Nate Miller knew exactly where he’d be hunting on Nov. 22, the opening day of Pennsylvania’s black bear firearms season. Miller, who lives in Rochester Township, had learned about the spot in Butler County from his pal Dan Druschel. His friend had seen good bear sign on rolling oak ridges on some nearby public land..
“Dan gave me some coordinates of the area, and that’s where I headed that morning,” Miller tells Outdoor Life. “I walked a power line, then up onto a ridge with lots of white and red oak acorns on the ground. There were lots of deer trails.”
After climbing a ridge and glassing the area for bears, Miller sat on the ground next to a tree until around 8:30 a.m. An hour later, he was walking further along the oak ridge, stopping and looking for bears, when he saw something black about 70 yards distant.
“I saw black hair and checked it carefully with binoculars to make sure it was a bear,” says Miller, a 38-year-old construction worker. “It was, so I used a tree to lean against to steady the .30-06 Remington Model 721 rifle that my wife, Ashley, loaned me.”
He shot the bear three times, then watched it vanish. Miller was shaking, and called his wife to tell her what had happened. Then he walked to where the bruin had stood at the shot. He found some blood, then saw the bear where it had rolled down a hill against a log pile.
He tagged the bear, then called some friends to let them know he’d taken a bear that he figured weighed about 300 pounds. When his pals arrived to help him haul it out, they realized he’d severely underestimated its size.
Miller’s brother, Jason, showed up to help, along with his friends Dan Druschel and Drew Ireland, and his son, Shawn. They brought a slick-bottom sled to haul the beast over hilly terrain, but it still took more than four hours to get the bear out. Four state park employees met the group to help pull the sled the last few hundred yards.
The bear was next checked in with the state game department at a Venago County station, where Miller’s wife met him to take photos and share in the excitement.
“The Remington rifle I used was the same one she used to take a 160-pound bear in Maine for our honeymoon trip in 2019,” says Miller. “I also shot a bear that trip, but it weighed only 130 pounds — hers was bigger than mine … but that rifle of Ashley’s has taken some game – ever since she got it as a graduation gift from Westmoreland College.”
The bear measured 7 feet 5 inches long, and its dressed weight was 608 pounds. It’s estimated live weight was 717 pounds, and according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission, it’s the heaviest black bear taken in the state this year. (Other bear seasons run through Dec. 7, so a larger bear may be taken.)
Nate will have a full-body mount made of his massive bear, and he’ll have the meat processed by a butcher. He also plans to have the skull measured after the 60-day drying period has passed.
He knows the bear is a once-in-a-lifetime animal, but he says he’d have been happy to take almost any size bear, especially because only 3 percent of Pennsylvania bear hunters tag out in a typical season.
“All I asked the Big Man upstairs for this season was just to see a bear. And then he sends me this incredible gift.”
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