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GORHAM – Hunters don’t often kill black bears in Cumberland County, where only 37 of them had been killed since 1987 and none since 1995.
The dry spell ended in a big way last week, when Ray Martel shot a 453-pound black bear in Gorham. Martel, 27, knew he shot a big bear, but the Massachusetts native didn’t realize how big until he and three other men tried unsuccessfully to lift it.
Martel’s shot Thursday didn’t set a state record, but it would have been a big bear any place in North America, said state wildlife biologist Craig McLaughlin.
By Friday afternoon more than 100 people – many with cameras – had came to see the huge bear.
By the time Martel, who grew up in Fairhaven, Mass., went to a local store for lunch Thursday, everyone already had heard the news.
“They all congratulated me,” he said. “By lunchtime, the whole mill at S.D. Warren was buzzing about it.”
A stream of people kept coming Thursday and Friday, said Eddie Benson, who owns the farm.
“It’s unusual to see a bear in Gorham at all,” Benson said, “but it’s weird to see a bear this big.”
Martel set out to hunt deer around 7 a.m. Thursday, heading for a tree stand behind the Kay-Ben dairy farm, where he has worked as a herdsmen for three years. He must have disturbed the bear at rest, he said, because it suddenly popped up about 15 yards ahead of him.
“At first I thought it was the shadow of a deer,” Martel said. “Then it stepped out from behind a bush and I got a real clear view of it. I just thought, `Oh, my God it’s a bear.’ You never in a million years expect to see a bear in the woods – especially down here.”
Martel said fear was the last thing on his mind as he aimed his Remington rifle at the large animal and shot it twice in the chest and once in the head.
“When you’re in the woods with a gun in your hand, you don’t really fear much,” Martel said Saturday. “The odds are in your favor.”
McLaughlin, who is the bear specialist at the state Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, said the largest bear he has seen in the past 20 years weighed 680 pounds and was shot near Fort Kent in 1993.
“Any time a bear over 400 pounds is taken it’s an event – I don’t care where you are in the state or in the country really,” said McLaughlin,
There are an estimated 23,000 bears in Maine, and hunters kill more than 2,000 a year. Most are taken in the first two months of the bear-hunting season, which begins Aug. 25 and ends Nov. 29. But about 250 are shot each year by hunters looking for deer.
Martel said he planned to have the bear mounted on all fours – just the way he saw it.
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