Brooks Camp Field Report, July, 2018: Subadult Summer (Sort of)

 

An ever-so helpful sign I placed to let you know that there's a bear nearby. 

Photo credit:  NPS / Carl Ramm

Hello Friends,

I’m back in King Salmon after my longest tour yet.  Even more than usual, the world of relative normality seems odd after weeks of the bear-centric semi-chaos of Brooks Camp.  Also more than usual, I am struggling  to find a way to do the experience even faint justice while keeping this email to a workable length.  My attempted solution will be to break this field report into two parts:  a kinda sorta executive summary and then various vignettes from life as a bear tech in Katmai National Park.  For those who make it that far, the vignettes will be the longest part, but perhaps the most interesting as well.

I’m going to assume some understanding of the wheres and whys of Brooks Camp in this email.  For a very good introduction to the river and the bears see here   To get a feeling of what a stay at Brooks during the July bear peak is like for a lodge guest, along with a brief cameo by Susan and me, see the video here.  

Executive Summary

Given how many sows with yearling or older cubs we had last year, this year was expected to be a “subadult summer”.  That is, it was expected to be a summer with an exceptional number of newly “emancipated” (a bear biology euphemism for “kicked-out by mom”) bears, running around and getting into all the mischief one would expect of ursine teenagers newly on their own.  Indeed this was the case, however, from the perspective of bear management, it was a relatively normal summer around camp in terms of bear activity.  The water levels on the river were high enough this year, and the salmon plentiful enough, that most of the bears (including subadults) did most of their foraging at or near the falls and away from the mouth of the river where camp is.  Nonetheless there was about as much action around camp as this aging bear tech could handle.  We were on a skeleton crew to begin with, and for ten days our crew lead, Michael Saxton, was on the coast darting bears for genetic research. I learned much about the fine art of bear management triage this tour.  Sometimes you just can’t get ‘em all.

While the great majority of hazings and surprise encounters that bear management is involved in lack any serious aggression from the bears, I was charged four times on this tour and had to use my pepper spray twice.  I and another bear tech, Eric Johnston, were also involved in at least one (these things start to blur after a while…) high-intensity running skirmish with a gang of subadults.  

It was a strange irony that one of the charges that I had to stop with spray came from a  bear that, in 2015/16, I and thousands of others were rooting hard for as Grazer's spunky little runt of the litter.  The spunk is still there--and I still love her for it--but she’s no longer a runt and I hope bear management can provide a few lessons that will help keep her mostly charming intensity within bounds that are safe for her and everyone else.  Mostly, though, that job will be up to her fellow bears.

In spite of a few rough situations (of a kind that any half-sane visitor or regular staff would never be involved in) I only become more and more impressed with the tolerance of coastal brown bears.  Not just at Brooks but on the peninsula as a whole, even in hunted areas.  Nonetheless they are huge, wild animals, and my concern continues to grow regarding various trends in camp visitation, as well as astonishing complacency in various circles, and it’s only a matter of time before something truly ugly happens.  

In the meanwhile we do what we can.  

Be it ever so crazy, and be it at times ever so up against a wall, there’s no place like Brooks.

Vignettes

Cubs

There’s something about bear cubs that brings out both the best and the worst in people.   The worst in the way that you would expect:  When a good photo opportunity for cubs presents itself, many people are willing to toss aside self-preservation, common sense, and even basic human decency in order to get the shot.  There is some kind of Cosmic Moral Imperative in their minds about the Perfect Photo that baffles me.  I mean, I get it in my marrow that bear cubs are ultra-cute, nonetheless…

On the brighter side, this was my first season to experience the good side of cub adoration, although in an unfortunate context.  402 had lost one of her four spring cubs, and the cub wandered into camp on several occasions in search of his(?) family.  It was bear management’s job to keep the cub outside of camp, above all because it was an unlikely place for a reunion.  Of course we didn’t haze the little cub in any meaningful sense of the word, but we did stand in his way when he wanted to go further into camp, and this was (at least after a while) enough to get him headed in a better direction.  There was no question that it needed to be done for the cub’s good and everyone else’s, nonetheless it was not fun work.  Who wants to stand in the way of a desperate cub trying to find mom?  The bright side came in how beautifully conscientious everyone became when they found out we were dealing with a lost cub.  People who normally had all the responsiveness of flatworms on muscle relaxants suddenly became models of bear etiquette.  Seriously, while I wish it was far more common, it was lovely to behold.

