This year, Nate Mooers, 24, of Hammond Plantation helped several clients get their bears. He then thought it was time to go hunting himself.
He owns and runs Howe Brook Guide Service.
When Mooers set up his bait sites at night, cameras caught a big bear. But Mooers never saw the bear during the day. The bear wasn’t always interested in the food. Mooers said he only came out at night and once a week at most.
His plan wasn’t going to work for this one.
Mooers and his dad, Chris Mooers, set a trap on Friday night to see what would happen. They saw the largest bear they had ever caught the next morning.
“I’ve lived my whole life around bears, but I’ve never seen anything like it,” Mooers said. He used to go with his grandpa Randy Mooers when he was taking care of bait sites for his own guide service. He said that his grandfather helps him out every once in a while.
The big boar weighed 535 pounds and was the largest bear caught in Maine so far this year, according to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. It wasn’t even close to the state record of 699 pounds set in 2012, but it was still much bigger than most bears killed in 2024.
Mooers has seen a lot of bears this year. The next biggest one belonged to one of his clients and weighed 270 pounds.
Mooers took the dead bear to Tapley’s Processing in Island Falls so that it could be killed and packed up. A shoulder mount is being done by Cody Gould at Crown of Maine Taxidermy in Hodgdon. Mooers wants to hang it in his lodge for the guide service.
He gave the state a tooth to find out how old the big guy is.
Mooers, who eats bear meat, said that breakfast sausage is his favorite way to cook it.
A new gun called a 7mm PRC, which Hornady started making in 2022, was used to kill the bear.
“I’ve seen bigger ones before, both alive and dead,” he said.