Hunter mounts huge black bear
KARNS CITY — Visitors to the Kiser household will be greeted by one of the largest black bears ever killed in Pennsylvania, towering over them as they walk through the foyer.
“It's going to greet you as you walk in the door. I have it standing, and it's 8 feet, 2 inches tall,” said Timothy Kiser, who shot the bear last year and had it mounted.
“I'm 6-foot-1 and I look like a midget standing next to that bear.”
Kiser bagged the 714-pound male black bear, estimated to be about 15 years old, on Nov. 19 near Bradys Bend in Armstrong County. The bear was preserved by Lee's Taxidermy in Mercer, with the work being done last month.
Though the bear is in Kiser's garage until he can move it into the house, the trophy already has attracted a lot of attention.
“I've probably had 100 people (in the garage to see the bear), so far,” Kiser said.
The Boone and Crockett Club, which promotes wildlife and habitat conservation with a focus on big game, rates Kiser's black bear as the 7th largest taken in Pennsylvania, and tied for 16th largest taken in the world.
The rating is made by skull measurement, not weight, and Kiser's bear measured 22 11/16 inches, which is measured by both length of skull, without lower jaw, and the greatest width of skull.
“It was luck. I'll never hear the end of it. I have a lot of friends who hunt bear, and they never have gotten one,” Kiser said.
Kiser said he has been buying a bear hunting license for about 12 years, since he moved to Karns City, and started seeing bears on his property, but he doesn't actively hunt them.
“I was out looking for a deer I'd shot during archery season that I thought had wandered into the (nearby) corn field. The farmer hadn't picked his corn yet, so I was going to go back to the house and, when I turned around, I saw the bear up on a hill,” Kiser said.
“I knew it was big. I wasn't sure what I was seeing at first. I thought I was looking at one of the neighbor's cows. Then, it turned and I saw it was a bear. I pulled up and shot. That's how fast it happened. It was only about a 10-minute hunt.”
Kiser's .270-caliber rifle, fired from about 175 yards found its mark, and the bear fled about 50 yards into the corn field before dropping. It was pulled out of the field with a winch and loaded into the bucket of a backhoe before being lifted into Kiser's truck and taken to a processing station.
“Before I got there, I had to stop and get gas, and I had a swarm of people around the truck at the gas station in Chicora,” Kiser said.
Despite the bear's size, it yielded only about 90 pounds of usable meat, which Kiser had made into hot sausage.
“The fat on that bear was eight inches thick the whole way around it. It was ready for the winter,” he said.
Although Kiser bought a license for this year's black bear rifle season, which runs Nov. 17 and Nov. 19-21 in and around Butler County, and has seen several bears on his property already, he won't be actively trying to top last year's trophy.
“I've got my license, but I think that one's probably enough. I don't really care if I see (a bear) or not,” he said.
