HUGE Grizzly in Montana

What a brute!!!!!

State Bear Management Specialist Mike Madel was trying to capture female grizzlies near Choteau recently when he unexpectedly snared "Big Daddy."

Standing on its hind legs, the mammoth male was even taller than Shaquille O'Neal, the 7-foot-1-inch tall NBA center who goes by the same nickname.

The grizzly, sporting 3 1/2-inch claws shaped like half moons, turned out to be the second largest bear ever recorded in the Northern Rockies Region.

But the bear's father might be even bigger.
In 2003, state bear managers operating in the Blackleaf Wildlife Management Area northwest of Choteau captured what's believed to be the largest grizzly, a towering 8-footer known as Griz No. 175.

Now Madel can't help but be curious about the two biggest bears ever recorded in the 10,000-square-mile Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem.

Like father, like son?

"This bear," he said of the most recent capture, "looked very much like that bear."

This spring, when Madel began setting foot snares and culvert traps in the Blackleaf Wildlife Management Area and the Teton River and Deep Creek drainages, he wasn't out to catch a near record-breaker.

"We actually were trying to avoid males," he said.

Since 2004, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks has been studying whether the area's grizzly population is declining, increasing or remaining stable. It's part of efforts to remove the grizzly, which is listed as threatened, from federal protection.

But females are needed for the study, not males. They're captured and fitted with radio collars, then released. Signals from the radios allow bear managers to track how many bears die and whether the females have cubs.

"This is really the first organized, large scale effort to look at the entire ecosystem at once," said Rick Mace, a Kalispell-based FWP biologist, who is leading the population-trend study. "This species never will meet the requirements for recovery unless we can continue to do this."

The work dovetails with another study, one led by the U.S. Geological Survey to come up with a total population estimate. Preliminary results of that work peg the number of bears in northcentral Montana, which includes Glacier National Park, at a minimum of 545.

When Madel, who stands 5-feet-8-inches tall, arrived the morning of May 24 to check a set of traps in the Teton River bottoms a few miles from the Front foothills, he found himself looking into the eyes of a 7 1/2-foot-tall grizzly standing on its hind legs.

Madel's been managing bears on the Front for 24 years, but even he was amazed.

"This bear was just a beautiful bear," he said.

Madel figures the big male with a bronze head, golden back and dark chocolate legs was searching for females, too, and lumbered in after catching the scent of a few who had checked out the bait.

The big bear was immobilized with a dart rifle.

Two scales — one topping out at 500, the other at 300 — were needed to weigh the bear.

The challenge was loading it.

"It was almost impossible to move him just a few inches," Madel recalled.

A hydraulic crane mounted on a flatbed truck, normally used to hoist bear culvert traps — bears and all — was used to hoist the bear onto the hanging scales.

The 300-pound scale topped out. The 500-pound scale hit the 450 mark.

Madel had himself a 750-pound bear, but it was still spring. Bears are thinner following hibernation, so he figures the big bear will weigh at least 900 pounds come fall.

"This is a really large male," he said.

Madel decided to attach a collar to the large bear so he could track its movements. Home ranges encompassing 200 miles are not unusual for adult male grizzlies.

But Madel has his doubts about how long the collar will stay attached.

The bear's neck is almost four feet around.

What Madel found most amazing is that he didn't even know the huge bear existed.

"Here's a bear that's down on the Front, and he's accustomed to moving in and around human activity, and he's never caused a conflict before," he said.

Big bears on the Front, the area where ranches meet the mountains west of Great Falls, are not unusual.

The year's largest cub, yearling, female and male documented in the larger NCDE were all captured along the Front. Now comes the second-largest male, which isn't full size, Madel said.

The average-sized grizzly male on the Front is 600 pounds, while females are around 300 to 325 pounds. By comparison, males on the west side average 500 pounds, and the females are about 250.

Madel said Front bears have more food diversity than bears west of the Rocky Mountains, and that's the reason the Front grows them big.

When the huckleberry crop fails in the west of the Rockies, low cub production typically follows, Madel said. When the chokecherry crop fails on the Front, bears turn to buffalo and service berries in addition to the livestock carrion.

"Then we have cropland, and bears have learned to take advantage of oat fields and barley," Madel said.

In addition, bears on the Front feed on the protein-rich carcasses of dead cattle, he said.

Preliminary results from the survey work also have shown that Front bears head to the prairie at night to feed on insects and ants and graze on sedges, roots and "tubers" more often than once was thought.

Genetics could play a role as well.

Today's Front grizzlies may have some of the same genes as the huge prairie bears that explorers Lewis and Clark ran into — and from — when they passed through the area more than 200 years ago.

Checking whether big bear No. 1 and big bear No. 2 are father and son normally would be as simple as comparing DNA from hairs.

Madel took hair samples from both bears.

But the hair Madel collected from the older bear was among a large number of hair samples from Montana bears that are missing from a lab in Idaho.

Until the samples are recovered, if they're recovered, there's no way to know for sure whether the big grizzlies are father and son.

But it wouldn't surprise Madel.

For one, it would be unusual to have two unrelated adult males look so much alike while at the same time be so unusually large.

Both bears had golden upper bodies with very dark legs. At the times of their capture, the younger bear weighed about 750 pounds, while the older bear, around 850 pounds. In the fall, each bear probably weighs 100 pounds more.

"And the adult male is by far old enough to have sired a male of this age," Madel said.

The younger bear is believed to be 7 1/2- or 8-years old while the older bear is about 15 1/2-years-old.

Time will tell whether the kid surpasses the old man in size.

"He's got some growing to do," Madel said.

Maybe the big brutes already have crossed paths.

When Madel captured the youngster in May, he noticed that the big grizzly's lower lip was torn and hanging low.

The lip was healed, but it was evidence the bear had been in a savage run-in with another male, most likely over a female.

"They get into some amazing battles," Madel said.

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