It was a decent timetable for Brad Jones to bowhunt for black bears on his buddy’s land close to the North Carolina coast on Saturday. Jones figured it was price it, although, since he knew a pair large boars had been frequenting the property in Beaufort County.
“My buddy Stuart Dudley had nighttime path digicam pictures of a pair large bears on his 200 acres, and he instructed me to go attempt to get one with my bow,” Jones tells Out of doors Life. “However he had some bear hunters with canines coming in [Dec. 16]. So if I wished to get one with my bow, I needed to get there first.”
Dudely had been baiting the realm with peanuts. Since many of the path cam pictures of the bears had been taken at evening, Jones arrange his lock-on stand roughly 500 yards away from the bait web site. He hoped one of many bears would move by on its strategy to or from its mattress within the close by swamp.
“I walked to my stand at the hours of darkness and waited for daylight,” says Jones, who lives in Greenville. “Earlier than daylight a bear got here via at the hours of darkness and handed by. However at 7 a.m. one other large bear got here down a path main again to the swamp. The wind was fairly good, and as he obtained nearer, he stepped behind some thick stuff. That’s once I drew my bow. He stepped into a gap lower than 20 yards away, broadside. I grunted like I do for deer. He stopped, and I launched my arrow.”
Jones knew he’d made a great hit behind the bear’s shoulder. He noticed the bear run right into a thick swamp, and whereas he by no means heard it fall, he says he heard the bear’s dying moan barely 30 seconds later.
![massive north carolina black bear 2](https://www.outdoorlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/massive_north_carolina_black_bear_2.jpg?w=1500)
Jones discovered the bear simply 50 yards away. The broadhead had handed utterly via the bear’s chest.
“In regards to the time I discovered the bear, the hunters with canines confirmed up, and so they all pitched in to assist load up my bear,” Jones says. “It took about eight of us to get him within the truck.”
Discovering a scale large enough to precisely weigh the bear was additionally a problem. Jones says they tried three completely different locations earlier than finding a scale that might deal with the huge boar. They lastly discovered one at a meat processor, and it registered 780 kilos.
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Jones has since notified North Carolina officers about his bear, and he’s been instructed it might be the heaviest bear ever taken within the state. Out of doors Life was unable to verify this element, but when the dimensions Jones used is correct, his bear far outweighs the 695-pound black bear that reportedly broke a weight record for western North Carolina in October 2022. It could additionally outweigh the present Pope and Young world-record black bear, which was killed in New Jersey and weighed 700 kilos.
“Some persons are saying it could be a world document bear, however that’s decided by measuring it’s cranium, which can take some time,” Jones explains. “Proper now, the bear is with a taxidermist, and after the cranium is cleaned will probably be dried for 60 days, after which measured by a Pope and Younger official. We’ll know then simply how large a bear it’s.”