It will take you a while to get the permit you need to hunt with Noskoviak, and I will have more to say about that in a moment. Suffice it to say, the wait is worth it if you are looking for a handsome black bear trophy, and you don't want to spend a fortune for it. Noskoviak's hunts run six days and cost $1,650, including accommodations, meals and trophy field preparation.
Noskoviak conducts his hunts from tree stands over baits. My own hunt was on private property surrounded by reservation lands. I shot my bear on the fourth day of hunting. It was one of the smaller bears taken by a Noskoviak client last year, but I was more than happy with my bruin. I didn't officially score the animal, and Noskoviak is not big on doing that for all of his hunters, preferring to use a bear's weight as a measure of its trophy size.
His largest bear last season was a 392-pounder. Last year, someone on a neighboring property took a bruin weighing a whopping 688 pounds! Bears up to 500 pounds are taken in Northern Wisconsin every year.
(Editor Note: In case you are wondering what all this means for trophy hunters considering a hunt in this part of Wisconsin, we just learned that eight bears taken in Ashland and Bayfield counties in 2000 scored above the minimum for Boone & Crockett and SCI, scoring from 18-15/16 to 21-5/16. Sawyer County, which borders Bayfield down the middle of Chequamegon National Forest, produced two........(continued)
