Bear Biology

The Complexity of the Bear Rut.

- Wade Nolan

The left wing on the juiced-up Super Cub dipped as my pilot pointed to a clearing below. We were snaking our way past a smoking vent on Mt. Chiginagak volcano deep in the Alaska Range near Shelikof Strait. Kodiak Island peeked out of the haze a hundred miles to the east. There were two brown bears spinning around in a small clearing, one roughing up the other. The dark chocolate one was clearly the larger male. He frantically tried to mount the reluctant sow. We circled high above the bears and I noticed a big cinnamon boar charging in from a nearby avalanche chute. Then a bear-sized fight broke out. The competition over receptive sows is the stuff that makes for the biggest fights in the North American animal kingdom. This was brown bear country and May is the bear rut.

I was joining a guided hunt led by friend and master guide Brent Jones. Our hunting strategy backed into the breeding biology of Alaska brown bears. After sleeping in a snow cave thousands of feet up the snowy mountainside all winter, the boars were now on the prowl. The males emerge way earlier than the sows with cubs, but the sows without cubs would be out of their dens soon, and the boars were searching for them.