A Pennsylvania hunter tags the season’s biggest black bear with his wife’s lucky rifle

Nate Miller knew where he wanted to hunt on Nov. 22, the opening day of Pennsylvania’s black bear gun season. Miller, who lives in Rochester Township, learned about the Butler County spot from his friend Dan Druschel. His friend had seen good bear sign while rolling an oak rock on nearby public land.

“Dan gave me some coordinates for the area, and I went that morning,” says Miller. Outdoor life. “I walked over a power line, then came to a ridge with lots of white and red oak acorns on the ground. There were lots of deer tracks.”

After climbing a rock and scouting the area for bears, Miller sat on the ground next to a tree until 8:30 a.m. An hour later, he was walking along Oak Ridge, stopping and looking for bears, when he saw something black about 70 yards away.

“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 the tree to steady the .30-06 Remington Model 721 rifle my wife Ashley had lent me.”

He shot the bear three times, then watched it disappear. Miller was shaking, and called his wife to tell her what had happened. He then walked over to where the bruin stood at the stroke. He found some blood, then saw the bear lying in a heap on a hill.

He tagged the bear, then called some friends to tell them he had taken the bear, which weighed about 300 pounds. When his friends arrived to help him out, they realized he had severely reduced 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 slick-bottom sleds to take the animal into the mountainous 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 checked in with the state Game Department at another 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 took with a 160-pound bear on our honeymoon trip to Maine in 2019,” says Miller. “I also shot a bear on that trip, but it only weighed 130 pounds — it was bigger than mine … but Ashley’s had a few games with that rifle — since she got it as a graduation gift from Westmoreland College.”

The bear was 7 feet 5 inches long, and its clothed weight was 608 pounds. It had an estimated live weight of 717 pounds, and according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission, it is the heaviest black bear taken in the state this year. (Other bear seasons run through December 7, so big bears can be taken.)

Nate will have a full-body mount made of his giant bear, and he will butcher the meat. He plans to measure the skull after the 60-day drying period is over.

He knows a bear is a once-in-a-lifetime animal, but he says he would have been happy to take a bear of almost any size, especially since only 3 percent of Pennsylvania bear hunters tag out in a typical season.

“For this season I asked the big man upstairs to see just one bear. And then he sends me this incredible gift.”