Skye Goode: My HUGE 2023 Wisconsin Black Bear

I usually have long-winded hunting stories with lots of details and historical facts thrown in, but this hunting story will be short and sweet. I drew a bear tag here in Wisconsin this fall and figured, why not. I recently learned the art of making hand cream and lip balm from bear tallow, so I figured if I could fill my tag on even a smaller bear, I'd be happy with some meat and some bear fat. I didn't put out a single bear bait all summer, even though you are allowed to bait starting in April. The season opened in the beginning of September, so one week before the opener, I put out a hollow log with some old bear bait and hadn't had anything hit it except a sow with cubs. A few days after the season opened, the acorns really dropped and per usual, most bear baits for hunters across the state ran cold. In the past, when this occurred, I used my super secret bear lure, sprayed in the trees and on the bark around the bait, and the bears usually come in within days. This year, I did the same thing, I sprayed my bear lure at the bait site, then sat in the stand the next afternoon.

Rather than try to recall the details, I'll insert the social media post that I made the following morning: "I’ll be completely honest here and say that I definitely do not deserve this bear. I focused so much on fishing this summer that I didn’t even put this bait out until last week. Wasn’t sure what bear were even in this property that I hunt and trap on, so just picked a thicket between a creek and an oak ridge. This was only the second night that I sat since season opened. As of last night the bait hadn’t even been hit in many days, so my expectations were low. I had an otter swim through right by me but otherwise it was an uneventful night until I heard a quick rustle at 7:09, looked over to see a huge bear practically running in, I made sure there were no cubs following, aimed center mass and shot him 10 yards below me. He took off and immediately disappeared into the thicket after one leap. The whole hunt took like 4 seconds. Per usual when one of us shoots a bear, a whole bunch of my family dropped what they were doing and quickly came to my rescue. Luckily my uncle recovered him because the minimal blood trail was really difficult to find. My cousin used pure brute strength to wheelbarrow this giant out of the thick and my uncle stayed with us to skin it out all night long. I was completely unprepared for such an animal so I took off work today and spent 4 hours getting it all completely cleaned up, which is very difficult when you can’t even budge the carcass an inch. I don’t own a big game scale and we don’t have any kind of bear camp to hang it around in, the priority was getting the hide off the carcass and getting the meat quartered up to cool, so I don’t have a weight, but I’m okay with that because the number doesn’t matter, and at some point all the inches and pounds and stats take away from the animal when comparing on social media. It’s the biggest bear I’ll ever shoot and every muscle in my body is hurting today. Might make B&C though? Can’t thank my family enough for all the help, I literally wouldn’t have been able to do any of this alone."

The bear was large enough that I can estimate it equals the same as harvesting 4-5 whitetail deer in terms of meat in the freezer. He did not have a lot of fat on him, but I was able to get a few jars that I use for cooking, hand cream, and lip balm. For some reason, there is a misconception that hunting black bears are for trophy hunting purposes only, when in fact, that is a mistake, and harvesting one large bear provides 200+ pounds of meat and several dozen quarts of rendered fat.