402 and cub were eventually reunited.  I was there when it happened and may have had a minor role in facilitating it.  I won’t go into how it happened here since it was too complex, but it was a happy occasion and the perfect set of visitors was on hand to witness it.  I do not say this to moralize, but those of you who know 402 will not be shocked to know that 24 hours later she was back to 3, and then 24 hours after that back to 4…  That said, it has to be difficult for any sow to keep track of that many cubs.

As some of you know, one of 132’s cubs was killed by 856 at the falls on July 3rd.  For more details see here.  Roughly a day later I saw 132 and her remaining cub as they passed by camp.  They were both still very nervous and the only thing bear management did was try to get the public out of their way so that they could pass through with as little stress as possible.  A few days later both seemed back to normal, the little cub as playful as any cub can be.  

435/Holly has two little pistols for yearlings.  They are both girls, and the darker of the two is especially adventurous and aggressive.  The darker cub has pushed the limits with some non-bear management staff and at least one of the lodge crew, and has become strongly disliked by them.  Any bear tech who holds aggressiveness against a bear needs to find new work, but the general feeling among the techs is that she will almost certainly end up getting sprayed.  That said, we are all fans of both cubs, esp. the dark one, though we keep that to ourselves around certain people. I’ve not seen the pair in action at the falls but from what I’ve heard they push the limits even more with the other bears when there.  Needless to say, once mom kicks them out next year and no longer has their backs, the world will be a different place for them both, but I hope they keep the spirit alive as much as they safely can.

While we’re on the subject of Holly’s family, anyone who thinks that bears don’t really go up the mountain just to see what they can see wasn’t there when Julie and I found Holly and her cubs all standing atop the camp gravel pile.  The base of the pile is roughly 20’ x 20’ and the top roughly 10’ high.  There they were, all three, crammed together at the top like giant furry sardines, just kinda lookin’ around.  Although they were within the hazing zone, we couldn’t bring ourselves to haze them.  Eventually Holly and the light cub sauntered down and out of camp, but it came as no shock that the dark cub just stayed there, staring down at us.  There has to be some anthropomorphizing in it, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was once again enjoying the thumbing of her ursine nose at us.  For some reason we did not find this so charming, and after a minute or so Julie and I started tossing gravel up in the air in such a way that it showered down on her.  This is completely harmless to the bears but they usually find it extremely disconcerting.  The dark cub held out with more tenacity than most, but eventually left to join her family.

Humans

Oy vey! What to say about humans?  It’s not the dumb stuff around bears per se. I’ve done my share of dumb stuff around bears.  Dealing with innocent dumb stuff may be annoying but it has never kept me up at night.  It’s the willfully dumb stuff, and there’s no shortage of it at Brooks.  The stuff driven by ego, or the pleasure of making others squirm, or both.  That’s not the kind of thing I like to write much about, and it’s not the kind of thing I think anyone here wants to read much about, but it is a significant part of my Brooks Camp experience so it deserves some kind of mention.  One of the disadvantages of being a bear tech is that you don’t get that much of a chance to interact on the job with the best visitors.  They are already a safe distance from the bear you need to monitor or deal with, and they don’t need to be prodded or cajoled into moving away.

The Bad-Girl Bears of Brooks River

I had never really thought about it until I started writing this, but most if not all of the really serious bear incidents I’ve had have been with females.  There probably were some males in the mix, but the ones whose sex I know were all females.  At this point I’ve been charged by bears ten times (nine of those as a bear tech at Brooks), and have had to use bear spray four times.  At least three of those four were females, with one unknown to me.  There may not be anything to that.  The sets are too small to say.  I suspect that it mostly has to do with the fact that the bears most often around camp are females, and has nothing to do with temperament.  But, in any case, I think it’s interesting.

