Color Phase of WA Bears?

[buckfvr]

Ive seen perfect superman blaze, the letter Y, and ones that look like an apron....love'em.

[Expedition Scout]

I work in a vast area of the Northeast equaling about 500,000 acres. Even in different drainage's you will see one color more than another. Some area's all I see are Black, others only color phase, then others I see both.  I think most people hunting in the same area all the time begin to make generalizations about the entire area.

[boneaddict]

Exactly

[Houndhunter]

I think lowland bears tend to be more "black" in color, but the higher up you go in elevation the color phase becomes more prevalent. Atleast from what i've seen hunting WA, thats been my conclusion

[boneaddict]

Probably because the higher you got, the closer to the east side of the mountains you got.

[Smossy]

I cant find any bears lol Someone point a brotha in the right direction for next year

[boneaddict]

Have SMG walk in front of you about 100 yards with a pound of bacon hanging from her belt.  Its a little grey whether that's considered baiting or not.

[Smossy]

Have SMG walk in front of you about 100 yards with a pound of bacon hanging from her belt.  Its a little grey whether that's considered baiting or not.

Sounds like were just hiking with a high protein snack to me.

[xXLojackXx]

I hunt the westside and all the bears i saw last year were cinnamon bears. But my buddy who hunts about a mile away from me saw nothing but black bears. Go figure.

[180-GRAIN]

Shot a blackie with a white crest 2 years ago in the Henry M Jackson. I have seen probably 300 bear in the last 8 years on the west side, only about 20 of them were color phased. I would go with about a 10 percent color phased to black on the west side. The closer to the crest trail the more color phased I have seen.

[boneaddict]

Has anyone on here seen a blue one?  Glacier bear?

[troyspinetar]

Ive seen one Black on the East side, Ive seen one Black on the West side, and Ive killed one Black and one Cinnamon with blonde stripe down its back on the West side.
Not a very good sample size. Hope to increase that this year 

[deaner]

never heard of a glacier bear, ill have to look that up.  anyway in this area id say that the 70% color phase thing is pretty accurate, maybe even a little conservative.  got myself a young cinnamon phase this year.  and heres an album of some of the bears i got on cam this summer.   pretty decent representation of the color frequencies id say. https://imgur.com/a/XCVOV

[RadSav]

In our favorite area close to the PCT, but on west side, 9 out of 10 under 250 are color phase from blonde to chocolate.  Better than 9 out of 10 over 250# are solid black.  In more than 20 years we've only seen one single sow in this spot.  She was about 100#, black as coal with a white patch and only one ear.  Maybe we've seen two others with a white patch.  1980-90's we'd see over 40 bear each year.  Since about '95 the numbers have rapidly decreased.

Closest thing to a blue bear I've seen was a near complete bald sow last year in Aladdin.  Red mop top and almost blue/bald everywhere else.  A 400+ grey bear on the Oregon Coast back in '85 was dang close to looking blue as well.

[Machias]

I never considered a black bear with white on it's chest a color phase bear...am I under the wrong impression?