First bear encounter.
After a long day in the Ocala national forest of hoping and praying to see something exciting I finally saw my first bear in the wild. The 2 animals I really have been hoping to see is a bear and Florida panther. I crossed one off my list Saturday. So excited. These came from my iPhone as I really botched my camera pictures. I was playing with my ISO earlier and didn't change it so all my pictures came out as just black pages. Oh well, I still have the iPhone pictures. I'm still learning. I was about 15 feet from this bear. It was much bigger then it looks in the picture. My wife first said it looks like a baby. Then she got a good look and said "Oh my, it's huge".
The rule of thumb for Black bears is If the ears look big and are on the top of the head then it's a young (small?) bear.
Congratulations on your first. Good luck on finding a panther.
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jstampa wrote:
After a long day in the Ocala national forest of hoping and praying to see something exciting I finally saw my first bear in the wild. The 2 animals I really have been hoping to see is a bear and Florida panther. I crossed one off my list Saturday. So excited. These came from my iPhone as I really botched my camera pictures. I was playing with my ISO earlier and didn't change it so all my pictures came out as just black pages. Oh well, I still have the iPhone pictures. I'm still learning. I was about 15 feet from this bear. It was much bigger then it looks in the picture. My wife first said it looks like a baby. Then she got a good look and said "Oh my, it's huge".
After a long day in the Ocala national forest of h... (
show quote)
Congrats ! .......you will need to use a night trail camera to get a wild panther
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jstampa wrote:
After a long day in the Ocala national forest of hoping and praying to see something exciting I finally saw my first bear in the wild. The 2 animals I really have been hoping to see is a bear and Florida panther. I crossed one off my list Saturday. So excited. These came from my iPhone as I really botched my camera pictures. I was playing with my ISO earlier and didn't change it so all my pictures came out as just black pages. Oh well, I still have the iPhone pictures. I'm still learning. I was about 15 feet from this bear. It was much bigger then it looks in the picture. My wife first said it looks like a baby. Then she got a good look and said "Oh my, it's huge".
After a long day in the Ocala national forest of h... (
show quote)
Very nice, jstampa. You won't see a Panther in Ocala National Forest. You have to come south to my area. Had one walk in front of my cabin a few weeks ago. It was raining too hard, and could not get a shot. But I have seen them here and got some shots. We have plenty of Black Bears also, had one out front at 5:30 this morning. They are getting active now and looking for food. They have to eat 20,000 calories a day now to get ready for the cold weather in winter.
jstampa wrote:
After a long day in the Ocala national forest of hoping and praying to see something exciting I finally saw my first bear in the wild. The 2 animals I really have been hoping to see is a bear and Florida panther. I crossed one off my list Saturday. So excited. These came from my iPhone as I really botched my camera pictures. I was playing with my ISO earlier and didn't change it so all my pictures came out as just black pages. Oh well, I still have the iPhone pictures. I'm still learning. I was about 15 feet from this bear. It was much bigger then it looks in the picture. My wife first said it looks like a baby. Then she got a good look and said "Oh my, it's huge".
After a long day in the Ocala national forest of h... (
show quote)
Congratulations on getting your bear...hope you get the panther too
Congrats. I would have been too excited to shoot!
Great photos! Imho, being 15 feet away from one of those would scare me. If it's a baby, then Mama must be close by.
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