Nate Miller knows exactly where he’ll be hunting on Nov. 22, the opening day of Pennsylvania’s black bear gun season. Miller, who lives in Rochester Township, learned about the Butler County location from his friend Dan Druchel. His friend saw the Good Bear sign on a rolling oak ridge on some nearby public land.
“Dan gave me some coordinates for the area and that’s where I was going that morning,” Miller told outdoor living. “I walked along the wire and then up the ridge and there were a lot of white and red acorns on the ground. There were a lot of deer sightings there.”
Miller initially thought the bear weighed about 300 pounds. Close to 700 actually. Photo courtesy of Nate Miller
After climbing the ridge and glazing the area where the bear was, Miller sat on the ground next to a tree until about 8:30 a.m. An hour later, he was walking further along Oak Ridge, stopping to look for bears when he saw a dark object about 70 yards away.
“I saw black hair and double-checked it with binoculars to make sure it was a bear,” said Miller, 38, a construction worker. “Yeah, so I leaned against a tree to stabilize a .30-06 Remington Model 721 that my wife Ashley loaned me.”
He shot the bear three times and watched it disappear. Miller was shaking and called his wife to tell her what had happened. He then walked over to where the brown bear had been standing when he was shot. He found some blood and then saw the bear, which had rolled down the hill and hit a log pile.
Nate Miller with the approximately 717-pound black bear he tagged in Pennsylvania. Photo courtesy Nate Miller
He tagged the bear and called some friends to let them know he had taken a bear he thought weighed about 300 pounds. When his friends came to help him drag it out, they realized he had seriously underestimated its size.
Miller’s brother Jason, his friends Dan Druschel and Drew Ireland and his son Shawn came to help. They brought a sled with a smooth bottom and dragged the beast over the hilly terrain, but it still took more than four hours to free the bear. Four state park staff met the group and helped pull the sled the last few hundred yards.
Some state park workers helped Miller and his friends drag the bear the last few hundred yards from the woods. Photo courtesy Nate Miller
Next, the bear was checked out by the state game department at the Venago County station, where Miller’s wife posed for photos with him and shared her excitement.
“I used the same Remington rifle she used while carrying a 160-pound bear in Maine on our honeymoon in 2019,” Miller said. “I also shot a bear on that trip, but it only weighed 130 pounds—hers was bigger than mine…but Ashley has won some competitions with that rifle—ever since she got it as a graduation gift from Westmoreland College.”
The bear is 7 feet 5 inches long and weighs 608 pounds when fully dressed. Its estimated live weight was 717 pounds, making it the heaviest black bear captured in the state this year, according to the Pennsylvania Wildlife Commission. (Other bear seasons last until December 7, so larger bears may be harvested.)
Nate Miller and his wife, Ashley, load the bear into their truck. Photo courtesy Nate Miller
Nate will have a full-body mount made from his giant bear, and his meat will be processed by a butcher. He also plans to measure the skull after a 60-day drying period.
He knows bears are a once-in-a-lifetime animal, but he said he would be happy to harvest a bear of almost any size, especially since only 3 percent of Pennsylvania bear hunters are out during a typical season.
“All I asked the big guy upstairs this season was to see a bear. And he gave me this incredible gift.”