Tamed Bears To Be Hunted In Alaska

[Paul Pless]

Did y'all see this bull****?

I'm prohunting, but this is too far for me - and that's saying alot. I hope there's another more reasonable side to this story that I'm missing.



http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/14/eveningnews/main1894769.shtml



(CBS) The spectacle plays out each summer at the world's premier bear-viewing area: Alaska's massive brown bears posing, wrestling and filling up on migrating salmon in the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary (http://www.wildlife.alaska.gov/mcneil/).

CBS News correspondent Jerry Bowen reports there's not a more camera-friendly group of brown bears in the world, because over time they've become very accustomed to having human visitors watch what they do.

And it's a tough ticket. A lottery system grants admission to just 10 visitors a day, totaling just 200 for the entire summer.

"It's overwhelming," says Steve Roberts, who came from Minneapolis to see the bears. "You just don't know which way to look."

"It's a three-ring circus," says Ruth Roberts.

Some people wait years for their chance to visit the sanctuary. Cheryl Parker, of Fairbanks, Alaska, found herself taken with a skinny girl bear who was trying to catch salmon: "There's a girl out here who's a tiny thing, and it takes her a while to get that fish. But once she gets it, she tears off with it."

The sanctuary is located a float plane ride over Cooke Inlet on the Katmai Peninsula, just past the still-steaming Augustine volcano. Once there, it's a four-mile hike to experience the ultimate bear tale.

Close encounters are common, and, as Bowen discovered, unnerving.

A young bear looked to Bowen for a little help with other, bigger, bears who wanted his fish. Guides shooed him off, but retired sanctuary manager Larry Aumiller said it's another sign that these are not your average bears.

"They're so confident and so unconcerned about us and what we're going to do, that they're relaxed enough to play," Aumiller says. "It's great."

Therein lies the problem. McNeil's bears may be too relaxed for what's about to happen, when, one year from now, adjacent buffer zones that protect them will be opened to trophy hunters. It's led Aumiller to retire, because he fears he's set the bears up for disaster.

He says, "When you finally get there, and they finally trust you, and you know that trust is going to be violated, I don't know how to describe it except to say it's heartbreaking."


©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[JimD]

The sick twisted mind of the trophy hunter will have no trouble justifiing this as both a public service to humanity and an environmentally sound practice. Ask them and they will tell you that in the end the bears themselves are the true beneficiaries.

[BrianW]

So how big are the buffer areas, and how close will the hunters be allowed to get?

[paladin]

This is the same crap they pulled 20 years ago with the Siberian Wolves....I raised Wuff from a pup and then his friends (pack) always followed the weasel out when we went hunting because we always left some game for the cubs and females, they became tame to us so that when the idiot governor decided he could make a gazillion bucks by making them trophy animals...then one day we were out and some a$$hole took a shot at Wuff when the two of us were tracking caribou.....I put three well placed shots in his snomobile.....

[BrianW]

Some of the better comments to the article...


I went to Alaska this summer and saw these babies! Why kill them? We are in THEIR territory, not ours! Shame on US!!! We fight so, hopefully no one comes to kill our babies....


a follow-up to my previous comment: I just now sent an email to my entire address book with the link to the CBS-news piece about the bears

glad I'm not on her list, sounds like she does that alot. ;)


They need to give the animal a gun,so they can hunt these big game hunters.I wonder if Cheney is involved?


Here's an idea. What if we took all of the folks who signed up for the lottery and "minutemanned" the buffer zones in a way to keep the bears safe within?

Perhaps the gentleman who retired in disgust could lead the effort. We could even go high-tech with drones, cameras and other "watching" systems so we would know where we need to be.


I remember a PRESIDENT who cared about bears, enough that they even named a stuffed animal after him, TEADDYBEAR. Why can't we stop this very stupid action of opening the areas around these beautiful beasts?

Apparently President Bush is at fault. :)

[George Jung]

There has been such a media response that I suspect the proposal may be 're-evaluated'; wouldn't do to tick off a large voting block, and the media attention seems pretty well orchestrated. I'd hate to be the pol looking for re-election, and found responsible for this in the first place. Unbelieveable to me that this was proposed at all.

