Tony Coley of Goldsboro shot this 210-pound bear on a still-hunt on private agricultural land near Gull Rock Game Land in Hyde County. Photo by Mike Marsh

On the opening morning of the bear season in the northeastern region of the state, Robert Nobles Jr. of Vanceboro was hunting with some fellow hunt club members at Little Pocosin hunting club. While he had taken a bear nearly every year for the past 10 seasons, that morning he did not realize he would be participating in the dream hunt of a lifetime.

"We were hunting along the border of Craven and Beaufort counties," Nobles said. "We were searching for tracks along a rock-covered road at first light. I was driving slowly along one road. On the other side of the block of land, another hunter was walking his strike dog."

A call came over the radio. The strike dog had found fresh scent. Soon the sound of hound music echoed throughout the piney timberlands.

"They said they had a chase going," he said. "I headed around to the same area and some of the boys had already gone in after the bear. He was in a reed patch, bayed by the dogs. But when the other hunters approached, the bear heard them, saw them or smelled them and busted out of there."

The dogs continued to chase the bear and bayed it several more times. But each time hunters approached, the bear took off.

"He finally got into a place where two roads made a corner," Nobles said. "He wasn't going to cross that road where he knew hunters were waiting. I had left my scoped .25-06 rifle in the truck and had carried an open-sighted Winchester .30-30 into the thick woods after the bear. I headed into the woods about 150 yards. There were about 17 dogs on the bear. But when I saw him, he began to run and went through an opening. I shot him in the head from a range of about 10 yards and he fell right there."

Nobles had killed plenty of bears, but the heaviest one weighed only 310 pounds. He had shot one at the same time as another hunter that had weighed 540 pounds and had let the other hunter claim the bear. This bear dwarfed any other bear he had seen.

"The dogs went all over him, covering him so you could hardly see him at the sound of the shot," Noble said. "They had been backed off, following along behind and that had given me a clear shot. The bear was so big that he didn't really even fall. He just slumped down onto his chest and rolled over. He was as tall lying on his side as he was when he was on his feet. I was really excited. But I had been excited from the time I heard the dogs running until I shot the bear."

A couple of other hunters were five minutes away through the brush and had been trying to get to the bayed bear. When they arrived, they helped Nobles get the dogs out of the woods and into their kennels.

The bear had fallen near a row of pines that had been cut in a thinning operation. Returning with reinforcements, Nobles and the others dragged the bear 30 yards through the opening and across a deep ditch to a waiting ATV. The ATV was used to drag the bear to a pickup truck.

"We took him to the Royster scale in Vanceboro," Nobles said. "He weighed 680 pounds. Then we took him to the Wildlife Commission's check station at Cahoon's Hardware in Pamlico County at Grantsboro. He weighed 680 pounds on the Wildlife Commission's scales, too. Their scales only go up to 500 pounds, so they had to use two scales and add the weights together."