DA BEARS!

The resident bears are finally out in full force, which means almost daily human/bear interactions for us. Pretty much our policy when it comes to the bears and the weir is if they were there first, they get dibs, if we were, they better stay off until we’re done working up fish. Because of noise from the falls and low visibility around the weir due to dense brush, many times we don’t realize the bears are approaching until they are right up next to the weir, and then we haze the hell out of them. The last thing we ever want is for us, or someone else, to shoot one of our bears, so hazing them helps enforce the humans = bad mentality and keep them from becoming “problem bears”. Hazing consists of yelling, blowing the air horn and shooting them with rubber slugs. It’s gotten to the point where all you have to do is cock the shotgun for them to run in the other direction, they catch on quickly.

Our most problematic bears our two juvenile bears (approx. 3-4 years old), nicknamed Little Bastard and Little Bear, that have been hanging around each other. They spend a good part of their time fighting, which is pretty cool if you’ve ever heard a bear growl, and fishing together behind the weir. Unfortunately, since they’re so preoccupied with each other they tend not to be very conscientious of us. The other day while carrying supplies from the bay side over the hill to the lake side the bears started fighting less then 10 yards away from us in the brush, so we could hear them but not see them, scary. Luckily, one warning shot in their direction got them both to scamper off.

I wish I had better pictures of the bears, the unfortunately my camera doesn’t have great zoom, but hopefully I can get some pictures from Joe, who just won 1st place in a photo contest in-town for a picture he took of one of the bears.


The bears are really smart too, they’ll wait in the bushes just watching us for hours, and as soon as they see us leave the weir and hear the boat engine they come running out to claim their fishing spot. The weir provides an interesting scenario for the bears: they can catch a lot of fish with little energy output since the weir is blocking the fish’s escape. And it’s a skill they seem to have learned quickly.

Seeing the same bears day after day and learning their space boundaries and how they’re going to react to us can, at times, make us complacent. We have to remind ourselves that they are wild animals who can be unpredictable and that we always have to be aware of our surroundings.