Trail Cam,, Is this a bear?Follow up black or brown?

[PLS-12224]

I agree, good bear, you can tell by the crease in his noggin

[Kenneth]

Yep, big bear!  Hope you get a shot at him this year!

[pickaspot]

Sasquatch - no doubt    

[Dean Lintz]

Forget bait take camera seems to interest this bear maybe he will come to look at camera while you are there with your bow.

[Cyclic-Rivers]

That thar is a Bar!

[Vig]

It might be a man wearing a bear hat, or an actual bear.  It's definately not a squirrel.

Just my 2 cents.

Vig

[Raging Water]

That's what my hair looked like 20 years ago!

[D. Key]

Down here in Texas we call 'em Chupicabra.  

Naw...Bear for sure.

[David Mitchell]

"Hmmm, I see you back in there!"  :p

[FerretWYO]

There is no doubt. Those little beady eyes ha ha.

[Joshua Lee]

Okay, so i'm not crazy and we all agree it's a bear. Here is the follow up question.  Is this a black bear or a brown bear (griz)?  I have no idea but I will say that the ears look a bit more like a griz than a black, although I've never been this close to either. Also, before you guess I should give you all the info I can to make it fair.  Supposedly there are no brown bear in this area, but there are brown bear within 150 miles.  I'm going with Brown, whats your guess.

[JimB]

I'm sure that one is a black bear.

Looks like a black to me.  Does not look much different than the many bears we run into that want our food when we our on canoe trips.  We don't take their pictures, we poke at them with paddles and jump up and down waving our paddles in the air.

[Joshua Lee]

Ok, I used a lifeline (internet) and read that black bears can have brown fur.  In the pic you can see, kinda, that it has brown and black fur. Dind't know that about black bears, ears still look a little rounded to be black but I saw a few pics that were kinda close. I would like to jump on board with JimB and Pavan and switch to Black..final answer..probably.

[recurvecody]

a bear or a really big brendal colored pitbull!

[Gen273]

Black Bear

[PLS-12224]

Joshua

deffinetly a blackie, we here in Idaho have a lot of color phase bears.  I am not sure what part of Idaho your in but, I have a site that has 3 color phase bears (2 blondes, 1 brown) and only 1 black colored bear. On my other site (6 miles away) I have never seen a colored phase bear on it. Go figure.

[TooManyHobbies]

Unfortunately it's a bear, I wanted to come out and hunt the giant chipmunks.

[JimB]

I'm a taxidermist that does a lot of blacks,grizzlies and brown bears.Regardless of what you read,all bears have rounded ears.You can take the cartilage out of a black bear ear and lay it beside that of a grizzly and you can't tell one from the other.

What is different,is that the grizzlies and browns have much longer hair on their ears which often makes the ears look much more like a puffball than black bear ears.This is why black bear ears may look less round to some.

Grizzlies also never have a distinctly lighter muzzle like many black bears do-but not all.I think your bear has a lighter tan muzzle which would be a contrast to his otherwise brown/black color.

This is why I say it is a black bear.It has enough crease in his head that I believe it is older than 4 1/2 but hard to pin down and impossible to tell gender.You may get more pictures of it.Places like water troughs where bears can dunk themselves are very important in hot weather.Find a place like that and you should get multiple bear pictures.

Go back and look at your grizzly and black bear pictures again and look at those features.Hopefully you can see what I mean.

If you do a search for MT FWP (our game department)they have a grizzly test for hunters.It is interesting to take and it helps you understand that when dealing with color phase black bears,you sometimes have to look close to tell them from grizzlies.

[Guru]

Originally posted by JimB:
I'm a taxidermist that does a lot of blacks,grizzlies and brown bears.Regardless of what you read,all bears have rounded ears.You can take the cartilage out of a black bear ear and lay it beside that of a grizzly and you can't tell one from the other.

What is different,is that the grizzlies and browns have much longer hair on their ears which often makes the ears look much more like a puffball than black bear ears.This is why black bear ears may look less round to some.

Grizzlies also never have a distinctly lighter muzzle like many black bears do-but not all.I think your bear has a lighter tan muzzle which would be a contrast to his otherwise brown/black color.

This is why I say it is a black bear.It has enough crease in his head that I believe it is older than 4 1/2 but hard to pin down and impossible to tell gender.You may get more pictures of it.Places like water troughs where bears can dunk themselves are very important in hot weather.Find a place like that and you should get multiple bear pictures.

Go back and look at your grizzly and black bear pictures again and look at those features.Hopefully you can see what I mean.

If you do a search for MT FWP (our game department)they have a grizzly test for hunters.It is interesting to take and it helps you understand that when dealing with color phase black bears,you sometimes have to look close to tell them from grizzlies.

I'll second all of that