At 700 pounds, black bear killed in New Jersey sets world record

A 700-pound black bear killed by bow on private land in Morris County, N.J., has set a world record for North American black bear, besting the mark set in 1993, according to a national organization.

The bear’s size didn’t surprise at least one hunting advocate who said the high weight is the result of state restrictions on hunting that allow bears to multiply and get dangerously big.

To determine if the bear was a record, the Pope & Young Club hosted a special panel for judging in Harrisburg on Feb. 8 during the Great American Outdoors Show. Pope & Young, based in Minnesota, is recognized as the official repository for records on bow-harvested North American big game animals, the group says. It maintains a scoring system and sets standards.

The organization named New Jersey resident Jeff Melillo as the hunter who bagged the bear.

“It has been an inspiring journey, to say the least,” Melillo said in a Pope & Young release. “New Jersey, my home state, has its First-Ever World Record Animal!”

The bear was shot on Oct. 14. It surpasses the previous bow-hunting world record shot by Robert J. Shuttleworth Jr. in Mendocino County, Calif., on Sept. 4, 1993, according to Pope & Young.

Melillo told Pope & Young that he had read an article in Outdoor Life magazine stating that a world record black bear would likely come some day from New Jersey.

“They were spot on, and I never doubted it for one second. I’m very grateful that I get to be a part of all this. Pursuing bears with bow and arrow is a passion of mine,” he said.

Rick Mowery, a spokesperson for Pope & Young, said it is the first record archery kill of an animal from New Jersey.

Mowery said the size of the bear was a testament to good wildlife management by the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife.

The bear, preserved through taxidermy, will be displayed at the Pope & Young Annual Convention in Virginia in March.

Eli Randall, records director for the Pope and Young Club, said the bear’s skull measured more than 23 inches.

Cody McLaughlin, vice president of the New Jersey Outdoor Alliance, a hunting and conservation advocacy group, said the bear’s size is an indicator that New Jersey’s wildlife management laws are allowing the animal populations to grow unchecked, causing increased potential for human contact.

New Jersey’s black bear hunt has become controversial the past few years since Gov. Phil Murphy pledged to end it. Murphy, who found it hard to completely ban the hunt, prohibited it on state lands in 2018. So hunters must get permission from private landowners.

McLaughlin said the bear population is now growing, and the animals are bigger, because the hunts are so limited geographically.

“It’s important to note that it’s not an accident that the new record bear came out of New Jersey,” McLaughlin said. “And that’s because our bear population has never been thicker, especially when you take away 40% of the land people can hunt on. There’s nothing stopping these bears from growing to enormous sizes. This needs to be a wake up call.”

Environmental groups are one of the biggest forces behind banning hunting altogether, and also find fault with Murphy’s decision to institute a ban only on public lands. The New Jersey Sierra Club is still pushing for the ban.

“There have been many commitments that Murphy made during his campaign like ending the NJ bear hunt … but there hasn’t been much progress,” the Sierra Club said in a recent statement.