[geeman]

Here we have the Smoky Mtns National Park.Surprisingly most people dont know its also the MOST Visited Park in the nation.The park has a large number of bear that for some reason dont know where the park bounderies are.So, every hunting season the "great hunters" hang around the park bounderies and wait for the partly tame nonhuman fearing bear to cross the line.The bear come out expecting the humans to feed them ,instead they get shot.Maybe its just me, but I dont see the "sport" there.

[BrianW]

The 'taming' of bears (and wolves) appears to be a problem. ;)

[BrianW]

My gut reaction is that this doesn't sound like a good plan.

But as expected, when I asked about specifics, like what size area are we talking about, there's only silence.

The article was good at stirring up emotions, but very short on facts concerning the proposed change.

[skuthorp]

If there's any truth to it, it sounds pretty sick! Anyone who'd 'hunt' one of these animals is not a person suitable to own or use a gun.

[JimD]

Some very good reading for those interested in a pair of naturalists study of grizzly bears:

http://www.cloudline.org/index.html

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/giants/living.html

And the very sad end to their studies of the Russian grizzlies:


Poachers wipe out Kamchatka grizzlies. Firing from a helicopter, poachers killed all of the 20 to 40 grizzly bears on Siberia's Kamchatka Peninsula ending the study conducted by the Canadian team of Maureen Enns and Charlie Russell who had been studying the bears since 1995. Poachers had previously killed all the tigers in the region and continue to poach sturgeon and salmon. The research is documented in a PBS documentary: Walking with Giants: The Grizzlies of Siberia and the book Grizzly Heart: Living Without Fear Among the Brown Bears of Kamchatka.

[skuthorp]

Uh!, as far as I can see the sooner man poisons himself off the better for the rest of the species, if there's anything left other than rats, insects and bacteria.

[ishmael]

Hm. A similar debate happens every election cycle here in Maine. The black bears we have are pretty easy to draw in with bait, and then are pretty easy to shoot. Some landowners make money off it during the season. I think the last referendum, to ban baiting, failed.

There's some justification for allowing it here. The bears are doing very well, and have become a nuisance in some areas. This story is different.

I'm not a hunter, though I respect people who do it well. Shooting fish in a barrel has always been a bit unsporting. As with all stories, there's doubtless another side to this one. Look to who is lobbying, for and against.

Question: Does Alaskan Brown Bear equal Kodiak?

[BrianW]

Question: Does Alaskan Brown Bear equal Kodiak?

Kodiak bears are brown bears, they're just on Kodiak Island.

'Brown Bears' are generally considered coastal bears, while grizzlies live in the interior.

[Phillip Allen]

Tourists go to see the spectacles of bears and other circus...they are tourists and not very smart. "Here's my money, show me the spectacle now’... ‘Wow, how about that...let me get a picture of you standing next to a bear’... ‘Now let us go and get some hamburgers at the McDonalds" I have a very low regard for tourists. Trophy hunting is what city folks come to the country to do...country folks may certainly hunt but they don't do such shallow things as trophy hunting...that is for tourists who feel they need to show off back in the city. There is a blurry and hard to define line between the shallow and vapid tourist and an honest hunter but I don’t have trouble seeing it when I encounter it. Perhaps it is similar to the difference observed when an experienced sailor encounters a raw beginner…

[BrianW]

I found this map on a 'Friends of McNiel River' website...

http://www.mcneilbears.org/db_images/adn/454-4McNeil_map-2.gif

Seems the proposal is to allow hunting in the refuge (salmon colored area) and the State land to the south (white.) Hard to see that part, somebody decided there needed to be a bear picture in that corner. :rolleyes:

So it looks like a buffer zone of approx 10 miles may be cut down to approx 3 miles. Guess nobody will be shooting the bears from the viewing platform.

[Paul Pless]

So how big are the buffer areas, and how close will the hunters be allowed to get?


Sorry it took so long to get back to this...

Brian I think what you ask is the important question. You later answered that hunters could get within three miles of the habitat of the bears in question. How far do bears wander, is it likely that they will cross that three miles and into the hunting zones? Like I said, I'm not an anti-hunter, but in this case it seems like a pretty bad decision.

