The photos and commentary below were part of a much longer field report. Now that the bears of Brooks River are so much better known, most of what I recorded then seems superfluous, but some of the photos and commentary are still worth sharing. Above all I wanted to share an incident involving 128/Grazer and her cubs that taught me a lot about bear families.
Part of what is meant by the title "River of Cubs" is that there were many cubs on the river that year. The other part is a reference I will leave it to the reader to figure out, if they haven't already.
My reason for posting this here and not on my other blog, "Bear in Camp!" is that I was with Interp at the time of this report, and not bear management. Also, I'm getting around to putting this up more than two years after my final post ("Holly Gets the Last Word") on that blog, and I want Holly to forever have the last word.
At the time that I wrote this in its original form, I thought that I had just spent my last season at Brooks Camp. Another July of working the overcrowded Falls Platform was just too much. (Little did I imagine that in the next years the crowding would become even worse.) Fortunately, and I cannot describe how fortunate I was, Michael Saxton asked me if I wanted to join the bear management team. Of course I accepted, and without even a nanosecond of hesitation.
151/Walker (the dark one) and 503/Cubadult (Holly’s former adopted cub) play fighting behind the
falls platform. On almost every day that I worked on the platform, these two would take about a half
hour to wrestle. I’ll be fine if I never watch another bear eat another
salmon again, but I’ll never get enough of wrestling bears. Walker is 6 years older than Cubadult.
An unknown sow and cubs having a 3-way play fight. Before this they
had all simultaneously tried to rub their backs on the tree.
On my next to last morning I found out that Grazer and cubs
were sleeping about 20 yards past the entrance gate to the platform.
I positioned myself just inside the gate to prevent visitors from leaving,
and requested the bridge platform to hold people there until the family
had moved on. Grazer nursed the cubs and they all napped a while,
then one of the cubs got impatient and decided to get everyone to
move. Here you see the cub heading down the trail, Grazer barely visible
in the trees having just gotten up a few seconds before.
“Come on, let’s go!”
Now the whole family is in motion, Grazer lagging behind.
The cub now leads them up the trail to the ridge by the platform gate.
Grazer slowly moving forward to take charge of this expedition.
Michael Saxton getting the Palayak ready for our return to King Salmon. A few of us went in a couple of hours ahead of the rest of the returning Brooks crew.
On Naknek lake, heading home to King Salmon. Always such mixed emotions.
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