As a point of reference and recent example of the above, we are all at the County Fair this week. There's a cute high school age gal there showing pig & steer in a full back brace cast setup. Her mom showed me a picture of her vertebrae {X-ray}. Busted all the way across. She'll be in that brace affair for 3 months. Big critters are dangerous!

Broken back. Steer. No gun. She smiles anyway, probably mostly in anticipation of sale day and the knowledge that the steer will be in somebody's freezer long before her cast is off.

Anyway, in the hunting world my money is still on big bear. Saw a couple TV shows the other night that further reinforced that opinion. A really excellent one on National Geographic where they go into some detail about the physiology of bear. The part about the construction of their nose and smelling ability is amazing. Endurance, too, but I've seen that myself with our small black bear. Many are the days I've seen bear just flat outrun dogs, with some keeping it up for 10 hours or more, even with fresh dogs dropped in on the chase. Their lung capacity and running endurance are absolutely mindboggling.