Here is one of the bears we took this fall. Not an exceptional bear but above average for Washington state. His skull was 19-5/16
I hate to post a weight when it's nearly impossible to weigh a bear in the field. I have a well developed chart on my web site that will give the weight very accurately. I developed the system when working in the bear management program. In some cases the chart was within a few pounds of actual weight! It gets old when every bear killed is XXX hundred pounds and you can look and see it's not what is claimed. It's actually kind of funny to hear guys who have actually convinced themselves of this non-sense. One fellow told me once "bears have a higher muscle density and weigh more then the look. Yeah Right! your 150 pound sow is really 300 pounds!
Kind of sad to me which is why I prefer to use an actual measure like skull size, or squared hide size. The weight in most cases when estimated a complete waste of time.
Oh yeah there was also a guy who loaded the bear into the back of his pickup truck and drove to the truck scale to weigh the bear on the truck scale. Only thing is his buddies were screwing with him and added a bunch of stuff to the back of the truck. For a long time he swore up and down his 250 pound bear was 400 pounds "because he weighed it" Too funny!
In Tacoma Washington a few years ago a Policeman was on the news reporting the search of a 350 pound black bear that was seen wandering in the neighborhood. They were looking to dart and move it. When it was finally shot with the dart gun and loaded into the trailer style culvert trap to move him two men lifted him with ease and placed him in the trap. The bear was later reported to be a 125 pound male! This 350 pound original report from one of Tacoma's finest "trained observers" was a real laugh for anyone who knows how to judge a bears size!
IMO believe what you hear regarding a bears weight only when you see it on the scale yourself! Outfitters are notorious for embellishing the bears size. They don't want to send anyone home with a little bear. They also don't want to have competition in camp between hunters. All bears are "about 300 pounds" when in a bear camp! I know this because I worked free lance for several outfitters using my dogs when they needed help. All of these guys took "300 pound bears" according to the outfitters. Funny the ones that actually weighed 300 pounds were usually claimed to be 500!
The BS regarding a bears weight never ends! If you really want a very accurate example of the weight use the chart on my site. It will completely remove the BS factor. It's been published in Bear hunting Magazine as well.
