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elder999
10th July 2003, 14:38
The following pictures are of a guy who works for the Forest Service in Alaska. He was out deer hunting. A large world record Grizzly charged him from about 50 yards away. The guy unloaded a 7mm Mag semi-auto into the bear and it dropped a few feet from him. The monster was still alive soh he reloaded and capped it in the head.

The bear had killed 2 other people.

His last meal was a poor fellow on a nature hike. The Forest Service
found his 38-caliber emptied. He shot 6-times and hit the grizzly 4(they found seven 7mm slugs and four 38 caliber slugs in him) but obviously only wounded him since it was estimated to be 3 days prior to the bears death by the Forest Service man. It was over one thousand six hundred pounds,12'6" high at the shoulder, to the top of his head. It's the largest grizzly bear ever recorded in the world. Of course, the game department did not let him keep it. It will be mounted and put on display at the Anchorage airport (to remind tourist's of the risks involved when in the wild). Think about it. You would be level with the bears belly button
when he stood, he would look you in the eye when walking! This bear on its hind legs could walk up to the average single story house and look over the roof at eye level.

elder999
10th July 2003, 14:44
more than a foot across.....

Soulend
10th July 2003, 14:59
My gosh what a monster! It is a shame that such a magnificent creature was attacking people and had to be killed though.

StanLee
10th July 2003, 15:21
Jebus! That's bloody great big feckin monster!

Run for ya lives!

Stan:shot: :shot: :shot: :shot: :shot: :shot: :shot: :shot: :shot:

elder999
10th July 2003, 22:58
So I got the email from some bear crazy friends, and printed it verbatim.
There were even stories about photos of the half-eaten corpse of the bear's last victim.

My bad, here's the truth:

Here's the story as told by the hunter, Theodore Winnen, a 22-year-old crew member of the 18th Fighter Squadron at Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks.

Winnen and three hunting buddies were dropped off on Hinchinbrook Island in the heart of Prince William Sound by an air taxi on a cool, rainy Oct. 14 morning.

Hinchinbrook is a 165-square-mile island near Cordova with an estimated population of about 100 brown bears, giving it the distinction of harboring the highest density of bears of any island in the Sound, according to Dave Crowley, Cordova area wildlife biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Four to six bears are killed by hunters on the island every year, though rarely one of more than 400 pounds.

Winnen wasn't there to hunt bear. Instead, he and his hunting buddies packed for a week of hunting for Sitka blacktail deer on the remote, wooded island. Winnen did, however, pick up a permit to shoot a bear just in case.

Loaded for bear
On day two of the group's hunt, the skies cleared at 8:30 a.m. Winnen and Eielson Staff Sgt. Jim Urban set out to follow a creek bed upstream looking for deer. Urban was carrying a .300-caliber Winchester Magnum. Winnen was carrying his significantly more powerful .338-caliber Winchester Magnum in case a bear crossed their path. In the creek, they spotted a deep pool with 20 salmon circling.

''By this time, the ... run was over and the salmon were looking pretty nasty,'' Winnen said. ''We started thinking that we were looking at a bear's dinner plate.''

That got Winnen in what he calls ''bear mode.'' The two men continued following the creek upstream until they came to a small island ringed with thick brush. Some end-of-season blueberries clung to the surrounding brush. In the middle of the island was a spruce tree larger than what Winnen could fit his arms around. At the base of the tree were signs that an animal had tried to dig a hole. About 9:30 a.m., Winnen glanced upstream.

Getting ready
Forty yards away was a big brown bear with all four paws in the creek, flipping over logs looking for salmon. ''He's a shooter,'' Urban said under his breath.

''So I started getting in the zone,'' Winnen said. ''When I am going to take an animal, I am really concentrating. We racked shells into our guns and took off our packs and left them by the tree.''

The hunters moved a few feet upstream. About halfway between them and the bear was a large fallen tree. ''I said, 'When the bear crawls over that log, he will present his vital areas and we'll take him,' '' Winnen recalled. ''I brought the rifle up to take a shot, but the bear moved over the log like it wasn't there. ''I thought, 'Oh c--p.' I didn't have a chance to get a shot off.''

