A hunting group killed a giant black bear on the second day of the 2022-23 hunting season, erasing a 30-year-old record. Jeff Teague and his hunting group killed a 695-pound black bear on Oct. 18, 2022, the second day of the season. Caleb Henry was the hunter who fired the shot and officially is the record-holder. The group was hunting in Haywood County. The bear is the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission record for the largest bear in the western region of the state. Teague’s bear broke the record by 7 pounds. 

Henry said the bear didn’t go to waste, as the hunting party divvied it up for meals. “We eat about every bit of the meat we can off of it,” he said. 

Teague said the region is “blessed with bears” and families have hunted them for decades. Like many other families in the area and Southeast, they live off the land as much as possible. “Last year, I think we had 28 quarts of bear meat,” Teague added. “We rely on bear and deer here, and we don’t buy much meat out of the store.”