The bear was easing its way toward Shahan's position when it stopped behind a treetop, which was 40 yards away from his stand. Allen Shahan realized the wind was in his favor, but he was concerned that the bear had suddenly caught some scent and was testing the thermals. After four or five minutes, the mammoth black bear again started toward him at a deliberate pace.

Shahan picked a spot where he was going to shoot the bear if it continued on its present bearing. As the bear approached, Shahan drew the Easton 2213 back on his Hoyt Extreme to full draw. When the bear reached the spot, Shahan focused on his target spot on the big bruin and released the arrow.

As soon as the Rocky Mountain three-blade broadhead hit the bear, quartering through from in behind the left shoulder, the massive bear let out a deep resonating growl and took off down over the mountainside like a runaway coal truck. Shahan listened intently as the bear went out of sight. After all the initial commotion settled down, he heard something sliding down the hill and then coming to an abrupt stop.

After lowering his bow down from his stand, then climbing down, Shahan nocked another arrow and went to where the bear had been. There wasn't any blood at first, but he could easily make out the bear's escape route. As the hunter broke the crest of the ridge, he could see a log road that cut along the hill below his stand. Dropping down on the skid road, he picked up where the bear had momentarily stopped at the edge of the road.

Peering over the edge, his concern turned to elation as he spotted the bear piled up on the uphill side of a sugar maple. The bear had come careening down the hillside, crossed the log road and then rolled another 30 yards down the mountain before coming to a final rest against a tree. After reaching the incredibly large animal, Shahan checked to make certain that all vestiges of life were gone before starting to admire the huge bear, which had tested his skill and nerve over the past four seasons.

The huge bruin ended up tipping the scales at a staggering 475 pounds field dressed, which by most accounts would put the live weight of the bear at between 540 to 560 pounds! The bear measures 7 feet long from the tip of his snout to the end of its tail and was almost 7 feet across once skinned out. It was determined that the monstrous bruin was 7 3/4 years old.

After letting the skull dry for several months, Shahan took it to Jim Evans, a wildlife biologist with the state. Biologist Evans scored the skull. The mammoth bruin's skull ended up scoring 20 9/16 inches Pope and Young (P&Y). The largest bear skull ever scored in West Virginia was 22 8/16 inches P&Y, and that bear was killed in Kanawha County in 1991 by George Murphy and C. Ryan. The bear was No. 2 in the Pope and Young book until just recently when a Wisconsin bear bumped it back to No. 3.

Looking back over the previous four to five seasons, Shahan can attest to the old time-honored axiom of "the spoils of success will come to those who are patient and persistent." Over the course of hunting for this one specific magnificent black bear, Shahan could have written off the chances of getting an opportunity on a great bear of this size, especially as the seasons started to roll by. In the end, though, Shahan's perseverance paid off. The reward is one of the largest black bears ever killed in West Virginia with bow or gun!