Great Bear Wilderness: BEARS r June 2023

This page is deliberately NOT in order, so that it should be difficult, if not impossible, to figure out the whereabouts of our many, many bear sightings. Generally in order of most interesting, here’s what we saw.

After seeing a couple of big male Grizzly Bears playing a slow game of territorialism – from here on, when I write “bear” I mean Grizzly; other bears will be identified by species – with a smaller female, and a bit of other male-male politics, the grizzled older female, with visible scars on her back legs, began a slow game of chess with a much younger, barely adult male. Eric’s interpretation: ‘she figures he’s fun to play with, and he’s too young to do anything about what he’s thinking.’

The female – Rochelle suggests we call her ‘Mrs. Robinson’ – chased the male all the way across the tidal flat, in that curious gallumphing gait that looks slow but isn’t, unfortunately while I was having a fight with my camera; the video would have been precious. At the end of the chase, she plunged into the river they were running beside, and lolled about, playing with sticks she found on the bottom, and occasionally chasing the male, who usually ran away. At one point, the old female stopped, and the male turned and approached, and rose up on his back legs, and they nearly touched.

After several repetitions of this pattern, each bear approaching, the other retreating, they appeared to agree they’d had enough fun, and walked back to the mud flats and resumed digging for clams. After awhile, we decided to ‘let the bears do their thing’ and headed back through the narrows and returned to the Great Bear II.

At an afternoon high tide, we motored up the creek at the head of the inlet, intending to go to the top of the tidal estuary, but a mother bear and her two year-old cubs distracted us. We’d spotted them munching on the sedge, a great source of protein in the Spring when the bears emerge from hibernation, but by the time we got into the estuary, they’d crossed the stream and were munching on grasses too close to the stream for us to pass . . . and anyway, we wanted to watch them.

As we approached, they moved into the trees, and we heard a vocalization that Eric interpreted as ‘Mom, we want to nurse!’ Eventually we spotted the mother’s large furry bum through a window in the trees. Eric wisely bumped the Explorer against the bank and we sat and waited, and after awhile one of the cubs appeared, peering out through the window. Then the mom bestirred herself, and walked cautiously down a slanted log and crossed the stream; the cubs followed her slowly, and they worked their way back across the sedge.

On another day, we Zodiaced up the estuary and saw a big dark bear deep in the Sedge. At first, Eric thought it was a boar, but after awhile Rochelle noticed that the Grizzly seemed distracted by something upriver, and finally detected the barest hint of a pair of ears: a cub, possibly a Spring cub, scarcely five months old. Eventually we determined there were two cubs hunkered deep in Sedge, but very curious about us. Finally, just before we left, both cubs stood briefly to look at us; unfortunately, I fumbled the camera and got a useless picture of the island’s bank.

Yet another day, we saw a Grizzly sow and one cub on the rim of the sedgey tidal flat. Soon her second cub appeared. Some of these bears are more comfortable with human observers and these paid us little attention. 

A little later the same day, we saw a sow and her two cubs, who were very interested in us, and not necessarily in a good way. After carefully examining us for a few minutes, the sow gave us a growl and they scampered (to the extent that a 600 pound sow can) into the deep nearby woods.

Another day, while traveling between anchorages, Captain Eric reported a sighting of a mother Grizzly and her three cubs at the head of an inlet we passed. Rochelle saw them, but I did not.

Nautical Bears

Returning from one of our expeditions, just as we reached the Great Bear II, we spotted two bears, most likely young ones being chased, Eric suggested, by larger males, swimming diagonally across the head of the inlet, a distance of at least half a mile. Grizzlies, at least the one close enough to see and photograph, appear to swim a little higher in the water and swim faster. He (or she) reached shore fairly close to us, and immediately scarpered up a steep slope into the woods.

We got a good sense of the nature of this voyage when we came upon a Black Bear swimming from the Don Peninsula to Susan Island, a distance of about 1.6 miles. He was low in the water, and Trina was worried – she’s an animal rescuer in her spare time – but he made it just fine. But the key take-away was that Eric stopped the boat and we watched the bear complete the swim and safely haul out before we proceeded on our way. (mouseover the image to see this bear)

Bears were here

One morning, gliding slowly up an estuary at lowering tide, with the mud banks a meter or two above our heads, we saw scratches in the mud, where first a Mother Griz, and then her cubs, scrambled out of the water onto the bank after a swim from their afternoon (or morning) feast in the Sedge across the river.

At two of our anchorages (so far) from the boat, Grizzlies were visible in the Sedge-covered islands exposed by low tides. Here in the northern latitudes it’s early times for bears, and especially the mothers, who have been nursing two, three, or even four cubs through the winter, are depleted. In Spring, the Lyngby’s Sedge is up to 25% protein, and helps to sustain them until the berries of summer and the Salmon of Fall.

Along the way, pictographs, possibly a century old according to Eric, who has asked the local chief if it’s okay for me to post their picture. ‘Only as long as their location is not revealed,’ I have been told. Center left, a copper shield from the time after contact when copper was introduced. The rows of dots bottom center may represent bodies buried on ledges on the nearby cliffs.