Eric and I did team up to haze two adult males out of camp on two separate occasions this July.  Each incident involved hazing a single bear.  The first was an unknown, unusually blonde male who was sleeping by the superintendent’s cabin.  The other was ol’ #32/Chunk, who had crashed out for the night on the beach and was trying to cut through camp to get to the river. Both were pushovers. Their responses, translated with the usual imperfections into human-ese, were essentially “Aw man, I’m just going about my business.  Why are you harshing my mellow?..  Yeah, yeah, okay, I’m going, give me a minute.”  That’s it.  Two is an almost (but not absolutely..) worthless sample size but it at least makes a fun contrast with what follows.

**

The most intense experience for this tour took place on July 19th, after I’d already signed off over the radio for this tour.  I heard Andrew LaValle, one of the Interp media crew, call out “Bear in camp!” by the visitor center.  Since Julie, the bear tech on duty, was probably preoccupied with other bears by the bridge I decided to go and take care of this one.  One more for the road...  I arrived at the visitor center to find two subadults by the back porch.  One I did not recognize and the other was almost certainly the aforementioned spunky cub of Grazer’s, kicked out in late May.  Without question it was the same bear that Eric had almost sprayed during an intense running skirmish he and I had been involved in with three subadults that morning.

By circumstance or intention I somehow I got between the two bears and straightforwardly drove the unknown subadult down the hill and out of camp, with no resistance.  I came back up to find the other subadult still in the same area.  I could immediately tell by her demeanor that this part wasn’t going to be as simple.  I started to push her up the trail toward the auditorium, in order to get her out of camp by way of the same trail (it goes out to an archaeological site away from camp).  She was aggressively resistant from the start, and when she got up to the auditorium she turned around and started walking my way.  This is sometimes called a dominance approach, and most often appears to be a matter of wanting to push a human or bear around and not about doing violence per se.  This was not a typical dominance approach, however.  She was drooling, her head was held low and was swinging from side to side, her canines were bared, and various other micro-gestures made it clear that there was far more hostility involved than is typical. (The other possibility is she wanted to play fight, but in practical terms this was no consolation.)  My loud, aggressive shouts and stomping had zero effect.  Normally we try to wait until two or three yards out to spray when dealing with a dominance approach, but in this case I had no ethical problem with spraying her at four.  

The spray hit her a little off mark, but well enough for the immediate purpose.  She turned and ran back up the short hill to the auditorium.  Disconcertingly, she did not run out of camp but stood at the top of the hill.  She was hacking but otherwise did not seem interested in going anywhere.  The cloud of spray was still thick enough in the area that I could not run through it without being more or less incapacitated, so I yelled at her.  She left camp, but returned in a minute or so to the same spot.  I was starting to find this spooky and really wanted to get her out of camp.  The cloud had dissipated enough that I was able to run through it and remain relatively functional, so I charged her hard and got her out of camp.  She was probably still in pain from the spray and I was at that point adrenalinized enough that it was relatively straightforward, though it was still disconcerting that it was necessary at all.

I then went over to one of the nearby lodge buildings to get some spectators to help me close the windows to the rooms.  After that was done they began to hack along with me and the subadult, the spray starting to catch the gentle breeze.  I advised them that they should probably go and get some fresh air somewhere.  They pointed toward the trail and said that the subadult was back in camp and heading to the visitor center again and declined to leave.  I couldn’t tell who they were rooting for but they clearly wanted to watch to see how things came out.  I ran back toward the visitor center.  I try to never make things personal when dealing with aggressive bears, and usually succeed, but for this round it was personal. I found her at the VC again and drove her hard down the hill and out of camp.

I had no lasting feelings of ill-will for her.  Nor did I find the experience traumatic, nor (I very strongly suspect) did she.  Without question, on the Brooks River bears worry far more about other bears than about even the biggest, baddest bear tech--far less me.  Nonetheless the adrenaline rush was strong enough that I slept little that night.

