How old is a bear?

A local troublemaker once asked my son, "How long has your dad been out of work?" The boy replied, "Nobody knows. We can't find his birth certificate."

That old joke fits in with a true thing that happened the other day. Had an advertising agency lady looking at colored slides of my very neat and organized den. She noticed files on everything from "AARP to zymosis," and asked, "How long do you keep the average file?" My answer was straight, "Don't know … not dead yet."

There is no understanding why some of us "keep files." Perhaps a kind of phobia, but I enjoy them. My wife thinks it's a genetic disease.

Was looking in old files just last week and found an article by Byron Dalrymple discussing how long wild animals can survive. He says moose live 10 to 15 years and once in a while one gets into the 20s. Of all the predators, bears seem to live the longest with blacks getting up to 15 and grizzlies reaching into their 20s.

He also notes it is common for polar bears to hit 30. We know of a female griz tagged in the Cabinet Mountains a few years back that went beyond 31.

Eight years is old for an antelope and researchers believe their short lifespan is due to increased rates of metabolism.

Very few deer reach 10, and Byron said in some eastern areas, 70 percent of the bucks shot by hunters were a year and a half, with only 2 percent older than five.

Even without human hunters, "life is chancy for a deer," with a 10-year-old being rare. (Possibly a quarter of a million deer are killed on roads by vehicles each year in the U.S. As an example—22,000 whitetail were killed during one year in Pennsylvania alone, with a damage cost exceeding $2.5 million.)

Elk commonly reach 15 and occasionally get into their 20s. He notes in bighorn sheep populations, "the best rams are 12 or more."

Of the big dominant-type rams I have personally had a chance to study, their ages ranged from eight to 10 years. Never saw any 16-year-old horns. Seventeen is about tops for bighorn males. Guess is, a very few get to be 20. One figure tells of female sheep hitting 24.

Dalrymple recalled bagging a cock pheasant estimated by its spurs to be possibly 12 years old…so tough "you couldn't shoot a hole in the gravy."

Average life for a Chinese pheasant is three to five years, which is longer than native upland birds where three is an old timer.

Wild turkeys can reach 12. A seven-year-old mallard is "exceptional."

He mentioned a banded canvasback that was crowding 20. A Canada goose with luck can have an old age of 15.

Because everything from owls to weasels eat rabbits, those poor little critters hardly ever top three, and 90 percent die within the year of their birth. Coyotes, bobcats, foxes, and raccoons can hit 10 years.

Byron doesn't mention mountain goats, but I would guess they are similar to their comrades of high places, the bighorns.

We photographed a huge old billy while climbing Bear Hat Mountain in the summer of 1992. He had nothing left of his horns except two large nubbins. Had to be very old. I'm guessing in his late teens.

A thought for the week comes from American journalist, Sydney J. Harris, "A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past: he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future."

A bountiful Thanksgiving to all!