If you think all bears are bigger out west, then check this out. Bob McNally with Outdoor Life reported that Cecil Jackson, a 69-year-old just-retired utility worker from Pineville, Kentucky, climbed into his elevated Millennium hunting blind on October 24 — opening day of archery bear season in the southeast Kentucky Appalachians — fully expecting to shoot a deer. He’d seen a few bears on his trail cameras but never planned to take one, since he carried no gun to track a wounded animal. Then a fawn strolled down the mountain trail, snapped its head up at something behind it, and bolted; thirty yards later a bear appeared, gave Jackson one deciding look, and turned after the fawn — at which point his Ravin crossbow did the talking. The bear ran off into a thicket, leaving barely a blood trail, so Jackson called his friend Tanner, who happened to be carrying a pistol, and the two spent that night following faint sign through the woods — a slow go, since Cecil is colorblind — until they spotted the bear lying off the path and realized they couldn’t even lift its head.
Getting the animal home became its own adventure: six adults, a rope rigged on a block, a truck barely manhandled onto a tailgate and coaxed out of a low spot in four-wheel drive, and finally a tractor to haul it off the mountain, all wrapped up around 11 p.m. The next day, James Dixon with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources checked the bear, which field dressed at an estimated 500-plus pounds, measured 105 inches — nearly nine feet — nose to tail, and packed a 33-inch neck. Dixon said he’d never seen a bear that big and believed it was the heaviest taken in Kentucky this year, with a head that may be record-worthy. Jackson gave the meat and hide to friends but may keep the skull for a European mount — which, if that head pans out, would be a fitting trophy for the man who proved the East grows giants too.
Check out pictures of this beast here.
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