Out of sight
As the bear kept coming along the creek, the two hunters momentarily lost sight of him in a thicket, so they retreated back to the big spruce.

''We were sitting there concentrating when, a few seconds later, he pops up right in front of us, about 10 yards away and he was coming toward us,'' Winnen said. ''I don't know if the wind was in our favor or what. We were dressed in camouflage. He might not have seen us.''

''I put the scope on him. I wanted to hit him in the chest, but all I seen was nothing but head. ''My partner said, 'Shoot! Shoot!' '' Winnen said. ''I aimed for his left eye, but the bullet takes an arc and I hit about two inches low in the side of his muzzle and into his brain.

''He buckled backwards and raised his head like he was going to howl at the moon, but nothing came out,'' Winnen said. ''I put two more rounds in the vital area, then three more after that. Six total."

"It was amazing"
''We watched for a few minutes, I reloaded and Jim brought his gun up on him,'' Winnen said. ''I approached from the rear and poked him in the butt to see if he was going to jump, but he didn't move. He was dead.'' ''It was amazing when I got close to him,'' Winnen said.

''I picked up the paw and it was like, 'good God.' The thing was as wide as my chest.'' The two hunters spent a fair amount of time getting photos of the bruin. One photo shows his statement is no exaggeration. The paw is almost as wide as the hunter's chest and sports 3- to 4-inch-long claws.

Six hours of skinning
Master guide Want said he was impressed with Winnen's story. ''Sounds like he did everything perfectly,'' Want said. ''I can't overemphasize how many people screw that up, even after you explain it to them. After the bear drops, they stand up and pat themselves on the back, and the animal gets up and takes off while they are standing there.''

After the kill, Winnen and Urban spent six hours skinning the bear -- and trying to drag its hide and skull back to the Forest Service cabin they had rented. The meat was left behind because grizzly meat is generally considered inedible.

Winnen guesses the bear's hide weighed more than 200 pounds. They took turns carrying it, but eventually put it on a tarp and tried dragging it together. When they were within a half-mile of the cabin, they summoned their hunting partners, Eielson Staff Specs. Ron Lutrell and Jim Scheu, a flight chief based at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage.

Winnen spent the next three days at the cabin working with his knife to scrape fat from the hide. He packed the hide with salt for the return trip to Fairbanks.

Once back, Winnen took the hide and skull to the state Department of Fish and Game to get it sealed, as required by law.

Bear records
Unofficially, Fish and Game records show, the skull scored 28 and 8/16 inches. Skulls are scored for size by combining the width plus the length. The skull of Winnen's bear was 10 11/16 inches wide and 17 13/16 inches long. This is called a green score, which is the unofficial score until the skull dries and can be re-measured. The Boone and Crockett Club, which uses a 16th-of-an-inch measurement system to keep records on the biggest animals shot in the world, requires that bear skulls dry for 60 days before an official measurement is made. A tooth was pulled from the jaw of the skull by a state biologist so the bear can be aged. Biologist Crowley said he suspects the bear was 15 to 20 years old. He added that the bear was no stranger to guides who know the area. ''One of our local guides has been after it a couple of times,'' Crowley said. ''Its luck finally just ran out.'' Bears are hard to hunt on the brushy and heavily wooded island, Crowley said, because the season doesn't open until Oct. 15, after the salmon run is over. The bears have largely dispersed from salmon streams by then, making them harder to find.

World-class brown bear
The hide measures 10 feet, 6 inches from nose to tail. While it is impossible to know exactly how much the bear weighed, master guide Want has measured and weighed dozens of Kodiak brown bears over the years. Based on the measurements and information he got from Winnen, he suspects the bear weighed between 1,000 and 1,200 pounds. By any standards, that's a world-class brown bear.

All brown bears taken with skulls that score over 28 inches are eligible for listing with Boone and Crockett, the official record keeper for North American trophy hunters.

In Alaska, the biggest brown bears are found on Kodiak Island and the Alaska Peninsula. The record Alaska brown bear -- killed on Kodiak Island in 1952 -- had a skull that scored 30 12/16. Only 19 bears have been shot with skulls that scored over 30 inches since the early 1900s, according to Boone and Crockett.

