584-Pound Black Bear Stuns Chapman Station Crowd
By Kevin Rauch
NORTH BEND – It was a quiet afternoon at the Chapman Bear Check Station with only 9 bear brought in before 4:00PM, all weighing in less than 200 pounds. That all changed when Mike Gerg of Kersey backed into the Chapman Township fire station with a trophy that he will no doubt remember for the rest of his life.
The nearly two dozen hunters and enthusiasts that happened to be at the station hoping to see something memorable all drew quiet as the scale was raised, revealing that Gerg’s bear weighed in at a dressed weight of 584 pounds, putting the estimated live weight just under 700 pounds at 694.
The smiles and “oohs and ahhs” of admiration were followed by plenty of onlookers pulling their phones out to take a picture of the once in a lifetime kill.
The bear was Gerg’s first, as he said that he and his friends have hunted black bear for over ten years. The Kersey man was in Chapman Township and shot the bear around 10:00AM but it took 6 hours to get it out of the woods. As the weight popped up on the digital scale Gerg enjoyed a celebratory laugh, saying that he was guessing the weight was in the 400 plus pound area.
