Iraq War veteran Deron Santiny first tried hunting as therapy in 2007. He’d been recuperating from multiple surgeries at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, and he got an invite to hunt whitetails in Texas with a veteran’s group based in the southwestern U.S.
“I found that it was therapeutic,” Santiny tells Outdoor Life. “So, I decided that was going to be one of my goals, to keep doing it.”
In the years since, the 54-year-old Army veteran and Purple Heart recipient has hunted elk, mule deer, and antelope across New Mexico with Gino Attardi of the Healing Road Foundation. And in December, the two made hunting history in Santiny’s home state of Louisiana, where Santiny harvested a potential record black bear during the state’s first bear hunting season in more than 35 years. The huge bear weighed nearly 700 pounds.
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“It had always been a dream, but it wasn’t something I was planning on doing,” Santiny says. “Gino calls me last minute and says, ‘Look, a guy had to back out. I need somebody that can go.’”
The state had distributed 11 tags, most of which were designated for landowners who aided in habitat conservation. Attardi had gotten just one tag for a veteran through a partnership with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.
With only two days before the short season started, Santiny had to take LDWF’s required course, which gave tag holders information on bear anatomy, processing, and food safety. It also provided some basic advice on how to hunt black bears — something Louisianans have been unable to do since 1987.
“It was about the bear habitat, what the bears do, how the bears live,” Santiny says of the state’s mandatory bear-hunting course. “And then it shows you where to shoot, because it’s not like hunting deer or elk where you just shoot them in the shoulder … and take them out.”
By the time Santiny found time to get in the woods, there were only five days remaining in the 16-day season. He drove north from Lafayette to the bottomland hardwoods of Northeast Louisiana in Tensas Parish, where bear populations are among the densest in the state. Attardi had permission to hunt private land near Lake Bruin, an oxbow lake a stone’s throw from the Mississippi River.
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The next morning, on Dec. 17, Santiny was perched in a box blind with only two days to hunt before he had to head home. Other than a few deer, nothing stirred. So, for the evening, Santiny and Attardi hopped over to an adjacent lease where hunters had pictures of a giant bear from the day before.
“They weren’t sure if he was going to come back. But it was worth a shot.”
This time, Santiny sat in an 18-foot ladder stand with Attardi. They caught movement a little before 5 p.m. about 100 yards away. As Santiny shouldered his .375 Winchester rifle and the bear came into full view, he thought back to the instructional video.
“I waited for him to take a step — like I learned in that video — to let that thick shoulder bone move out the way,” he says. “When he took that step, I shot.”
Santiny sent a 300-grain bullet down range that dropped the huge bear where it stood.
State officials announced in early January that Santiny’s 696-pound bear could set a new state record as the heaviest black bear ever harvested in Louisiana. (Most Louisiana black bears weigh around 450 to 500 pounds, according to the agency.) LDWF large carnivore program manager John Hanks said the boar, which was estimated to be in its late teens or early 20s, is easily the biggest black bear he’s ever seen in the state.
Santiny says his bear will also be scored by the Boone and Crockett Club after the mandatory 60-day drying period is up. B&C ranks black bear records according to skull size and not weight.
Black Bear Hunting Returns to Louisiana
Santiny wasn’t the only Louisiana bear hunter to find success this season, either. In all, 10 black bears were harvested in Bear Management Area 4, a seven-parish region in the historic flood plain of the Mississippi River where the species was cemented into national hunting lore. It’s here where, in 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt made his famous hunt in the Tensas River canebrakes, eventually taking a 202-pound sow.
By 1988, however, hunting for black bears was halted across the state. The Louisiana black bear subspecies (Ursus americanus luteolus), which is native to the lower Mississippi River Valley, was designated as threatened on the Endangered Species list in 1992. At that time, population estimates hovered around 150.
In a conservation success story, after some 750,000 acres of habitat restoration, the state’s bear population has since climbed above 1,000. The bears were delisted in 2016, and in 2024, Louisiana established its first black bear hunting season in more than a generation.
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The re-establishment of a hunting season has reconnected a regional link with the Louisiana black bear, an animal crucial to the history of the state; The famous Creole dark roux, for example, was first made possible in the 18th century thanks to the high smoke point of bear grease. Santiny has now woven himself into this historical tapestry.
“We made it into sausage,” Santiny says. “I’ve given it to family and friends, and they’ve had it and said it was really good.”
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