what is the average age expectancy of a bear?

[ferjr]

i was just going through some of my hunting albums and saw a tooth analyis card from the washington fish and game on a bear that i shot in 1992, my senior year in high school. the bear was aged at 15.5 years old and was over 400lbs. how old do bears actually live?

[livetohunt]

The average lifespan in the wild is 18 years. The record age of a wild specimen was 31 years, while that in captivity was 44 years.

[ferjr]

damn, i never figured them to live that old. the bear i shot was 15.5 years old and its teeth were about wore down to nothing. i shot it on a bait and when it came in it was wheezing and sounded like it couldnt hardly breath, i dont think it would have made it another winter.

[Nolte]

"What is the average age expectancy of a bear?"

Well if it's a boar with genetically big feet that lives on public land in WI, it's pretty luck to make it to 4. Real Lucky.

In MI, I would bump that number down to 3 or less.


A guy I hunt with shot a 200lb dry sow that aged 28, I believe. A different guy got one that was 22. I shot a sow back a few years that was 9 and some friends bagged a nice boar that was 18. So I think it ranges all over. For boars I'd about bet that 20 is tops and maybe 30 for sows, but then it all depends on a bunch of factors.

I saw show or read an article that was talking about the bear that the MN DNR follows for studies. I thought I saw/read that they had a sow that lived in a pretty heavily hunted area but had lived to over 20. Now they only bait sit, but she was still kickin. They were hoping she would make it through again this year. They get their unders in a bunch when a hunter bags one of "their study" bears. They must not realize that it's hunters dollars that allow them to do the study in the first place. And if one gets whacked, just put a collar on another one. People in other industries would call that job security.

[HoundDawg]

A local bear study I read that was done here in Utah by a long time bear researcher, if I remember correctly he tracked a Sow somewhere here in Utah that lived to be well into her 20's... and I believe she was still having cubs into her early 20's. I've read a couple of bear studies and I think that was the one from here in Utah, but I could be getting them mixed up...

The bull elk I killed two years ago was aged by the DWR at 18 years old. I never figured a bull elk could live that long around here.

A friend of mine had a big bear that would show up on his place from time to time, and there was no mistaking this bears track. He saw that bear off and on for fifteen years or so on his place and it was fully mature when he first saw the track... so he always figured that bear had some age on him.

[RIFLEMAN]

My first bear was tooth-aged at 21 years old...older than I was at the time.

[livetohunt]

I went back and looked at the web site where I took them numbers from, looks like thats the average for all black bears in North America.

[ZeluvaRIP69er]

The School House Bear dad and I caught in Alpine was over 21. It was the oldest one we had caught, one of the biggest ones I had seen.

[bob baldwin jr]

The oldest we ever had tested was 19 years old weighed 330 dressed out .Boar . certainly could have used a set of dentures But not sure if it could have ate anything going into it's 20th year . I personally have never pulled a bears tooth ,But when we looked at the mouth we could tell it was bad . Had a warden with the right equipment do the job .I recall him saying that it was NOT unusual for them to reach 25 years old. This bear may have been sick also as I recall while field-dressing the gut kit really STUNK. We kept the hide but were afraid to eat the meat ,Let alone feed it to the hounds.

[bob baldwin jr]

The oldest we ever had tested was 19 years old weighed 330 dressed out .Boar . certainly could have used a set of dentures But not sure if it could have ate anything going into it's 20th year . I personally have never pulled a bears tooth ,But when we looked at the mouth we could tell it was bad . Had a warden with the right equipment do the job .I recall him saying that it was NOT unusual for them to reach 25 years old. This bear may have been sick also as I recall while field-dressing the gut kit really STUNK. We kept the hide but were afraid to eat the meat ,Let alone feed it to the hounds. This was also the shortest chase we ever did .Hounds blew up we put them out , the bear must have just crossed in front of us as the chase was only 50 yards .The bear was on a skidder road and bayed up acting real MEAN. Not sure what this bear may have weighed in its PRIME . I have often thought that one was defineately on the downside of life.Probably HURTING real bad at the time .Mean and angry YES ,but not jumping around and charging like you would have assumed a bayed bear would . Perhaps we did it a favor by putting it down

[007pennpal]

My friend had one from Idaho aged at 25 years. It was big and had real bad teeth. I've heard their lifespan compared to horses.
Sean

[beardog-treed]

The first bear I ever treed alone was aged at 22 years, and she had 2 cubs with her. They were relocated away from the cornfields.

[ferjr]

hell, i thought the bear that i shot was old, it was 15.5 years old, its teeth were about totally wore out and when it came in on the bait it was wheezing and sounded like it could hardly breath. i dont beleive this bear would have lived another year. i guess they are like people, age varies depending om many different factors. my dad told me he killed one some time back that was 22 years old, i thought he was feeding me a line of b.s., i guess i was wrong.

[Brianshounds]

the oldest iv seen was cought in WA. pre. 1996, it was aged by F&G. they said it was 26 yrs old

[plottpappaw]

we just got the paper work back from the biologist on a bear we killed last year the bear was 24. killed one the other day with completly flat teeth so we'll see how that one ages.