This is an awesome bear..... But with my personal experience in bear hunting, butchering the bear ASAP after the kill is very important for top quality bear meat. What bothers me is how stiff his front legs are.... How long was he down before they recovered him? With the 3 to 4 inches of fat that this aninal would have been hauling under his coat, it takes forever forthe bear to cool with the hide on...
The best bear meat I have ate, was skinned and quartered in under an hour... This meat will be all right but it won't be the best tasting.....
He only traveled 25 yards, after the one shot through both lungs.
It probably took them (13 guys) a good part of the day to get him out of the woods. 535 pound bears don't usually hang around the back of your pickup truck, waiting for a ride, and they don't drag too easy. Pike County, PA is full of swamps, so I would guess this one was shot a ways back, along the swamp. And if you know anything about swamps, you almost always have to walk down hill to get to them, and up hill to get out of them.
I don't know about other states, but PA Game Commission has done miracles building the number of Black Bears in the state.
One of the ways they do this, is by having a Game Commission Biologist carefully gut the Bear at one of their numerous check-points, so he can inspect the sexual organs, the teeth, and other biological happenings. Gary Aldt was the foremost authority in the country on Black Bears, and he was instrumental in this whole plan. It is illegal to gut your own Bear in PA.
So it would be kinda hard to get a 500+ pound bear from a few miles from the nearest road, to a check-point maybe 20 to 40 miles from your hunting spot in an hour. You just gotta do what you gotta do, and hope for the best.
All things considered, just getting him there in the same day is an accomplishment.
Bear