After helping several clients get their bears this year, Nate Mooers, 24, of Hammond Plantation decided it was time to do some hunting for himself.
He is owner/operator of Howe Brook Guide Service.
Mooers had been seeing a big bear show up on cameras at his bait sites overnight, but never saw the animal during the day. The bear was inconsistent on the bait. He was nocturnal and only showed up about once a week, Mooers said.
What he was doing was not going to work for this one.
So Mooers and his father Chris Mooers set a trap Friday night to see what would happen. The next morning, they saw they had snared the biggest bear they had ever seen.
“I’ve been around bears my whole life and I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Mooers, who used to go with his grandfather Randy Mooers when he was maintaining bait sites for his own guide service. His grandfather helps him out now here and there, he said.
The big boar weighed in at 535 pounds, the biggest bear harvested so far this year in Maine, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife told Mooers. Although it wasn’t near the state record of 699 pounds established in 2012, it was much bigger than most bears being harvested in 2024.
For perspective, the next biggest bear Mooers has seen this year belonged to one of his clients and weighed in at 270 pounds.
Mooers took the bear carcass to Tapley’s Processing in Island Falls for butchering and packaging. Cody Gould of Crown of Maine Taxidermy in Hodgdon is doing a shoulder mount, which Mooers plans to hang in his lodge for the guide service.
He sent a tooth to the state to find out how old the big bruin is.
Mooers, who eats bear meat, said his favorite way to prepare it is as breakfast sausage.
He shot the bear with a 7mm PRC, a new rifle that Hornady began manufacturing in 2022.
“It’s the biggest one I’ve ever laid eyes on, dead or alive,” he said.
