Thought this info may be of interest since folks have asked in the past where the best place to go for trophy black bears is.

I was at the ADF&G statewide office yesterday picking up a personal use sockeye and king crab permit and noticed the results of a black bear study on Kuiu Island they had posted on the wall.

The most interesting statistic I gleaned was that the largest black bear skulls in the State come from Unit 2 (POW Island) and the 2nd largest skulls come from Unit 3 (Kuiu Island, et. al.)

The full study tracked the number of bears taken on Kuiu and what the average skull size was. Remember all hides must be sealed and skulls brought in to ADF&G for examination by hunters, so their data should be pretty damn good. They only had about 8 years of data, but some of the other stats I gleaned were: (1) the number of bears taken on Kuiu is increasing annually, the number/percentage of bears taken by out-of-staters is increasing, the average size of bear skulls is decreasing. The study did not indicate any changes in management strategy by ADF&G. To my knowledge they do not manage game stocks for trophy size, only game numbers. It did not appear that the study tried to determine any effects logging has on black bear numbers either - both POW and Kuiu are heavily logged (Clear cut.) To my knowledge, ADF&G has never tried to determine the importance of old-growth stands on black bear population. It definately affects deer and salmon populations, though.

Seems like the Black Bear love the clearcuts as they come back in with heavy berry brush for some years untill they get a regrowth canopy. Then the old clearcut becomes of no use to the Bear or Deer with no food under there.

Actually the ADF&G has put a non-resident cap (kinda) on Kuiu. When the kill reaches 120 non-residents can't hunt. A crackdown on illeagle transporter activity, in recent years has slowed the Kuiu kill down as they were responsible for a lot of hunting pressure.

The POW Island kill is also climbing and skull size is going down. A very large percent of the kill is non-residents. 100% of the bait permits (this season, unit #2) were issued to non-residents. Also illeagle transporter activity has been in the trooper spotlight.