Nobles will have a full rug made of the bear's skin. His "green" skull measures 23 points, enough to make the Boone and Crockett Record Book if certified by an official scorer. He was over 8 feet long.

Still, the bear may have to share a place of honor with another bear in the Nobles family. Robert Nobles III, age 9, killed a 340-pound bear on the last day of the hunting season.

BEAR HUNTING DATA
"We still maintain our check stations at Cahoon's Hardware in Grantsboro, another one at Aurora and another one at Blount's Creek," said Mark Jones, the Wildlife Commission's bear biologist. These check stations are left over from our study done in that area in the 1990s. We continue to keep them open and are the only ones we've kept open. We continue to use them to collect bear harvest data because hunters still like to bring their bears to those locations."

The hunter check stations are very successful in adding to the data collected by the biologists who are in the field traveling to hunters who call the toll-free number during the opening week of any bear season. The number is the violations reporting number and is available for use only during the opening week. Hunters can call (800) 662-7137 and the dispatcher will relay the information over the radio to biologists who head for bear hunting areas from all across the state to conduct the harvest sampling and survey work.

"The biggest threat to bear hunting comes from anti-hunting groups," Jones said. "By collecting reproductive and age data from hunter harvested bears, we will be able to defend our bear seasons from attacks in court. We have been much luckier than in some of the other states, such as New Jersey where bear hunting has been the subject of lawsuits and legislation by anti-hunting groups. So far, it hasn't happened in North Carolina."

Lots of interesting research is being conducted in other ways. Modern forensic analysis through DNA databases collected from bear hair is helping biologists estimate bear ranges and populations.

The bears' hair is collected from barbed wire that is strung at a height of about 18 inches above the ground surrounding bait stations. The hair provides a DNA sample, allowing scientists and biologists to track individual bears without having to actually capture the bear.

"We are constantly looking at other techniques, such as using DNA by collecting hair samples," Jones said. "You can track an individual bear and track population densities. You identify individual bears in the same way that you would capture them and put ear tags on them. You plug the DNA data into models and estimate the population in the same way as a capture-tag-recapture study. You may be able to catch so many samples that you can identify 95 of the bears that are in a specific location and that can be more accurate than simply doing an estimate."

The 680-pound bear harvested by Nobles was taken in the state's Coastal Plain, the area most hunters head when they want to hunt the largest bears. Indeed, most of the state's bears are also harvested in the Coastal Plain. But while the bear habitat in the Coastal Plain is nearing its capacity, there is still some room for bear populations to increase in the mountain region.

NORTH CAROLINA'S BEAR HARVEST
In 2004, the bear harvest at the coast was 1,053, and in the mountain region the bear harvest was 444 for a total of 1,497.

That's a drop from the 2003 harvest of 1812, when 1,095 bears were harvested at the coast and 717 in the mountain region. While the harvest in 2003 was an all-time high for the state, the all-time high harvest for the coastal region occurred in 2001 (1,107 bears) and in 1997 in the mountain region (726 bears).