Jay Cutler black bear hunt

TROPHY TUESDAY: Jay Cutler harvests cinnamon black bear on Montana hunt

“Montana bear hunt in the books.” Jay Cutler just harvested a beautiful cinnamon phase black bear on Trophy Tuesday!

Talk about perfect timing. Jay’s been up in Big Sky Country for Montana’s spring bear hunt for the past several days. No harvestable bears came over the weekend, but another fantastic trophy did: this massive 6×6 elk rack and skull still fully intact.

Then, on Trophy Tuesday, the former NFL star and Gratis Beer champ‘s bruin came in sight. Now, with his “bear hunt in the books,” Jay is “heading home to get some summer ale.”

Cutler sent a couple of photos over to Outsider, and the second shows how impressive a shot this was via scoped bolt action rifle:

MT bear hunt in the books @outsiderig Heading home to get some summer ale @gratisbeer.

Jay Cutler

As for his trophy, this is a cinnamon black bear, or cinnamon phase black bear. While black bears remain true to their name here in the eastern U.S., they’re taking on brown coats out west. “Cinnamon” refers to this coloration, a rich brown with a reddish hue.

Our Eastern black bears (Ursus americanus americanus) are, again, nearly all born with black coats. But cinnamon phase bears have become so common that many bear biologists have assigned them their own subspecies, the cinnamon black bear (Ursus americanus cinnamomum). Debate continues on whether this coloration should be a separate subspecies, however.

Jay Cutler’s cinnamon black bear is part of a larger debate

From Yellowstone National Park out to the Pacific Northwest, the American black bear is often confused for their brown bear cousin due to the brown coats they’re adopting. And Americans have called this a “cinnamon bear” for centuries. In fact, pioneering explorers like John James Audubon documented them as a separate species altogether.

But in truth, they’re simply black bears (Ursus americanus) with a copper-to-brown coat. Late last year, a joint United States and Japan research team analyzed DNA samples from 151 North American black bears from across both the U.S. and Canada to try and help solve this debate.

Their findings, published Dec. 16 in Current Biology, found that black bears born in western states like Arizona, Idaho, and Nevada are not only far more likely to possess a cinnamon coat than their eastern counterparts, but this coloration is now more common than black among western bears.

For more on this, Outsider’s full breakdown of the cinnamon bear research is a fascinating read.

As for Jay Cutler, he’s set to battle commenters online who disapprove of bear hunting. Man has hunted bears for eons (and vice versa), however, and as black bear populations continue to expand at a rapid rate, hunting is a crucial part of state conservation.

Congrats again to Jay on a successful hunt! For more Trophy Tuesday action, see this Oklahoma angler’s behemoth bighead carp, and the massive elk rack Jay found during his spring bear hunt.