Guide Photos

The mother grizzly and cubs have climbed over the log and are about to enter the river just behind the boat. If you look over the previous photos in this series of postings you will notice the grizzly did not make eye contact by looking toward the boats – staring a bear in the eyes is a sign of aggression. And the guests were cautioned that it was ok to glance and take pictures but to avoid “bug eyed staring”. The mother had her head down while the cubs would occasionally glance toward the boats when a camera was making noise. …. more tomorrow

You my notice that both the guests head and the bear are in reasonable focus so the distance is close. At this point the mother grizzly bear was about fifteen meters or less than fifty feet across the river from the boat. Knowing the bears and their habits we were very safe in our location. These same bears had being coming down the river for about five days and had accepted the boats presence and as you may have noticed there was a larger boat ahead of ours and another behind, enough to make the bears very cautious…. more tomorrow

A beautiful fall morning on the Glendale River located on Knight Inlet, which is part of British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest. We had left Grizzly Bear Lodge at 7:30 for the hour and half boat ride up the inlet to the river. After taking Angus’s guest to shore for the SUV ride up to the viewing stands my guests climbed into the flat bottom river skiff for an estuary tour. If you check the Jan 1st posting “Google Map of Spawning Channel” it shows the yellow dot of the float and we went from there into the river and up past the tree line. At times pulling the boat over the sand bars and up the shallow river but as the tide came in we were about half a mile into the tree’s when we saw this mother and cubs coming down river. We had moved to the riverbank and I was standing in hip deep water holding the boat…… more tomorrow

This photo shows that grizzly bear cubs are often different colours and can be quite different in size even though they are siblings. The size difference is often a result of one being a male and more aggressive than a female. This means first to nurse and the first to solid food once they are on the beach in the spring. It could also be due to the fact that siblings may have different fathers as females will mate with multiple males. A genetically larger male may produce a larger cub.  And the difference in colour is a result of the different mating partners. As the season progress and salmon become more of their diet the oils will cause the fur to darken but these are “spring cubs” and salmon are not in the rivers.

Running after salmon in deep water does not seem to be a good technique to catch salmon but the size of the bear indicates success and that is what matters. Every grizzly viewed from the stand on the Glendale River seems to have its own fishing style and in the end all that matters is if the grizzly is able to catch enough salmon to fatten for hibernation.  This particular grizzly bear is five years old so the technique works.

It seems that most of the guests want to see a large grizzly bear when Grizzly Bear Lodge goes to the viewing stands on the Glendale River, however as a guide it is not my choice.  From experience if there is a large grizzly by the stands that may be the only bear you see on that visit.  The large males tend to dominate the area and the other grizzly bears especially those with cubs will wait until the male has left the area. Fortunately the really large males are not as comfortable around people and seem to come to fish in the area of the viewing stands outside of the designated viewing times.  We know this because of the motion sensor cameras that have being used in the past.

It is common to see sub-adult grizzly siblings together on the Lodge’s grizzly bear tours. These two spent sometime in Knight Inlet’s Glendale River estuary ”playing”.  Depending on food abundance, mother grizzlies may keep their yearlings a second (even a third) year, denning together again and breaking up in the third (or fourth) year. Alone and vulnerable, siblings will often stay together for some time after their mother abandons them, eating and sleeping side-by-side, and even denning together. The average breeding age for female grizzlies is 4.5 years. Males reach sexual maturity at roughly the same age as their female counterparts. Even though males are capable of breeding at three or four years of age, they rarely have the opportunity to do so because of intense competition from older, bigger males.