Took a little run back in the hills to see how the moose were fareing.
Still quite a bit of snow, but it is getting away fast. Had to catch
the morning freeze otherwise by afternoon the snow is too soft. The
creeks are opening up and made it hard to get around. Still a few ice
bridges to cross on but you have to look hard to find one at times.
Found a lot of sign of where moose were having porblems when the snow was deeper. They were staying on their trails and were confined to
small areas, and the willows they could get to were chewed down pretty
well.

A lot of places they had corraled up under the trees and stood for days
in one spot, like as evidenced here.

With the snow melting and a good crust freezing at night they were
finally able to move around and had started working their way towards the south facing slopes and trying to find browse.
A lot of the brown bear are out of their dens now though and are
finding easy moose hunting. The bear was on this kill when I found it.
He made a couple half-hearted attempts to run me off when I first pulled up on the Tundra but then moved back up in the brush before I
could get a camera out. I didn't crowd him, after he moved off I walked over and got a picture of the kill.
(Sorry, this thing is acting weird so will post this and continue with
a new post).

Continued:


He couldn't find much for dirt and sod to cover it with so he used some
spruce branches. This moose was one that F&G had collared about a month
ago. The orange in the pic is the collar. I picked it up and took it
back to them.
Went on up the creek bottom and found another kill. This one was very fresh, the bear moved off when I came up on it. He killed it in this
channel and just left it in the water, and like the other bear he laid
a few spruce boughs on it to try to keep the birds from eating it.


Gen2600, a couple grandkids and I went back to this kill next day. There
was one bear eating on the moose, another was laying in the brush about
75 feet away and they were growling back and forth at each other. While
we were watching them another bear was roaring a couple hundred yards up
the canyon. We stayed back about 150 yds and watched them for probably 20 minutes or so, hoping to see a fight, but they just grumbled and
growled at each other. Got a couple long range pictures.

[img:gal:105044f8fb65e822df]
Not sure if he is going to show in this picture very well.
http://www.trapperman.com/forum/attachments/usergals/2012/04/full-10504-83346-winter_2012_brown_bear_055.jpg[/img]
[img:gal:105044f8fb65e822df]
I counted 5 different sets of bear tracks on that little trip and it's still a little early so they are not all out of their dens yet.
This is the collar from the first kill, one of the new ones F&G is using this time on the moose. The little black box on the side is a breakaway unit that can be programed for a certain amount of time (up to 5 years) and then it will open and let the collar fall off.
http://www.trapperman.com/forum/attachments/usergals/2012/04/full-10504-83349-winter_2012_brown_bear_043.jpg[/img]

Man, this thing is just full of surprises tonight. Had to put one pic in photobucket to get it to even post, and now the last two just gives a string of letters and numbers???
I'll try the two pic's again here:

(Edit) He doesn't show up very well. (he's in the tree's at the left of the pic).

Looks like it was a good outing!! Feel for the moose, I've never seen piles that big. Makes me wonder how that is going to effect calving season, if they had enough to survive and not abort. Nice looking bear!

Thanks for sharing!

Wow with that much bears around it gotta be hard on the moose. Is nobody targeting the browns there? Man i'd be going nuts. A brown is like the top of my bucketlist. Really neat pics ya got. Thanks for posting them!

Wow Spek the bears are out in full force. So do you think they are killing more than scavenging the dead and dying? We need a more liberal brown bear season. They want to save the moose in the KP but won't sacrifice many brown bears to help the cause. Did you see any black bear sign yet? Going to try and see what is across the bay here soon for something to do.

HFT, I don't really know how much it will affect the calving as far as
causing the cows to abort. In a sense it doesn't really matter a lot
whether that happens or not, as the calves that do get born will not survive the bears and wolves. Our calf survival rate last year was very
low. But yeah they are hurting for certain.

YukonTrapper, our brown bear season has been closed for a long time here.
Back before about '96 we had both a spring and fall season. The harvest was
pretty low because this is brushy country and generally pretty hard to hunt
brown bear in. So even with a fairly liberal season back then the BB population was steadily increasing. Then we got handed an influential idiot
(IMO) for a biologist here and he managed to get the bear seasons closed down
even though there was no biological reason for it. Proposals have been submitted to open it up again but for what ever reason the BOG has not seen
fit to do so. It's a sad deal. Our moose are being managed right out of
existence. The BOG is finally starting to acknowledge we have a problem so hopefully something will get done, but we are behind the curve on it in a big way.
FT, the sign indicated that both these moose were killed by bears. I only ran
a couple miles of the drainage but did not find any that had died of starvation. I'm sure some did. Bad thing is they are weak and easy prey for
the brown bear. The bears had no problem catching these two and taking them down.
I haven't seen any black bear yet, but I'm sure they are out down along the
coast and the lower elevations.

