Young brown bear (Ursos arctos) foraging for food on the beach at Point Hayes, Chichagof Island, Southeast Alaska, USA
Young brown bear (Ursos arctos) foraging for food on the beach at Point Hayes, Chichagof Island, Southeast Alaska, USA
This was a young brown bear that I encountered quite frequently at my regular camp at Point Hayes on Chichagof Island. It was often foraging on the beach for food while I was cooking on my campfire, but it would always make a wide detour around me before continuing along the beach. I always had to be on my guard against bears getting into my food, especially black bears. I usually hung all of my food high up in the trees. On one occasion I arrived at a camp too late and I just covered everything up with a tarp. I disturbed a large bear that visited my camp in the night and could feel it’s heavy weight vibrating the ground when it was running. In the morning I discovered that it had “sucked” all of my bananas and pears through a mesh bag that I stored them in and I eventually found my large empty jar of peanut butter cracked open like an egg and licked spotlessly clean.
This bear was well behaved but on one occasion it walked right up to my tent in the forest, and sniffed the air while looking up at my food hanging in the trees. I had cut open a lemon and the pungent smell was just too much for the curiosity of the bear. I talked to it in a calm, gentle voice, as I had learned to do: I had even made a bear fall asleep once while I was setting up my tripod to photograph it. I didn’t want to startle the bear too much so I just bent down slowly, picked up a small stick, and tossed it so that it hit the bear on the nose, upon which it promptly ran away.
