100 years of Michigan bear hunting – a success story

Don Brown harvested this bear in 2024 on his 80-acre homestead in Rapid River. (Photo courtesy of Don Brown)
On a cold, rainy fall afternoon in 2019, veteran bear hunter Elijah Keller and a friend had spent hours tracking a black bear through the western Upper Peninsula woods.

Soaked and exhausted, the men hustled along to keep up with Keller’s two hounds, at one point sprinting up a hill when the male bear – called a boar – turned to rush the dogs.