Spec- Another thing that may work in the proposal is having everything documented. Not jus what you see but others. Pictures also. And proposse it to the BOG, well as long as they are actually finally acknowledging the long term damage on the moose No B-Bear Season is having. I know what you are saying about brushy country. I think i only saw a sow and cubs once while out boating since i been out on my own. Every so many years guys will get one in the springtime on snow machines. Otherwise idk when was the last time anyone got one in the fall time.

Spek,

I thought there were only 12 brown bears on the entire Pennisula?

Its very sad when the authorities start protecting the top predators outright without considering the outcome.They seem to not realize that the imbalance will lead to huge problems down the road.Seen it here when they closed the spring black bear hunt not for scientific reasons but due to political ones.A few years ago someone found a huge rotting pile of bears in the bush near a community and the shite hit the fan when it reached the media.The authorities told them in no uncertain terms that just because the harvest had been closed that the nuisance bears still had to be dealt with.All the tree huggers had a hard time getting their heads around that concept.

Nice pic Spek! At least you're always putting a hurt on the wolves, real bummer about no BB hunting.

It was a fun time, my throat is finally feeling better from stabbing into the bank and taking my tundra's windshield to the windpipe... Good times :P

Here is a short video I shot of the bears if you guys want to see:
BrownBear Vid

I'll head down and fix Spek's computer now!

Thank you for sharing the pictures and video guys. Our griz here would be very aggressive if you came to their kill.

Hey, the video is much better than my still shots. Noticed the willows in the foregound of the video are chewed down to the size of my thumb by the moose. Thanks Travis. And thanks for fixing the 'puter, it's working great again... so far anyway!

Northway, I think that deduction went by the wayside after 13 bears were killed in
peoples yards and we were only supposed to have 12. Somebody in F&G said "Duhhh, now
wait a minute here, how can this be"??!!!

I shouldn't joke about F&G, the majority of them guy's do an outstanding job, we just tend to notice the bad apples more. To be fair, I know at least one board member is in favor of getting at least a registration hunt for BB going, hopefully that'll happen soon.

Thanks Takotna. In my dream world we would do a predator control zone here and open
up neck snaring of brown bear for even just one season. The old timers up until
sometime in the '30's did it (and were maybe a little too zealous about it). But things could be turned around in a hurry. A hunting season alone would help, but have little impact as far as what needs to be done.

Ron, they can be very aggressive here at defending kills as well. Some of my most
hair raising experiences with brown bear has been around kills. It depends a lot on the individual bear. Close to 50 % will abandon a kill when you approach, the other half
will defend it. Sometimes it has more to do with the size of the fight in the bear
rather than the size of the bear in the fight. In the video above the bear eating on the moose was a little smaller than the one that was standing back and growling. The bigger bear wanted the kill but not at the cost of battleing with the samaller bear that was on it. Normally the bigger bear takes over the kill, but not always.

OK Spek that answers it. Most of the ones that I have encountered are feeding on hunter lost animals in the fall and seems most are not leaving. Also seems like if a griz gets on a moose kill real late into November he may stay there until it's all gone, even as late as Christmas. Not sure what spring bears would be like, have not had opportunity to observe them.

That is a cool video. He is staying up on top pretty well. That would be exciting to see.

Spek, any chance you could tell me the location of these bears. I have 309 and am heading down this evening to the cabin to look for brown fur. I suppose these are in anchor drainage?

Sent you a PM slider. Congratulations on drawing a permit.

Don't worry Spek when your moose density gets down to about .3 moose per square mile of moose habitat you can look forward to a huge battle to convince ADF&G that habitat and deep snow is not what is limiting and/or reducing the moose population. BTW I'm no wildlife professional, well at least not until I have to be.

Spek one of the most interesting posts Ive ever read thanks for sharing. In all my years out in the sticks I have never seen a place where the moose were stuck in one place so long.

Thanks Yukon. There's always a certain percentage of moose here that winters in the upper drainages, and most years they do fairly well there. This year though the snow just kept
piling up in the upper drainages. They were pretty much snow bound by the middle of Feb.
(The moose that made it to the lower elevations faired pretty well). I'm sure there were
some starved to death. I didn't find any that had that day but I only traveled one short
section of one drainage. Our snow is going fast these days, but of the ones that survived the snow, bears and wolves will finish off most of them before they gain back their strength. With all the wolf and bear hugging going on these day's it's a tough time to
be a moose.

Speck I talked to the trooper last weekend at the spit when we got back from bear hunting. He said they were going to have a register hunt for brown bear starting this fall. Don't imagine it will last very long but progress.

Thanks for the good news Len. I knew Spraker was trying to get that going but hadn't
heard how it was coming along. He didn't happen to mention what the target quota would
be did he?

No he didn't