[Matt J.]

It takes a very insecure person to trophy hunt. It takes a very daft public to allow it. WTF do we feel the need to kill critters like that?

I agree with the skuthorp. Maybe some of these diseases and wars, etc are not undeserved? Earth's house cleaning, as it were.

[ishmael]

One of our hunters can correct me, but the 'trophy mind' arose quite naturally out of pot hunting. Someone once bagged a huge buck, the guy next to him said, man, look at the rack on that sucker, let's measure it and write it down.

The people who don't learn their quarry, who go out for a long weekend at a ranch where they are pretty much guarenteed to shoot something, in between sips of Johnny Walker, are a pitiful lot. Not hunters, not in my book. But if you know there's a trophy black bear roaming the back forty, and you stalk him, and kill him, and then eat him, give some of him away to charity, and want the head in your den, or maybe a bearskin rug, that's okay with me. It's a helluvua lot more honest than buying cellophane-wrapped chicken.

Respect.

[BrianW]

Paul,

I do recall reading that the bears already roam pass the current no-hunting areas, into areas where it's legal to hunt them. Obviously the new rule will not make things better for them, but I doubt it will be much worse.

A lot of this is perspective. Some folks are enamoured with them, and give them human like qualities. But bears aren't human, they're critters, and some of us don't live in reverance of them.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v136/BrianW/Sitka/bearsignatstarigavin.jpg

Sometimes they're simply another thing to look out for on a favorite local trail. :)

[paladin]

mmmm...city slickers...they taste like salmon.......

[BrianW]

Ish,

I appreciate your attitude.

[BrianW]

paladin,

Funny you mentioned salmon. :)

I was coming back from the shooting range when I stopped to check out the river, and took a few pictures of salmon...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v136/BrianW/Sitka/starigavinriversalmon.jpg

Spotted this river otter nearby...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v136/BrianW/Sitka/riverotteratstarigavin.jpg

That's when I saw the sign and was reminded of this thread. ;)

[Meerkat]

Ish,

I appreciate your attitude.Do you like other forms of horse manure as well? :rolleyes:

[BrianW]

Must be, I still like you too. :)

[Meerkat]

Must be, I still like you too. :)Har har.

Ish has a way of postulating the most bogus, obscure, insipid and/or inange reasons for most things. His take on how trophy hunting came to be is consistent! :D

Trophy hunting is an atavasitic throwback to when hunting for the pot was the stuff of life. Hunting for things you can't even eat is particularly odious!

[BrianW]

Well, we all have our opinions. Most folks reserve theirs, or share them respectfully, sort of like you have. Others spew theirs as if they have the only correct opinion and everybody else is wrong. ;)

[Phillip Allen]

Brian, I'd go hunting with ya and carry the back-up rifle. I don't miss often and I don't cut and run...just remember that I don't really want a bear of my own to shoot so don't muck up the shot...and you STILL have to clean it!

[BrianW]

Okay, meet ya in Anchorage on the 25th. Sheep is on the menu, not bears. ;)

[Phillip Allen]

I doubt I could handle the altitude required for sheep...I'd need months of prep I think. (anyway, ya don't need back-up for that...camera would be fine though)

I am kinda proud that after 4 months of sloth, I'm able to jump back into masonry...that is upper torso work though and not leg work.

[ishmael]

Gee, can I come? I'd be toting a camera, not a rifle. Just joshing, I've got other things on my plate, and also am not in shape for a hunt.

It's funny, David and I often agree on the details, but something about me bugs him. I've come to see it as his to work out.

Legs aren't used in masonry? You must have a young-buck hod carrier on the job. LOL.

I'm having a fifty year olds reunion with my ex-partners in crime this fall. Four old friends from highschool; we haven't been together in ten years. Everyone's a little crippled. I've got a bad elbow, John has a hip that needs surgery, from a fall he took skiing, Dwight has a broken scapula(another ski accident), and Steve has eight year old triplets and a prostate that's acting up. We should have a great time together, LOL.