A black bear recently shot and killed by hunters is the heaviest ever recorded in Halifax County and is ranked No. 12 in the state.
Tommy Sorie of Enfield presented a press release:
When Harold Jordan of Harrellsville first saw the bear, he thought the dogs had a black Angus cow bayed in the wooded area off Highway 481 near Green Acres Road northeast of Enfield. Harold fired a slug into the bear with his 20 gauge shotgun, but it wasn’t over yet.
Sorie had been monitoring a cellular trail camera he had covering a peanut field that had been harvested months before. Sorie, an avid deer hunter and lifelong resident of the area, began seeing bears looking to glean peanuts on his camera. He and Tim Tedder of Kenly, along with Irvin Ayers and Jordan of the Harrellsville area, sent hounds into the swampy area a week prior with no success. But the morning of Dec. 11, Sorie woke up to images of bears on his camera from just a few hours before. He mustered the other three men and quickly formed a plan.
At about 9:30 a.m., Ayers set his hounds on a set of bear tracks in the field, still a little muddy from the rain on Dec 10. The dogs trailed the scent for quite some time. Tedder released his dogs on the other side of the beaver pond. After about 15 minutes, his dogs picked up a scent and started to pick up their pace. The hunters sent out more hounds, 11 in all. The dogs had something cornered in the woods, and Jordan made the initial approach. Nobody expected to see the giant black bear. Once Jordan was sure it was not a cow, he fired. The bear appeared to be unfazed and scrambled away through the woods.
The dogs were hot on the bear’s heels as he led the hunters about 3/4 mile through swampy forest. About 40 yards from where Conoconnara Swamp crosses Green Acres Road, Sorie spotted the bear and fired several times with his Winchester 88 lever action rifle. The .243 Winchester had served Sorie well whitetail hunting for over 50 years, but it took several shots to finally bring the bear down. The hunters collected their hounds and approached the massive bear. Then the work began!
A side-by-side ATV was brought in to drag the bear out of the swamp to the roadside. Once at the road, passersby began to stop to see the beast up close, many taking pictures with their phones. A local farmer, Dan Wilson, passed by and commented the bear was the biggest one he had ever seen. He suggested they take the bear to Shield’s Fertilizer Co. in Scotland Neck to have the bear weighed on certified scales. There was one problem, they still had to get the monster onto a trailer. Men from the small crowd that had gathered chipped in, and the bear was rolled, pushed, and dragged onto the trailer.
According to the certified scales at Shield’s Fertilizer Co., the bear weighed a stunning 735 pounds. That broke the previous Halifax County record of 680 pounds. Despite the enormous size of the bear taken by Sorie, Tedder, Jordan and Ayers it was still a far cry from the 880 pound Craven County giant. That bear, killed in 1998, still holds the world record as the largest black bear. The bear taken by these hunters on Dec. 11, is likely the 10th largest black bear taken in North Carolina and, unless they are outdone by another hunter, it will be the new Halifax County record.
The Herald spoke with Sorie, who took down the bear that day along with his companions.
Sorie said he is the president of the Ole Mill Hunting Lodge in Enfield, where the party he was with is a member, and that is where the peanut field is located. The 74-year-old man said he grew up in the area and said this was his first year bear hunting, but his second time going to find them. Sorie said he had always wanted to hunt a bear but took the opportunity after bears began showing up more in the area on his trail cameras.
“We had been getting a significant amount of bears on our own trail cameras that we’ve been putting out for the deer,” he said.
Sorie said he has been hunting all of his life and said he had mixed emotions after killing his first bear.
“I won’t never shoot another one,” he said. “I don’t want to ever kill another one. If I had to kill one 500 pounds, I still wouldn’t have wanted to. I might want to go bear hunting again, but as far as me ever really wanting to shoot another, more than likely I will never be able to shoot another bear that big. So why do I just want to kill another one is the way I feel. I’ll never kill another bear like that.”
Sorie said he is getting some of the meat processed in Wilson and making some bear sausage and burger and will likely mount the head in the lodge.
Colleen Olfenbuttel, Black Bear & Furbearer Biologist with NC Wildlife Resources Commission, told the Herald that records going back to 1969 confirmed that it is the largest bear by weight killed in Halifax County. Olfenbuttel also said it ranks No. 12 in the state.
The largest bear killed on record in the state was a male in 1998 in Craven County weighing 880 pounds.
Olfenbuttel said the only way to age the bear Sorie killed was to pull a tooth and have a lab analyze the cementum layers — a layer that is added each year the bear lives.
“Just like counting tree rings to age a tree, the lab counts the layers to determine the bear’s age,” she said.
Olfenbuttel said they should have the age of the bear in September. She said bears became reestablished in Halifax County beginning in the 1990s and were established in all areas east of Interstate 95 by 2010. Olfenbuttel said it expanded to all of Halifax County in 2009.
