Information and clothes shop Zack LaFreniere of Howland, Maine, had set a bait barrel in a distant a part of Penobscot County in early September. He monitored the bait web site with a mobile path digital camera, and seen when an oversize bruin started hitting the bait repeatedly.
“In Maine we are able to lawfully harvest bears a number of methods: with bait, hounds, and likewise with snares,” says the 33-year-old outdoorsman, who guides bear, deer, and moose hunters by his Wild Ferns Information Service. “Leg conibear traps can’t be used, however snares can. They require a great little bit of effort and ability to set them proper to idiot a giant outdated black bear … I exploit the digital camera to ensure solely a big bear is coming in earlier than setting a snare for it.”
LaFreniere stated it took six days of monitoring his distant digital camera pictures to substantiate a large bruin was hitting the bait. Then he baited and set a snare. LaFreniere digs a gap to carry a pipe, locations bait on the backside, and positions the pipe close to a mature tree to anchor the cable. The snare can also be fitted with a “cub cease” — a particular system that forestalls smaller bears from accessing the setup.
“I lower means again on the bait on the web site. When a bear involves the half-full barrel, however smells extra bait deep within the pipe, it goes for the pipe bait.”
Late on Sept. 15, a path digital camera photograph confirmed he’d snared the massive bear.
“I referred to as three buddies and we went in very quietly to the bait web site,” LaFreniere defined. “We didn’t wish to spook the bear and walked in very stealthy for a couple of quarter-mile … We didn’t use flashlights as a result of [the] moon [was] brilliant, and we just about slipped in.”
As they approached the location, they switched on brilliant lights.
“The bear was laying down on the pipe snare, and when the lights got here on it stood up,” LaFreniere stated. “I instantly shot it with a 250-grain Hornady bullet from my 35 Whelen rifle. It dropped lifeless proper there.”
LaFreniere stated the bear had nearly labored its means out of the snare, with the cable loop barely holding the bruin by a claw.
“If we’d gotten there just a bit later the bear would have been gone.”
In loading the bear onto a drag sled they realized the bear, a giant sow, was a large. It was so heavy that LaFreniere determined to subject gown it to lighten the load. He additionally didn’t need the meat to spoil earlier than they might get the animal out of the woods and on ice.
“It was 4 a.m. on Sept. 16 after we [finally] obtained my bear to a tagging station,” LaFreniere says. “They didn’t have a licensed scale for weighing it. So, we drove to The Village Market in Carmel. It was weighed there and verified by state biologists at 358-pounds. “The official estimated dwell weight of the bear is 429.6 kilos.”
LaFreniere’s bear is now formally the state’s largest sow taken in Maine, each by dressed weight and estimated dwell weight, he stated. Boar black bears are bigger and are in a special state information class. The Maine boar bear weight document is 699 kilos.
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“My bear had numerous fats, however we obtained loads of roasts, hamburger and sausage from it,” he defined. “I’m additionally gonna have a full-body taxidermy mount of the bear made. It’s expensive at $5,000, and I don’t know the place I’m gonna put it, although. Now we have so many deer, moose and fish mounts at residence I feel we now have to construct a lodge or searching headquarters for all of them.”
