Kodiak 9/17 - Bears 11
A long post today. If you are not into stories, look at the photo and move on!
This is the last of the bear photos for the majority of our trip. I only photographed one more bear during our stay (a future post) so you get my bear story now.
This photo is somewhat typical of the Kodiak rivers during the salmon run. You see the fishermen huddled together when a bear is near. As the bear moves from one part of the creek to another, anyone in the departing section is calling to the next set of fishermen to be aware. The common term when a bear is on the move toward you is "Hey Bear". When you start hearing a lot of "hey bear"s, you need to be paying attention!
My daughter and I decided to go fishing one morning in this same river (Buskin River) at this same location. We are all dressed up in our waders and are fishing with salmon egg sacks. On the day (9/17) of these bear photos, there were salmon everywhere. On the day we went fishing, there were few to be seen (typical of my fishing luck!). It was probably more a function of tides but who knows. There were 4 or 5 other fishermen in the river when we arrived and a couple were leaving with two very nice silver salmon giving us hope. We get our gear out and hooks baited and start fishing basically in the location where the cubs had destroyed the rod and case a few days earlier. We sat down our bait and tackle box basically at that same point on the rock island and start fishing. Note that I do not have a camera and our cell phones are in a waterproof pocket deep in our waders - so no photos of this event.
The fact that I'm telling you a bear story likely tells you what happened next! You normally see the bears coming down from the mountain side of the river - but not this day. The mom and 3 cubs came down the same path we entered the stream - way too close for comfort! Not only were they close, they were blocking the most obvious and closest escape path back to the parking lot. We bring in our fishing lines and make a quick dash to pick up our baggie of bait hoping to not attract the bears our way. We left our tackle box. Yes, I know the bait is now on us so you think we would be the focus of the bears. Fortunately, none of these fishermen had a stringer of fish to worry about. If you have a stringer of fish, the park ranger instructions are to take the stringer with you and only give it up if you are in direct danger. They do NOT want the bears to associate an easy meal with robbing a fisherman. Similar logic applies to bait.
The Kodiak river bears are a bit different than a bear in the unpopulated wild. These bears see people every day during salmon season and they are not hunted in these locations. They know to not mess with people because most everyone is carrying bear spray that will stop a bear as fast or faster than a bullet. The only big problem with bear spray is the effective range is really close - like 20 feet - and you better not be spraying into the wind (like you are going to think about that if a bear is that close). If you go to a gun store and shop for a pistol to take as protection, you will be told that is a bad idea. It takes a well-placed, very large caliber bullet to stop a bear and any normal pistol will just piss them off and you will be dead. Bear spray is your best defense. The bears really do not want anything to do with a human as long as that human is not posing a threat. This is not to say there is no danger but the risk is significantly reduced - especially if you are in a group. A lone human is at much more risk than a group of 5+. So when a bear comes into a fishing area, the fishermen gather in a cluster to discourage the bear from wild thoughts.
So we clustered with about 4 other fishermen and watched the bears. The cubs hung around the trail entrance to the river while mom went into the river to fish - pushing us further upstream. This dance of a bear move followed by the fishermen moving to keep a perceived safe distance went on for a while. The cubs got bored and a couple of them went onto the island pushing us further upstream. The cubs went to where we left our tackle box that likely had some salmon egg smell on it. The tackle box (think a 8" x 12" small parts box) was broken and we later discovered that bear saliva REALLY STINKS. Fortunately, the cub did not get into the hooks before it stopped messing with the box. The mom kept pushing us upstream and once moved quicker than anyone liked despite the "hey bear" calls. My daughter decided to use her bear whistle hoping to slow the bear. It slowed the bear but the change in stance and attention we got was very uncomfortable! That whistle will NOT be used again! It might be a good rescue whistle but nobody liked what we saw with that bear. We ended up getting pushed pretty far upstream before we finally gave up and one of the other fishermen knew of a path to get up out of the river and back to the cars. The only small challenge was that we had to find a crossing to that bank that wasn't deep - so further upstream we go. We finally get back to the cars and wait around a bit before we slowly and loudly nose our way back down the trail to retrieve our bait box. The box was destroyed but we did not want a bear to get tangled up in hooks. We retrieved our box and left. My 1-day fishing license was used for maybe 10 minutes and that was the end of that adventure!
Time to go find our next adventure for more memories!
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