576-pound black bear among largest in Wisconsin

Post date: Oct 17, 2016 6:02:23 PM

Outdoornews

October 13, 2016 by Dean Bortz

Grantsburg, Wis. — Even as Ricky Danielson and his fellow hunters on Sept. 24 dragged a 576-pound bear 600 yards to some machinery, Wisconsin bear hunters were closing in the DNR’s 2016 bear harvest goal of 4,750 animals.

On Sept. 29, the DNR had a preliminary count of 3,817 registered bears, according to Dave MacFarland, of Rhinelander, the DNR’s bear ecologist.

On that same date, the DNR also reported that wolves had killed a record 37 dogs so far this year, with seven more dogs injured.

576-pound bear

Danielson, of Grantsburg, has been bear hunting since age 10 or 11. Friends of his family, got him started bear hunting with hounds and he’s been hunting bears ever since.

Danielson has drawn three harvest tags over the years. This third tag went on the 576-pounder (field dressed) that he shot in Zone D in Burnett County. The bear was weighed at the Burnett Area Co-op in Grantsburg. He hunts with the Crex Meadows Bear Hunters group that is headed up by Jerry Burton. The group includes many of Burton’s family members and friends.

The big bear never showed up on a trail camera, but group members saw its tracks at several bait sites.

That day the group had four other hunters with kill tags.

“I just was the lucky one in the right spot at the right time,” said Danielson about a long day of bear hunting that began about 7:15 a.m. and ended about 4:30 p.m. when he shot the bear.

The big boar never treed and never stopped walking. The group started the track with three dogs. The track headed into a big swamp that Danielson said is about three miles by five miles. There are no roads through the swamp. Danielson said the closest the bear came to any road was .6 of a mile – and that’s where he shot it.

Throughout the day, any of the five hunters with kill tags tried closing on the bear in wet, nasty cover.

“It’s a bad swamp. I was up to my waist in mud and water most of the hunt,” he said. “He just stayed in the middle of the swamp and hopped from island to island.”

The dogs bayed up the bear a number of times throughout the day on those swamp islands. Each time, a tag-bearing hunter tried wading in close enough for a clear shot.

“The first time he stopped I got about 100 yards, but the bear caught my wind. We started pushing it north. Then another couple of hunters came in and got to a bay up, but the bear busted out again,” he said.

Later in the day, Danielson was circling around the swamp on the west side when the bear bayed up again about 400 yards away. That time Danielson got to within 10 yards of the bear.

“It was too thick, but saw it was a big bear. Then it picked up its head, and I was able to shoot it in the chest,” Danielson said.

Danielson used a .45/70 Marlin lever action rifle loaded with Remington 300-grain Core-Lokt bullets.

That bear was the group’s eighth bear of the season, and the biggest bear so far. Next biggest was a 462-pounder (live weight) that field dressed at 412 pounds. “I passed that one up in a tree a week prior. I knew we had a bigger bear around,” he said.

Group members joined forces to drag the bear about 600 yards across state land to the edge of private land where farmers let them borrow a John Deere Gator to ferry the bear out of the woods and onto the trucks.

This is Danielson’s second bear. He didn’t fill his first tag; on the second tag he shot a boar that dressed at 315 pounds. That bear was also shot on ground.

The dogs included two Plotts, a redbone and three Walkers. Once the first three dogs started the track, two dogs were added. When one dog tired and left the run, they added two more dogs.

Bear tally

MacFarland expects the Sept. 29 preliminary harvest of 3,817 bears to continue climbing through the seasons. The bait season closed Oct. 4 in zones A, B and D. The seasons close Oct. in Zone C and for hound hunters in the remaining zones.

“We are about where we’d expect to be at this point,” he said.

The state’s record bear kill was set in 2010 with 5,133 animals. In 2012, hunters registered 4,646 bears. The 2015 kill was 4,198.

MacFarland said hunters who shot bears last year will begin getting postcards on ages (from last year’s tooth samples) in early December.

MacFarland said Wisconsin bears have reached age 30, but most are much younger. Females have averaged 4.6 years; the males around 3 years old.

“Most bears will be less than 12 years old, there will be a handful in the upper teens and a couple in their 20s. Once or twice in the last 40 years we have had a bear older than 30 years,” he said, adding that the long term average age for both sexes has been pretty stable.

He said a bear that had been collared every year since it was first collared in 1984 in northwestern Minnesota finally died a year or so ago. It was more than 30 years old when it died.

Dogs killed

As of Oct. 4, 40 dogs have been verified as being killed by wolves, with another seven dogs injured.

MacFarland said that number sets an annual record with 21⁄2 months still left in the year.

Those are losses that have been verified by USDA Wildlife Services staff. Other dogs might have been killed by wolves, but those deaths couldn’t be confirmed by Wildlife Services based on the evidence left at the scene by the time the dog was found and Wildlife Services arrived.

The previous high was 23 verified dog deaths in 2013, with 20 in 2014 and 22 in 2015.

Why the increase this year?

“It’s hard to say – anything is speculation. There are more wolves on landscape. We could have more hound hunters on landscape. Hopefully that number will be lower next year,” said MacFarland.

Some have suggested that doing away with the Class B pursuit tag in July 2015 is bringing more nonresident hound hunters to Wisconsin this year, so MacFarland could be correct in suggesting there are more hounds in the woods this year.

“There is no way of knowing since there is no license requirement. The only thing we can track is number of dogs killed that are owned by residents or non-residents,” he said.

Through Sept. 29, seven of the 37 dogs that had been killed to that point were owned by non-residents.

In 2015, one dog owned by a non-resident was killed by wolves; there were none the year before.

The non-resident Class B pursuit tag used to cost $149 per person.

Three more dogs were added to the verified kill list on Oct. 4: a Plott hound killed on Oct. 1 in the town of Winter, Sawyer County; a second Plott killed in separate attack – also on Oct. 1 and in the town of Winter; and a redbone killed on Oct. 1 in the town of Knight, Iron County.