Meanwhile in downtown Soldotna....

[NightTrain]

Soldotna is just a few miles away from Kenai, about 150 miles by highway South of Anchorage.

I don't have the story on this yet, but I'll track it down. Decent size Griz.

[aboutime]

Good photoshop job.

[Voted4Reagan]

Good photoshop job.

Could be a Kodiak Brown Bear... Kodiak Island is just Southwest of the Kenai Peninsula.

[NightTrain]

It's not photo shop.

It was taken last week, that's the hunter returning home.

[NightTrain]

Could be a Kodiak Brown Bear... Kodiak Island is just Southwest of the Kenai Peninsula.

Kodiak isn't far, but that's a Brown / Griz.

[jimnyc]

To give an idea on other Grizzly's in that area, to compare how large they can get...





This one is HUGE, and I didn't embed as it's not a kind pic - http://i.imgur.com/1W3k3Kw.jpg

[Perianne]

Why would someone want to kill a bear?

[NightTrain]

Why would someone want to kill a bear?

Different reasons.

Every year there have been maulings here in AK, there are a LOT of them here. Take a good look at those claws and consider what those will do to your ribcage when swung. They can rip great chunks of wood out of a healthy tree with one swipe, and a human is very fragile. I don't know if this one was involved in a mauling or not.

When the population of bears grows too numerous, many more maulings occur and the results are often fatal for the human. They decimate the moose and caribou population by wiping out all the calves that can't defend themselves or run fast enough.

Spring Blackbear is great eating. My favorite bear recipe is cooking it like you would a beef roast with carrots, onions, potatoes, etc. Grizzly not so much. It's edible but it's not particularly good eating in my book.

Most Grizzlies are killed either because it's aggressive with humans, or it destroys property, or it is hunted for sport. It's a big mark of prestige in Germany to have shot a bear in AK and the State gouges the Euro hunters something fierce... it's almost shameful, but they're more than willing to pay for the privilege.

The biggest reason for me is the destructive nature of them. Some of them happily destroy cabins and have no fear of humans - and that's a bad bear. A few years ago, we had a black bear sow with a cub wander into the yard at the cabin while all of us were in the shed getting tools. We came out of the shed and she was between us and the cabin - and all our guns were in the cabin.

She began bluff-charging us (a mother with a cub is extremely dangerous) and we stood there quietly, watching her out of the corner of our eyes. Being bluff charged is terrifying, because you don't know if it's the real deal or not. That happened about a dozen times, and finally the cub retreated to a tree about 30' feet away and climbed it. When the sow turned to follow her cub, we hauled ass into the cabin and armed ourselves. That was a close call and we're lucky that all of us weren't severely mauled at the very least.

That was a bad bear, because she had no respect for humans. Bringing her cub into the yard meant that she was a menace by placing herself and the cub in immediate proximity to humans - and she knew we were there way before she entered the yard. They have amazing hearing and sense of smell and knew we were there... but she did it anyway.

Clearly there were too many stupid bears around the cabin and the stupid ones with no respect for humans needed to go.

I can report that there aren't any more stupid ones around my cabin nowadays. And my kids are free to enjoy fishing at the cabin or run around the area without a high possibility of being killed by a rogue bear.