Interesting to note that only one bear in Alaska, in the Boone and Crocket books of North America, is larger than these two BC monsters, that are tied in score.
Gary Shelton has shot his share of grizzlies over the years, but the bear he's likely to be remembered for is the one he didn't even kill.
In 1970, Shelton was on a hunting trip near Green Lake, south of Highway 20 between the Bella Coola Valley and Anahim Lake in the west Chilcotin.
While walking along the edge of a high-elevation meadow, he spotted an animal skeleton so big he assumed it to be a moose.
Then he tripped over a grass-covered skull with canine teeth, and realized a bear had died here.
A very large bear.
So big, Shelton figures that at any given time only one of its kind could possibly roam the B.C. coast, an area that today is fittingly known as the Great Bear Rainforest.
Shelton estimated the bruin topped 1,000 pounds (454 kg), dwarfing the 550 to 750 pounds that adult male grizzlies typically weigh on the coast.
"A bear that size is unusual," he reflects from his home in Hagensborg in the Bella Coola Valley. "Think of a horse with short legs."
By counting the annual growth rings on a premolar tooth he reckoned the bear had lived at least 40 years, the sort of age that only a grizzly with strength and cunning and luck can achieve. So old that more than half his spinal column had been fused by arthritis.
Grizzly skulls are calculated by adding the maximum width and length, which, in the case of Shelton's bear skull, produced a score of 271/8 inches (about 70 cm).
The Montana-based Boone and Crockett Club, which maintains hunting records for North America, reports that the skull remains tied with a bear shot in the Dean River in 1982 as the biggest grizzly of recorded time in B.C. Throughout North America, only a 1976 specimen from Lone Mountain, Alaska, proved to be a hair bigger, at 2713/16 inches.
Shelton says he tends to keep his story about the record grizzly skull and other king-sized bears he has shot to himself because he doesn't feel it's something you should brag about.
The Vancouver Sun only found out about it through Boone and Crockett.
"It's a personal thing," he says. "I rarely talk about it and few people know."
Shelton is not known for shying away from bears or publicity. He is the author of three best-selling books on bear attacks, and has taught courses to thousands of government and industry workers on how to act in bear country.
His very public views on bear management have made him reviled by conservationists, even as another famous grizzly hunter from the Bella Coola Valley, the late aboriginal Clayton Mack, remains revered, his larger-than-life tales spun into two popular books.
Shelton argues that grizzly populations are growing in B.C. and the Ministry of Environment should allow more hunting of them. Male grizzlies are even showing up on northern Vancouver Island, where historically they have not existed.
"Bear hunters have been labelled horrible people," he laments. "But what the hell are you going to do with all these bears?"
Here is the whole story, including the outlook of future BC grizzly hunting.
http://www.vancouversun.com/Technology/Trophy+hunters+line+fire/1693303/story.html
Gary Shelton has shot his share of grizzlies over the years, but the bear he's likely to be remembered for is the one he didn't even kill.
In 1970, Shelton was on a hunting trip near Green Lake, south of Highway 20 between the Bella Coola Valley and Anahim Lake in the west Chilcotin.
While walking along the edge of a high-elevation meadow, he spotted an animal skeleton so big he assumed it to be a moose.
Then he tripped over a grass-covered skull with canine teeth, and realized a bear had died here.
A very large bear.
So big, Shelton figures that at any given time only one of its kind could possibly roam the B.C. coast, an area that today is fittingly known as the Great Bear Rainforest.
Shelton estimated the bruin topped 1,000 pounds (454 kg), dwarfing the 550 to 750 pounds that adult male grizzlies typically weigh on the coast.
"A bear that size is unusual," he reflects from his home in Hagensborg in the Bella Coola Valley. "Think of a horse with short legs."
By counting the annual growth rings on a premolar tooth he reckoned the bear had lived at least 40 years, the sort of age that only a grizzly with strength and cunning and luck can achieve. So old that more than half his spinal column had been fused by arthritis.
Grizzly skulls are calculated by adding the maximum width and length, which, in the case of Shelton's bear skull, produced a score of 271/8 inches (about 70 cm).
The Montana-based Boone and Crockett Club, which maintains hunting records for North America, reports that the skull remains tied with a bear shot in the Dean River in 1982 as the biggest grizzly of recorded time in B.C. Throughout North America, only a 1976 specimen from Lone Mountain, Alaska, proved to be a hair bigger, at 2713/16 inches.
Shelton says he tends to keep his story about the record grizzly skull and other king-sized bears he has shot to himself because he doesn't feel it's something you should brag about.
The Vancouver Sun only found out about it through Boone and Crockett.
"It's a personal thing," he says. "I rarely talk about it and few people know."
Shelton is not known for shying away from bears or publicity. He is the author of three best-selling books on bear attacks, and has taught courses to thousands of government and industry workers on how to act in bear country.
His very public views on bear management have made him reviled by conservationists, even as another famous grizzly hunter from the Bella Coola Valley, the late aboriginal Clayton Mack, remains revered, his larger-than-life tales spun into two popular books.
Shelton argues that grizzly populations are growing in B.C. and the Ministry of Environment should allow more hunting of them. Male grizzlies are even showing up on northern Vancouver Island, where historically they have not existed.
"Bear hunters have been labelled horrible people," he laments. "But what the hell are you going to do with all these bears?"
Here is the whole story, including the outlook of future BC grizzly hunting.
http://www.vancouversun.com/Technology/Trophy+hunters+line+fire/1693303/story.html