''Twenty-eight is the magic line,'' Want said. ''Anything over 28 inches has everyone sitting up and taking notice.'' The fact that Winnen's bear came from Prince William Sound makes it even more remarkable, Want added. ''His bear is exceptional. It's unbelievably unusual,'' the guide said. ''It's safe to say that it is more than double the average size of brown bear coming out of Prince William Sound.''

Between 1970 to 1999, about 600 male brown bears were killed in Prince William Sound, according to state Fish and Game records. Of those, only two had skulls that scored more than 28 inches, Want said. The vast majority had skulls that scored 22 to 23 inches. Bears with heads that size typically weigh 350 to 400 pounds, Want added.

Hide will be hunter's rug
Winnen is having the skull preserved and mounted on a plaque. The hide is with a taxidermist, being made into a rug.

''With the small rooms in base housing, it'll be more like wall-to-wall carpeting,'' Winnen said. Meanwhile, the e-mails keep circulating. The genesis appears to have been a radio talk show in Fairbanks on which Winnen appeared. Photos from his hunt showed up later on the radio show's Web site. And that appears to have been what got the Internet humming.

Guide Want said, ''I can guarantee you, in a year or two, someone will tell him (Winnen) how big the bear was and it will be up to 1,800 pounds. And when he tries to correct them, they will call him a liar.'' (Reporter Natalie Phillips at 907-257-4461 or nphillips@adn.com. This story appeared Dec. 16, 2001, in the Anchorage Daily News.)

The bear facts
Statistics for Theodore Winnen's brown bear taken on Hinchinbrook Island in October 2001:

1,000-1,200 lbs. -- Estimated weight
15-20 years -- Estimated age
10' 6'' -- Hide measurement from nose to tail
10 11/16'' -- Skull width
17 13/16'' -- Skull length
28 8/16'' -- Skull score (length and width combined)
30 12/16'' -- North American record brown bear skull score
19 -- The number of bear skulls with a score above 30'' in Alaska since 1904

Big bear, though......

gmanry
11th July 2003, 00:01
This is actually Wendy.

Yeah, I'm pretty glad they don't get that big in Wyoming. Out here, you can get away with bear spray. In Alaska, you pack a .44. My alaskan native buddies tell me that a .45 isn't a big enough caliber and will bounce off their heads.

I'm a good shot with a hand gun, although I prefer rifles and shotguns, because I'm more familiar with them. But to imagine being charged by a 1200 lbs 12 foot Bruin used to eating people...I think I would have a hard time keeping it steady.

:eek:

The Game and fish guy is hot. yum. men in cammo. Mossy wood cammo...even better. I wish they made speedos in that stuff.

Mike Williams
11th July 2003, 10:16
Call me a tree hugging hippy if you like, but it is a real shame that a creature as magnificent as that died just for sport.

None of that explains the photo of somebody's half eaten leg (with hiking boot still attached) that I received along with the original e-mail story. If it was a photoshop job, it was a goodun.


Cheers,

mike

elder999
12th July 2003, 19:02
Originally posted by Mike Williams
Call me a tree hugging hippy if you like, but it is a real shame that a creature as magnificent as that died just for sport.

None of that explains the photo of somebody's half eaten leg (with hiking boot still attached) that I received along with the original e-mail story. If it was a photoshop job, it was a goodun.


Cheers,

mike

Separate incident of post-mortem coyote activity.

Gruesome, though.......

Shitoryu Dude
12th July 2003, 19:48
As well as being hunted for sport, the overwhelming vast majority of hunters turn their kills into food. Most places it is a felony to just take the head or cape of a game animal and leave the rest for the scavengers.

:beer:

elder999
12th July 2003, 19:51
Originally posted by Shitoryu Dude
As well as being hunted for sport, the overwhelming vast majority of hunters turn their kills into food. Most places it is a felony to just take the head or cape of a game animal and leave the rest for the scavengers.

:beer:

On top of which, the"generally considered to be inedible" part just isn't true. People do eat grizzly, and other bears.

I had the opportunity to try some black bear once, and I don't care for the stuff at all-tasted like really, really bad dog-so I've never hunted bear.

Soulend
12th July 2003, 19:59
Me neither. Bear meat is nasty, which is why I'll never hunt them.