OK, so you want to shoot a black bear, and not just any bear, but a big one, and not just a big one, but one so shockingly huge it will make your friends' jaws drop to their shoetops.

Here's what you do:

Go outside, get into your car and pull out of the driveway. Make a right, then immediately stop.

You're there.

OK, well, not exactly there. There may or may not be bears roaming your front yard.

But you're in the right part of the world anyway.

Says who• No less an authority than the Boone & Crockett Club, the organization that's been keeping track of big game records from around the world since 1887.

Officials at the Montana-based organization recently went through their records and determined the top three hunting areas, broken down by species, based on the number of trophy animals produced.

Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa are the top three places to go if you want to kill a trophy whitetail, for example. Montana, Alberta and Oregon are the top three for bighorn sheep. Grizzly bears• That would be Alaska, British Columbia and the Yukon Territory.

But when it comes to black bears, nowhere have more trophies been taken than in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Alaska, in that order. Wisconsin has 365 entries in the record book, Pennsylvania 222 and Alaska 192.

Pennsylvania stands out above even those two, however, when it comes to big animals. A look at Boone & Crockett's 10 biggest bears ever taken all time shows Pennsylvania bears in second, third, fifth, sixth (pending final review), and eighth (two Pennsylvania bears are tied here) place.

That says a lot about the quality of Pennsylvania's bears and the habitat they enjoy, said Eldon Buckner, chairman of Boone & Crockett's North American big game committee.

"Boone and Crockett records have always been a classic indicator of habitat quality and on-the-ground performance of conservation and management programs. The states and provinces on this list are the best of the best right now," he said.

Mark Ternent, the Pennsylvania Game Commission's black bear biologist, believes there are two reasons why this state produces so many big bruins.

First, hunters take a lot of bears. The state's record harvest -- 4,164 bears in 2005 -- stands as the third highest recorded, and the more typical harvest annually ranks in the top five. When you're shooting that many bears each year, you're bound to get some big ones, he said.

Second, Pennsylvania bears have lots of foods, wild and domestic, to grow fat on.

"They're not really that tied to any one crop that can fail," Ternent said. "So our bears don't really have bad food years. In Maine, for example, if the blueberry or beech nut crops fail, those bears are in trouble. That's not the case here."

The Poconos region in particular produces big bears -- all six of the 800-plus pounders taken in history, and lots of bears over 700 pounds -- because of the food choices available.

"There's not a bear in the Poconos that doesn't have some sort of human food regularly available to them," he said. "There are bears on the Chestnut Ridge that likely have very little contact with people. But bears in the Poconos, they can probably raid a bird feeder every day of the week."

But big bears can come from anywhere, and likely will when the state's bear seasons get underway. The archery bear season is set for Wednesday and Thursday in select wildlife management units, while the statewide seasons will run Nov. 23-25. An extended season will continue in some units Nov. 30 to Dec. 5 and/or Dec. 2 to 5.

Last season's harvest was 3,458 bears. Ternent expects hunters to do at least as well, if not better, this year, given the high number of bears -- at least 15,000 statewide -- and abundant accord crop, which will likely keep them active and out of their dens.

"I'm looking for a good harvest," Ternent said. "I think we even have the potential to have a record harvest if the weather cooperates."

Additional Information:

Where the bears are

Where within Pennsylvania should you go if you want to bag a monster black bear?

Well, trophies can come from anywhere. Forty-three of the state's 67 counties have produced at least one bear worthy of Boone & Crockett's record book.

But some produce more than others. Here's a look at the top big bear-producing counties, and the number of record-book bears they've given up.

• Lycoming -- 18

• Bradford -- 17

• Pike -- 16

• Tioga -- 13

• Clinton -- 12

• McKean -- 11

• Clearfield and Sullivan -- 9 each

• Sullivan -- 9

• Potter -- 8

• Bedford and Indiana -- 7 each

• Centre, Huntingdon, Monroe and Westmoreland -- 6 each

• Jefferson, Lackawanna, Luzerne and Warren -- 5 each

• Carbon, Dauphin, Elk, Somerset and Wayne -- 4 each

• Clarion, Mifflin and Schuylkill -- 3 each

• Armstrong, Blair, Cambria, Cameron, Fayette and Forest -- 2 each

• 10 counties have given up one each

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