Black Bear Identification

Photo by: Scott Mogilefsky

I used pictures of bear tracks in a blog titled "Bear Protection in camp" from pictures I took on an elk hunt in 2011.  Well, here in 2015, I think I found the owner of these very same tracks.  Luckily it was not in our camp!  However, it was not too far from camp at all.   During my 2015 elk hunt, I saw two black bears.  One was on a trail camera from the kill site and the other was roughly about 600 yards away.  The bear at the kill site was clearly a black bear and the other was not.  The second bear was a black bear in cinnamon and blonde.  This gave the bear the appearance of a brown bear.  There are no brown bears in Utah, or so they say (just like the wolves!).

Let's talk about the first bear, the one that was at the elk kill site.  This bear was doing nothing wrong, just being a bear and eating the left overs from a fresh elk carcass.  I set up a trail camera at this location to see what might come in.  We did not see too many sign's of predators while we were hunting, so this was a good way to see what the threat for us might be.  This bear was a great textbook example of what a black bear looks like.

 

Photo by: Scott Mogilefsky

Black bears coloration can be blonde, reddish (commonly known as cinnamon), black, brown, dark brown, blue-black and even white.  There is no distinctive hump in their front shoulders like you would see in a brown bear.  Their backside rump area is a little taller than the front portion of the bear's body.  The ears are tall and the face has a straighter profile.  Black bears can be around 5 feet tall when they stand on their hind feet and their body weight can range from 110lbs-400lbs (depending on the time of year and region they are located in).

 

Now this will bring us to bear number two I saw on the elk hunt this year.  I was lucky to see him about 600 yards from where I was.  This bear was a joy to watch.  He was a little clumsy and not very graceful, which was an indication he was a younger bear.  The coloration of this bear is a great example of a black bear in cinnamon and blonde.  When I first saw him, the first thing I looked at was the profile of his face and the absence of the hump brown bears have.

 

Photo by: Scott Mogilefsky


Notice the facial features?  Notice the facial profile?  The ears?  The rump?  These are the physical characteristics you want to focus on more so than the color of the animal.

 

Photo by: Scott Mogilefsky

 

Photo by: Scott Mogilefsky

It is easy to understand how people could mistake this animal as a brown bear instead of a black bear.  It is important for everyone who enjoys the outdoors to know what animals are in the areas they are going to visit.  This bear was no threat to me, there was plenty of distance between us and I think he was more curious about me than I was about him.  If he was a threat, the best method of self defense would have been to keep a good distance between us.  If that didn't work, then deploy bear spray.  After seeing the bear in this area, I determined the area was no longer safe to elk hunt in.  If you do see a bear while hunting, keep in mind it will be interested in the same thing you are.  If I did get an elk down in this area, our recovery effort of the animal would be risky due to the bear's peaked interest.  At this point, there was no reason to continue on a hunt where I could not safely recover the meat without risk of a bear encounter or loss of meat.