The same spunk and ferocity that helped her survive and thrive as a runt is exactly the same thing that made her act the way she did that day.  I just hope that it can be curbed sufficiently before it causes serious problems. She didn’t make it this far by being stupid, so the odds are good I think, but it is a concern.

**

During my second week of this tour I was charged one evening by an adult sow.  I was hazing her out of camp rather mildly, just walking behind her while clacking my bear sticks and shouting “Bear in camp!” to warn others of her possible approach.  She dropped down a slight slope to the ranger station from the back of camp, and at that point she was well ahead of me and had several open routes to leave camp with almost no one around.  I thought we were more or less done when she turned and charged me at a gallop.  From the focus of her eyes, the direction of her line of travel, and various other cues it was clear that it was a charge and not just her running from some disturbance I could not see.

That said, she did seem a bit hesitant and I held off on spraying her.  At about six yards out, however, she was still coming and seemed more confident, so I sprayed.  The spray hit her straight on at five yards (I later measured it) and she made an immediate hard right into the brush and disappeared, though I could follow her direction as she crashed through the willows.

One problem was solved but another created.  She was now running around camp in a panic.  Thank goodness it was evening and there were few people around.  I now had to figure out how to get her out of camp.

She wanted absolutely nothing to do with me now.  In a way that was good, but it also created a problem.  It was like the responsive of a computer mouse suddenly going from the Low to High.  She was now hyper-responsive to my every movement, whereas before it had been the usual ursine heel-dragging.  Somehow she and I both got her out of camp, though it probably had more to do with her own motivation than anything else, once she had gotten over some of her panic.

**

The last incident I’ll mention was so complex that there is no hope of recounting it here in detail, even if I had completely understood the choreography at the time.  It was unintentionally caused by 856, the most dominant bear on the river.  He, however, was never my immediate problem, even if in a way he had been the cause.

It started with me heading down the trail from the auditorium to the archaeological site in order to see if Holly and cubs were still asleep by it.  Suddenly I saw a motley assortment of five bears of varying ages running toward me in an obvious panic.  I hopped off the trail in an undignified manner to let them pass.  My staring at them in disbelief as they passed by, less than a couple of yards away, would have made a good Norman Rockwell painting.  At least I was out of their way, but once again, one problem solved but a new one begun.  I was outside of camp by about 50 yards while they were by now almost certainly in the middle of it.

I got back into camp as quickly as I safely could.  There I found Holly, cubs, and the sow who charged me from the ranger station, all by the visitor center and still in a panic.  What I thought was a subadult when they ran past, and later turned out to be a young sow (284?), was not in sight but from various clues was still around.  I did not know about 856 at the time.  

There is little that can be done in a situation like this in terms of getting the bears out of camp.  I was the only tech on duty, the bears were still in a panic, and there was a bunch of them.  The only thing doable was to get everyone else inside building or electric fences (preferably the former) and stay as close as  possible to the bears to monitor the situation.  Somewhere in this I heard from Anna Marie that 856 was in the area.  That helped make things a little more comprehensible, but I did not have much time to ponder it.

The next 5-10 minutes are a blur to me now, just scattered memories of finding the bears in various parts of camp and checking their level of agitation, following them as best I could, and trying to keep people corralled.  Fortunately, Anna Marie and some of the other interp crew were able to assist with people management, which made a huge difference.

Eventually it turned out that the young sow was being courted by 856.  The rest of the bears had been unintentionally swept up in the dragnet of his pursuit of the little sow. I followed the courting couple out of camp, and it was interesting to see how willing people were to get out of the way when they heard it was a dominant male approaching.  That said, for obvious reasons I found it nowhere near as touching as when they got out of the way for a little cub, since generosity of spirit had nothing to do with it.  You’d have to be a trophy-class egomaniac yahoo not to give 856 as much room as possible.  Once the couple was out of camp I came back to find the other bears gone as well.

See you downriver,

Carl