Your oldest black bear?

[Etter]

Ive been to canada 16 times and have hunted bears in GA for 5 years now. Ive killed a decent number of them and have been in on the blood trailing and processing of probably 30 or so. I killed one here in the north ga mountains that was nine years old but I killed one last week on opening day that I think might be really really old. She was about a 150lb sow. Most of her teeth were brown and broken but her two upper incisors were completely gone. There werent even spaces in the gum line anymore. Her muzzle was completely bald and her head was a mass of scars including a really fresh one. I have never seen this level of scarring on a sow, and hardly ever on a boar.

So for those of you that pull a tooth and get cementum annuli done, what is the oldest bear you have killed?  My guess is this one is going to be 15-20 years old.

[Mike Bolin]

Killed a big boar in Quebec in '95. Outfitter pulled a tooth and sent it in. I got a card in the mail saying he was 19 years old. Poor old fellar's teeth were mostly gone and broken. Skull officially measured at 19 3/16" and field dressed, he bottomed out a 300# scale. This was in late May.
Mike
 
 

[dnovo]

I killed one in Ontario in 2012 that was 410 # on a scale. Skull was 19 1/16 and they aged him with the tooth at 16 years old

[Michael Arnette]

Etter, I shot one just like yours this May...A really old sow. Not sure how old but she didn't have much for teeth. I plan to send a tooth in just to see how old

[hunt it]

My oldest and biggest black bear was aged by BC Wildlife at 23yrs, it weighed in at just over 500lbs and skull was 21 15/16. Taken on Vancouver Island 1996.

[Terry Green]

dnr said 10 years old on one I shot...the one in my avatar

[agross1]

Originally posted by hunt it:
My oldest and biggest black bear was aged by BC Wildlife at 23yrs, it weighed in at just over 500lbs and skull was 21 15/16. Taken on Vancouver Island 1996.

Wow!!! That is a beast!    My best and oldest bear , I shot in 2008 in Ontario.  342 lbs,  18 10/16 skull,  7 years old .

[Tim Finley]

My oldest bear was 14 years old he had a broken jaw that caused his teeth to be broken and worn down and his nose was stunted from the break in his jaw, he looked like Don Rickels . Even with the stunted nose he still scored over 20 inches. When he walked he didn't bend his legs he was full of arthritis . The oldest bear that came into our camp was aged at 28 years it was a sow.

[Tim Finley]

My oldest bear was 14 years old he had a broken jaw that caused his teeth to be broken and worn down and his nose was stunted from the break in his jaw, he looked like Don Rickels . Even with the stunted nose he still scored over 20 inches. When he walked he didn't bend his legs he was full of arthritis . The oldest bear that came into our camp was aged at 28 years it was a sow.

[Birdbow]

The sow in the pic was aged by NHF&G at 11 1/2 yoa. Knew this bear from the time she showed up with 3 legs. Over the seasons, she appeared with 9 cubs but was barren the year I shot her. She was always on the small side and her head and shoulders were covered with scars - with 3 legs probably couldn't climb easily and had to stand her ground.
 

[Longbowcrowder66]

Years ago between 1988 and 2000 I hunted bear in Ontario and the camp that I hunted with had a Game  biologist that would stop in and check on the bears that were taken, This one time there was a guy that killed an old boar that weighed #150 that had a huge head and it made Boone and Crockett. They took a tooth from the bear for aging purposes and the  bear was 29 years old. That was so amazing to me. The Biologist said if the bear would have made to hibernation that it most likely would have died because he was on the decline. Just wanted to share this story because its amazing.. God bless you all and Happy Hunting!!

[Ken Taylor]

Very few of the bears I have personally killed in my lifetime were officially aged by biologists.

However, one was aged at 21 1/2 years old and another was aged at "older than 21 1/2" but they couldn't be more precise than that because of the extreme wear of the teeth they had to work with.

Both those were boars.

[bruinman]

19.5 year old sow.

[Bob B.]

I shot a boar in North Western Saskatchewan, just south of the North West Territories that dressed at 365 in the spring.  He was over 6 feet squared.  I believe he was aged at 12 years, which is pretty "long in the tooth" for bears that far north.  I remember he was missing an entire row of lower molars, and the jaw was "healed over" no holes where his teeth used to be.  The ministry of Natural Resources was surprised at how old my bear was and remarked he likely did not have much time left.

Bob.

[Longbowcrowder66]

Ken Taylor, Th e area I hunted was in Sudbury Ontario, It was a 520 square mile bear management Area. The Camp was called Chinaguchi run by Keith and Trudy Hines. The biologist did alot for that area during that time that I went. I thougt it was kinda cool having them in camp. They sure did teach me alot about the bears and stocking lake trout in the lakes in that management area. Just thought this was a neat thread and wanted to share my experience.

[HARL]

I did a fare bit of bear hunting in the 80's and 90's .I shot a sow that was aged at 20.5,her skull green scored 18" a couple years later a boar I shot was10.5 with a 19 3/4" skull.My shots where with my bows .

I have only killed one bear, so he would be the oldest I have ever taken. I don't have a clue how old he actually was though!

Bisch

[Ken Taylor]

Floyd - that sort of thing really interests me too.

Let me add that although we often submitted the teeth to the ministry, we rarely got the results back.

During my lifetime of dealing with bears (hunting, trapping, and guiding for them), the oldest looking bear I was ever involved with was a bow kill by one of my hunters in 1994 in northeastern Quebec.

When I skinned him I did an examination and the old boar was blind in one eye, had such a thick cataract on the other eye that he most likely could only see light through it (his survival to that point further proof of a bear's incredible sense of smell), he had only a few claws remaining, I could move the feet around in the paw like someone wearing oversized shoes, the skull was large (19" plus - I forget how much over 19" he was) but the head was very boney, he had to have weighed over 400 lbs in the fall at one time but he was only about 175 now.

We never saw him but when we went to the bait he was counting on, we could hear him moving off/around.

I really would have liked to know how old he was... that was definitely his last year to live.

I forgot to mention that I used to go to Sudbury in my youth. In fact we lived in Elliot Lake Ontario for a couple of years when I was a young boy - great bear and wolf country back then - they used to break into our ice box at night.

[Etter]

Such amazing creatures. Compared to a deer, they are ancient. I really cannot wait to get the results back on this one. It takes about nine months. For any of you that have euro mounts of bears, it is very easy to pull the little nub tooth behind the canine and send it to a private lab for aging. Even cementum annuli is not 100 percent accurate (I think studies show its actually less then fifty percent) but it gets pretty darn close.