2 DAYS, 2 BIG BEARS

Kennedy takes down monster 680-pound Taylor County bear

The first day of bear hunting for Kyla Kennedy will likely be the best the Rib Lake High School senior will ever have.

Using a bear harvest tag transferred to her by her uncle Brian Quante, Kennedy bagged a 680-pound monster in Taylor County on the morning of Friday, Sept. 10, the third day of the 2021 season and the lucky hunter’s first-ever day of bear hunting.

“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Kennedy said. “I never went bear hunting before. I’ve baited and stuff with my family and all that kind of stuff. But the hunt, it was so crazy. My adrenaline was rushing through the roof with a 680-pound bear coming at me.”

Kennedy’s hunt was coordinated by the well-known area crew that included Mike Nicks, Quante, Cole Ziehlke and Mark Decker. Working off a bait the hunters and dogs first started to work a trail left by one bear early that morning. But, Nicks said, where that bear crossed a road, they noticed an even bigger track and changed course, going after that one instead.

“It was a good thing it crossed the road, so we got lucky and found the track of this other bear,” he said.

Nicks said Ziehlke led the dogs that tracked the bear for about a mile and a half, where it crossed a road near the south end of the Mondeaux Flowage in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. Only a few yards in from that road, the dogs had the bear cornered, but the giant bruin wasn’t about to give up.

“It actually sat and fought the dogs for awhile,” Kennedy said. “A big bear like that is not going to tree. As we were walking in the woods and stuff, it charged at us two times. It was scary. There’s little Kyla out in the woods and this big thing was charging at us.

“The one thing that was on my mind was to not shoot the dogs because they are so expensive and they were jumping up and stuff,” she added. “That was one of the biggest things I was thinking. The other thing was this is one of the biggest bears and I got the opportunity to shoot that. That was awesome.”

“She did a good job. She kept her calm in all of the chaos,” Nicks said. “We were in the popple slashings, the bear and the dogs were all riled up, but she put a good shot on him and dropped him right there.”

As luck would have it, the crew barely had to drag the bear to be close enough to be winched out and it was quickly brought into Medford to be weighed. Nicks said its the second-largest bear he’s ever been involved harvesting behind a 716-pound beast Patrick Higley harvested in 2016.

“To have an opportunity like that, to shoot something like that, that’s crazy,” Kennedy said. “I would’ve been satisfied with anything at that point because I’ve never done this before. I did not expect to go in there and get something like that.

“I will never top that. I’m fine with that. That is crazy. I will never get another opportunity.”

Not surprisingly, there will be work done to remember the experience.

“I’m going to get a three-quarter mount and a skull mount too,” Kennedy said. “I was going to do the full mount, but that’s really expensive. I was going to do a rug with it too, but it was so old there wasn’t much hair on it. The paw on that thing was unbelievable. I was just amazed.”