Stickflingers

[Ray Lyon]

Originally posted by Steve O:
Good bear trophy photos are very tough to take. You see so many guys with little bears sitting way back from them to make them look big you get desensitized to what a big bear looks like in a proper picture.  

Yes, have to agree with Steve. Here's a photo of a good Michigan bear I shot in 2008. I was 265 at the time and the bear weighed 225# dressed on the taxidermist commercial hanging scale 3 days after harvest. This boar had no body fat to speak of (early September bear), but his head was green scored at 18 3/4 by the taxidermist after he got it back from the beetle cleaner, so he was a good bear. When I took my picture, I wanted to be right up in front holding his chin up, but for me to make a bear look big, it'd have to be a brownie.    :eek:

   Ray\\'s 2008 MI black bear

Love seeing this thread each year.  I'm hoping we see one from the man himself-Stickflingers proprietor Ryan-as I loved the on the ground video of his hunt last year.

[Brock]

I wish a lot of guides would not position their clients a ways behind bear to give optical illusion as to it being larger relative to hunter than might be the case.  Why cant they be happy with the bear taken....weight and skull measurements being the same...causes lots of confusion when a new hunter sees a bear at 250 with 17" noggin that looks to weigh more and be larger than a confirmed 300# and book head.  LOL   That is why I like to put mine in headlocks....no confusion that I am bigger. LOL

[Manitoba Stickflinger]

Good points on hunter positioning in trophy photos. I generally try and have the hunter place his hand on the back or shoulder of the bear so the viewer can see where he/she is in relation to the bear. Seems to avoid that intentional upsizing trophy pic.

[Kevin Dill]

A thought on posed pictures:

A lot of them are taken with point & shoot digital cameras at close distances. The closer the lens is to the animal, the larger the animal appears in relation to the person even if the person is against the animal. The result can look like the hunter is 5' behind the animal even when not. Part of that is due to the semi-wide angle of a typical point & shoot lens.

Although uncommon, the most accurate images are taken at a moderate distance with a lens set between approximately 50 to 90mm and then cropped to size. This almost always prevents the wide-angle effect from happening.

I don't recall very many guys ever saying "Hey, you need to make sure this thing doesn't look too big!"    :cool:

[MnFn]

True, Kevin.    When taking a photo of my bear (which was the smallest of three taken that week, Ryan made a comment that showed his feelings on the subject of photo "tricks". "Not an exact quote, but something to the effect of :

"We want an honest photo".

Which was fine with me, it is s trophy I will never forget.  Not to say I wouldn't mind  getting another chance at a bigger one!