Thoughts on Pennsylvania's largest bears

On its surface, the question seemed like it could be easy to answer.

"What is the biggest female black bear recorded in Pennsylvania?"

A reader posted it two weeks ago to our InquERIE page — www.goerie.com/inquerie, which invites readers to ask questions about our community. We're not sure what the motivation was behind the question. We reached out via email three times, and our message was kicked back each time.

Nevertheless, we did our best to find out.

Interestingly, the discovery process had a few twists: First, only the Pennsylvania Game Commission keeps a record of bear sizes, and those are for bears killed during the various hunting seasons; and, second, there is more than one way to determine "largest bear" — weight and skull size.

But to answer the reader's question, according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission: The biggest female bear recorded in the state weighed 540 pounds.

This is the largest female bear killed in Pennsylvania by a hunter. It was taken by Robert Miller of East Stroudsburg in the 1999 general season in Stroudsburg Township, Monroe County.

"That’s the only 500-pound female on record," said Travis Lau, communications director for the Pennsylvania Game Commission. "There are 16 females in the 400-pound class and many in the 300-pound range. ... Generally speaking, when you look at the top 10 females weighed by check station, most stations have some if not all 10 slots taken by females in the 300-pound class."

On the way to finding this answer we learned that trophy bears aren't compared by weight, though the weight is often recorded.

Instead, record bears are ranked by their skull size.

And, because the biggest bears are male, there are no female skull measurements listed anywhere.

In Pennsylvania, the records follow the Boone & Crockett Club's protocol — two measurements are taken on the dried skull, one lengthways from the base of the skull to the end of the snout and the other from side to side. 

"The largest bear in Pennsylvania’s records is a bear taken in Monroe County in 2011 that scored 23-9/16 inches," said Bob D'Angelo, the Game Commission's Big Game Scoring Program coordinator.

The heaviest bear ever taken in the state was an 876-pound bruin taken during archery season in Middle Smithfield Township in Monroe County in 2010.

D'Angelo added that harvested bears are the closest we will get to answer because the Game Commission normally doesn’t track road-killed bears or bears that die from other causes "because they are usually disposed of quickly without taking the time to formally weigh them or save the skull."

Doug Oathout can be reached at 870-1698 or by email. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ETNoathout.

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