Finally got to see some of Alaska a few months ago. Went to Juneau and linked up with a friend of a friend who arranged an afternoon hop to one of the larger islands in the area. Less than 20 minutes from the Juneau airport, we were stepping off the 10-seater plane at Hoonah on Chichagot Island. The plane carries people to and from work, the mail, tourists, and anything else you can imagine. This is THE way one commutes around here.
About 1000 people live on the island. But, around 3 to 4 THOUSAND BEARS live here; Alaskan Brown Bears. In the past, any bear seen by people on the island was shot. But now that is highly limited and the bear population is rather stable. Met up with two “guides” who were set to take us around the island in search of bears. Of course, the only shooting I would be doing was going to be with the camera. There were two of us tourists so all four of us easily rode around in the Jeep-like all-terrain vehicle.
Even though there are plenty of bears around, they are still wild and are not so interested in being seen by anyone, including other bears. Except for mothers with cubs, most bears are loners. Phil, the more talkative guide, lives on the island year-round. Brad, the driver, was not so verbose but still informative when needed. He only lives here in the summer while the rest of the time is in Oregon with his family.
We set off down the road which quickly turned into a more narrow, bumpy trail with lots of brush along the sides. We stopped at several points near where bears had been seen recently. There were tell-tale signs that bears had been around in the last few hours but we saw nothing. After quite a while of looking, we were all getting rather discouraged. The guides kept saying that bear sightings are not guaranteed. They did ask us if we wanted to keep looking. It was a nice day with plenty of light left so we said "sure, why not?". There was some thought of turning around to try another road out of town but it was decided to continue on the current path.
There was a stream farther out where the bears sometimes fish. So we headed to that. Once there, we parked on the bridge and got out to look around. Bingo! There's one bear (female) on one side of the stream. She was munching on some salmon. Then she slowly made her way along the bank, going under the bridge, and into the shallow water to grab another fish. As we watched, we saw more bears appearing farther up the stream. One was a mother bear with a couple of cubs. And then a juvenile bear came along. They were all fairly adept as avoiding getting too close to one another.
We kept watching them all as they would move in and out of the water, munching as they went. The juvenile bear when up the embankment into the bushes to avoid more direct interaction with the female bear. After some minutes, he was suddenly up on the road at the end of the bridge! Someone had thrown some fish bodies at the side of the road just beyond the bridge and he wanted those. But he did also notice us. He was basically about 30 feet away from Phil and I was only 8 feet behind Phil!
Now that may sound far enough but, really, that's only a few bounds away for a bear. We just kept our cool with no yelling or running. From behind, I could hear the camera clicking away so knew we should be getting some good pictures. Phil did have a gun but he had said earlier that he had never needed to shot a bear on these outings and did not really ever want to. He wants to live in peace with the bears. He did know them enough that, for a juvenile bear, it didn't take too much to get him to move off. Just let him eat what he wanted then Phil stomped his feet and waved his hands (to look large) and the bear decided to leave us alone (after some sniffing the air to determine our tastiness, I think!).
Shortly after that, there were no bears in sight. And then a bus came rumbling up the road behind us. It stopped on the bridge with over a dozen people pressing their noses again the windows to see if they could spot any bears. I think the noise of the bus is probably what got the bears to disappear in the first place. We told them about everything we had seen. Don't know if they fully believed us, having seen nothing all along their trek themselves. After just a few minutes, the bus roared off and it soon became peaceful again. And sure enough, another bear appeared up the stream for us to marvel over.
We spent another 15 minutes on the bridge and then decided to return to the airport so we could get the flight back to the mainland. The view up in the sky was great but we also knew we would always remember the close-up view of the wild bear on Chichagot.
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