Bowhunter shoots giant 770-pound black bear in New Jersey

Well before sunrise on October 15, Brian Melvin sat 15 feet high in a climbing tree, holding his 70-pound bow and waiting for a huge black bear he knew was nearby.

“At first light I saw him crossing a country road and then walking down a path I knew he was using,” says Melvin, 39. Outdoor living. ‘With many cameras I modeled him walking through a corridor between a small swamp area and a bait station.

“I knew it was only active in the early morning, and last Tuesday I was in the right tree at the right time at 7 a.m.”

It didn’t take long for the bear to present Melvin with an opportunity from 45 yards out. Melvin drew his Hoyt bow, anchored and sent a heavy 535-grain arrow with a Serv 2.0 broadhead deep into the bear’s chest – right behind his shoulder.

“It was a perfect hit and the arrow went deep into his lungs,” said Melvin, a sales engineer from West Orange, New Jersey. ‘But the arrow was not completely missed. I saw him running away, crossing a road and heading towards a large rock wall in dense, tangled forests.

Melvin immediately called his best friend Adam Mavromatis, who was nearby.

“Adam immediately came to my stand and we tracked the bear together,” says Melvin. “The blood trail was heavy and we followed it very close to houses in the countryside. He even traveled between two houses, within 200 feet of houses.”

They followed the bear to a large rock wall, where they saw it lying. Melvin says the Bruin was probably down for good, but he shot a second arrow into the bear at 20 yards just to be sure.

The dead bear was located close to private homes, and Melvin had promised landowners that he would not dress the bear near their property, which could have become a dire situation because dragging a huge brown bear like this is not an easy task .

Fortunately, the dead bear was at the top of a hill and the hunters were able to roll it into a plastic sled and drive it down a ramp to their truck, where it was loaded into the bed.

“The hardest part was dressing the bear, which we did at a friend’s house,” says Melvin. “It took us seven men to get him on a hoist in a garage and then dress him in the field.”

Melvin decided to dress the bear quickly because the temperature was getting high and he didn’t want the bear meat to spoil. From the garage, the hunters took the dressed bear to the Green Pond control state to register it with the state.

“At Green Pond they officially weighed the bear at 770.5 pounds,” says Melvin. “They also took a tooth to age the bear, and they will let me know how old he is.”

Melvin says his bear is of record size, with an estimated live weight of more than 900 pounds.

“Even gutted, my bear is 70 pounds heavier than any other taken by an archery hunter,” Melvin claims. “The heaviest live-weight bear captured by any means weighs approximately 825 pounds.”

Melvin says a standard black bear clothed weight calculation to calculate its live weight involves adding 18 percent of the clothed weight. This would put Melvin’s NJ bear at over 700 pounds – a size closer to that of a large grizzly bear.

“He was definitely a giant,” Melvin says. “I had ten bait stations set up and over twenty cameras trying to keep up with him. He had a real taste for sweets and loved bait. He didn’t like meat, such as fish heads, in his bait piles.

New Jersey does not allow bear hunters to be within 100 yards of a bait station. So Melvin looked for hunting locations among thick swamp areas and bait to ambush his porpoise.

Melvin says he heard about the giant bear three years ago and actively targeted him for the previous two seasons. The bear lived in swamps, but moved far and often from area to area. Melvin killed the bear on private property and requested permission to enter wherever the bear traveled.

New Jersey has one of the densest black bear populations in the Lower 48. But despite an estimated bear population of more than 3,000, the state hasn’t had a hunting season in years. New Jersey reopened black bear hunting in 2022 after settling lawsuits filed by anti-hunting groups.

Read next: Photos from New Jersey’s bear season, the highly controversial hunt that wasn’t

Melvin has a taxidermist make a full-body mount of the bear.

“I’ll never get a chance at a bigger black bear than this,” he says, chuckling. ‘I’m going to build a new house in a year or so, and I think I’ll have to have that brown in there somewhere.

“I was pretty obsessed with getting that bear and my fiancée is happy that I finally got it. However, I don’t know how she will feel about where my stuffed bear will be in our new home.