Grizzly in North America while Traveling to Kodiak Island

Let's take a look at the bears in North America, Kodiak Island.


Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are the white ones, found only in the extreme frozen north of Alaska. Black bears (Ursus americanus) are smaller, blacker and exist in the state’s south. Brown bears (Ursus arctos) are large, brown plus can be found throughout Alaska apart from in the Arctic north, wherever the white ones reign supreme.

Plus what about grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis)? Well, they’re simply a variation of the brown bear - plus despite that impressive horribilis tag, they’re not yet very large. To see truly large brown bears, you must to head offshore to Kodiak Island. (A huge Kodiak brownie can weigh further than semi a ton!) The island is home to approximately 3500 of the critters, which means your chance of spotting one is almost certain.

Kodiak Island in North America is what you might call a lengthy mode from somewhere. Outside of Kodiak town, there’s only a handful of villages, a bit of fishing lodges and also a whole lot of perfect wilds…value bear-watching territory. I fixed a Beaver floatplane to the island, that dropped me off at Karluk Lake to the west.

Waiting for me on the jetty were my native Alaskan leads, Rome and Alex. These two guys understand their bears. They as well know their shotguns, which they tote on bear-watching trips, while they secure me they’d in no way had to use them…

Bear-watching in Kodiak is cute rough’n'ready. Nearby are no viewing platforms, no real visitor infrastructure - in reality, we didn’t come across any other tourists at all. Walking since the lakeside to our preferred bear-watching viewpoint, we had to drive our way during shoulder-high scrub. The smell of bear hung serious in the air and I couldn’t help thinking if we force tour over rather large, brown and also furry, napping in the grass. It was much the same when nature called in the middle of the night - the view of bumping into a bear en route among my bunkroom slumbering bag and also the outhouse didn’t thrill me. The cabin itself was spartan however relaxing, run by a native firm which works not easy to employ local Alaskans.

More the next three days we saw plenty of bears and also bear cubs. The bears saw us also, however weren’t that interested, being far extra occupied by looking down a few salmon. On our first day, there were no salmon to stay seen: the run was yet to start, and also the bears were searching painfully skinny. But the second day the fish were on the move. I’m not sure who was extra delighted - those hungry bears rampaging into the stream to smack a fat salmon on to the riverbed, or us, overjoyed to witness these hulking creatures
explode into fighting.