I didn’t want to bring this up before the Anchorage Alaska Mayors Marathon, but now that it has passed, I can bring it to all my readers attention.  (I didn’t want to scare off the Team in Training folks I trained with.) It just serves as a reminder that there are still places in the West that wildlife is part of the landscape that we have to take into account in our daily activities.  There are cities in all of the 12 Western States where urban wildlife is a reality. 

From the Anchorage Daily News on June 18th 2008

On Saturday, the 50-year-old competitive skier and triathlete was run over by a grizzly as he and a running buddy were finishing a three-hour workout that took them from Hillside Park up to the base of Flattop Mountain and back.

Rogers happened to be wearing a heart-rate monitor for training at the time. He thought his maximum heart rate was 180. He later looked at the monitor and realized he’d hit 193.

“You hear about people dying of fright,” he said. “Well, this was scary, and I’ve the data to prove it. I think it aged me about five years.”

Rogers suffered no injuries, though

Read the rest of the story HERE

Now is the time of year when the snow is melting off of the Coast range and I start thinking about heading off into the hills to see if I can scout out some bucks and bears. With green grass growing in the higher elevations, it isn’t unusual in the West to see hungry spring bears grazing and soaking up sun. Usually the bears I see will turn tail and run at the hint of human scent, but in wild places where people work alongside wildlife that isn’t always the case.  It goes to show that wildlife can lose their fear of humans in their quest for an easy meal.

Thanks to my Alaskan friend Mike Stark who sent me these pictures, he had an explanation to go with them…

These pics are all from Prudhoe Bay Alaska, some of them have been around a while, still amazing though.  The last pic is one of a bear they named Toby when he got into the Prudhoe Bay Hotel and up to the second floor.  They decided that he was a little too used to humans and had to put him down.

This has to be the most unique tracking collar story I have heard of.  An Alaskan wildlife biologist collared a mountain goat and a year later they discovered that a black bear was wearing the collar! 

Follow the LINK to read the story that appeared in the Juneau Empire on February 24th, 2008. 

We will start with the Alaskan Brown Bear because it is the first alphabetically in the Pope and Young Records. If you are after the largest land predator in North America, then this is it. Ursus arctos middendorffi is the larger coastal brown bear. For record keeping purposes the Alaskan brown is found south and West of the dividing line from the P&Y measurers manual:
“…beginning at the Pearse Canal and following the Canadian and Alaskan boundary to Mt. Natazhat, then west-northwest along the divide of the Wrangell Range to Mt. Jarvis at the western end of the Wrangell Range. The boundary proceeds north along the divide of the Mentasta Range to Mentasta Pass, then in a general westerly direction along the divide of the Alaska Range to Houston Pass, and westerly following the 62nd parallel of latitude to the Bering Sea.”

Scoring for all bears is the sum of two measurements. Length plus Width taken after a sixty day drying period, after all meat and tissue has been removed from the skull. The minimum measurement for entry in the P&Y records program is 20 0/8 inches.

Needless to say, you can only get an Alaskan Brown Bear in Alaska so I have presented the top ten areas for number of entries and average score. The vast majority of the Pope and Young Bears have come From Kodiak and Amiralty islands, both of which are well known for their high bear densities. Click on the thumbnails below to see the full sized charts.

All information presented is from the Pope and Young Club Bowhunting Big Game Records of North America, Sixth edition 2005 published by the Pope and Young Club Chatfield, MN. Not responsible for numerical errors, typographical errors or omissions, due to the author’s poor typing skills or plain bone headedness.