Grizzly Watching

Grizzly Bears are magnificent and the biggest reason visitors choose our lodge!

Grizzly bears thrive here and the viewing opportunities are spectacular. We have operated our Grizzly Bear Lodge for decades and know the prime spots for bear watching. The ultimate grizzly bear photo opportunities.

Guide Photos

grizzlies fight
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Not all encounters between grizzly bears are friendly but this one between siblings was playing. The wildlife tours from the lodge travel up Knight Inlet to view the grizzly bears along the shore in the spring and after August 24th we move up the river to the viewing platforms which overlook a man-made salmon spawning channel. Both along the beach and on the river we encounter juvenile bears testing their strength in play. The only true aggression is when a mother with cubs encounters a male bear or when one bear is defending its claim to a fishing area. But even these rarely end in injury as mothers are a “force of nature” normally left alone and the abundance of salmon in the area make the fishing spot not that important.

 

Guide Photos

grizzly scaring salmon
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With all those salmon in the water one would think that it would be next to impossible NOT to catch one. The key to catching salmon is shallow water, as grizzly bears tend to grab the salmon with their mouth after they have pinned them to the bottom with their claws. In this photo the bear is in water over a meter (yard) deep so it becomes much more difficult to push a salmon from the surface to pin it on the bottom. The photo in the April 3rd posting is a better example of a successful grizzly bear fishing. The fall tours from the lodge are on the Glendale River, which provide a variety of locations and many opportunities to watch bears catching and eating the spawning salmon. 

 

Guide Photos

grizzly triplets on log
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April 8th posting shows a May cub while these three are also first year cubs this photo was taken some time after August 24th when we are permitted to use the viewing stands on the Glendale River’s spawning channel. Three months has passed and even though this mother is feeding triplets they are allot larger than the May cub. A several more months of eating salmon and these three should be ready to den for the winter. The survival rate for cubs in our viewing area in quite good. It is common on the grizzly tours to see mothers with sets of twins and triplets in the spring that we had viewed the previous year.

 

Guide Photos

grizzly first year cub on a rock
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Grizzly bear watching from our lodge in Knight Inlet starts in late May. At this time of the season the mother grizzlies bring their cubs, born in the den between January and March, to the beach for the first time. The three or four month cubs are very timid the first time they see a boat but when the mother ignores the “clicking cameras” so do the cubs but they are still alert to our presence. If the size of a dog pup’s feet is an indication of its eventual size then this cub will develop into a good-sized bear.

 

Guide Photos

grizz;u hungry
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The same grizzly bear from yesterday’s post eating the salmon it caught. It is not uncommon to have 6 or 8 bears at the entrance to the spawning channel catching and eating salmon. There is not much aggression between the bears because of the abundance of food. There may be some challenges to the better fishing spots but when even the poor spots provide more than enough salmon the aggression does not become violent enough to shed blood. I have talked with guides that work the rivers in northern BC and southern Alaska and their grizzly bears have numerous scars and many open wounds due to fights over the rights to fish salmon.

 

Guide Photos

grizzly caught salmon in mouth
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This is the classic pose for a grizzly bear. The photo was taken from the viewing stands on the Glendale River in Knight Inlet BC. The late summer grizzly viewing, after August 24th, requires a short van ride (fifteen minutes) from a floating dock in the river estuary to the man made spawning channel. The grizzlies of the Knight Inlet area, which is on the southern edge of the Great Bear Rainforest come to this river to feed on the fall, run of spawning salmon. The day tours from our lodge on Minstrel Island use these viewing stands and often view more than a dozen different grizzly bears in the immediate area of the stands as well as grizzlies on the drive to the stands. If one looks closely in the water in front of the bear there are many salmon on their way to the spawning channel and the main reason the bears pose for this photo.

 

Interesting Guest Photos

grizzly bear claws close up
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Grizzly bear claws can be used to hold a salmon to share with a cub as shown in the March 29th posting or they can be used to dissect a salmon as shown in toady’s. Janis Worsley from the UK used a long lens to capture this grizzly at work.

 

Interesting Guest Photos

grizzly cub staying dry
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Because of the abundance of salmon in BC’s Glendale River the grizzly bears do not show much aggression towards each other, which encourages females to bring their cubs to the spawning channel to feed. First and second year cubs are common around the viewing platforms and provide amusing photo opportunities.  Although the water flowing from Tom Brown Lake is warm, in that it is not glacial cold, this cub seems to prefer sitting on a dry rock while mother fishes. It did come off to eat but was quick to return to its perch.

 

Interesting Guest Photos

grizzly sharing with cub
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Great Britain’s Lindy Taylor provides another great photo, this one of a mother grizzly bear sharing a salmon with her first year cub.  This photo shows the claws holding the salmon so the cub can feed. The normal claw length is seven to ten centimeters (3 to 4 inches) long and useful to catch and hold the salmon. Again the salmon is being eaten headfirst, as the mother and cub need to fatten to survive hibernation….more cub tomorrow.

Interesting Guest Photos

knight inlet grizzly with salmon
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Same bear from yesterday’s post eating the salmon headfirst. This photo was taken on September 1 which is one week into Grizzly Bear Lodge’s use of the viewing platform on Knight Inlet’s Glendale River. The salmon arrive in the river mouth in mid-August and start up the river in late August giving the bear their first opportunity to catch salmon. This means that the grizzlies are hungry and will normally eat the whole fish and not be selective and eat only the protein rich roe and belly fat.