It was the third time in a row that a New Jersey bow hunter had been after a 770-pound black bear. He finally got it on his third trip.
Brian Melvin, 39, first saw the bear three years ago while hunting. He has been following it on his last two bear hunts, knocking on doors to get permission to check out land the bear may have gone through.
“I wasn’t really trying to break records…” “It was an honor to have chased him because he was the smartest animal I had ever chased,” Melvin told The Post Friday. He shot the bear with a compound bow on Tuesday morning in Kinnelon.
NJ.com said Melvin killed the animal from 45 yards away. He has been bow shooting since he was in his early 20s.
He told them, “He never stayed in the same place for more than six months.” “I went door-to-door for weeks to get permission to go on land I thought he might be on or at least pass through.” I got a picture of him last year. The last we saw him was in May of this year.
In the past, Melvin had killed a 400-pound bear, but this huge animal beat that record.
State fish and wildlife officials say that the heaviest black bear ever caught during the New Jersey black bear hunt weighed 770 pounds. A black bear’s “dressed weight” is its weight after its guts have been taken out.
Melvin thought that the bear might have set a world record for weight if he hadn’t gutted it.
“Leaving them whole for more than an hour makes them go bad, and you lose the whole bear, and I don’t like that,” he said.
People in Morris County, New Jersey, used a bow to kill a 700-pound bear on October 14, 2019, which was the previous record. Melvin’s bear broke that record.
There has been a bear hunt in New Jersey since Monday and it will last until Saturday. So far, 285 bears have been killed in the Garden State.
Bear hunting is limited so that each hunter can only kill one bear per season and cubs that weigh less than 75 pounds cannot be killed or taken.
New Jersey will be able to hunt bears until the 2027 season.
