“You must have some great bear stories,” the nurse says as she escorts me to the examining room. I hear this comment or a variation of it often because I live in the wilderness on Kodiak Island in the middle of one of the most concentrated brown bear populations in the world. The nurse looks at me expectantly, and I wonder if she thinks I will start spewing out harrowing life-and-death tales of bruin adventures. She would be surprised to learn my mind is blank because living near bears is my “normal.” Put me in a car on a freeway outside Los Angeles, and I’d have an exciting story, but it would have nothing to do with bears. I am uncomfortable telling bear tales because most of my encounters with bears have been wonderful experiences where I sit with my husband and our summer guests watching bears chase salmon and interact with each other. Often, the bears don’t even know we are there, and if they do notice us, they usually ignore us as long as we remain quiet and stay out of their way.
Bear stories, though, are apparently more entertaining than tales of terror on a California freeway, so I decided to write about three of my most memorable bear encounters. The one I’ll cover in this piece has nothing to do with me but was a major coming-of-age event in my husband’s life, and I think it offers insight into what it must have been like for him to grow up in the wilderness. My second bear story is an encounter I hate to share, but I think I need to write about it. I call it my Tragic Bear Tale, and it sums up one of the worst events of my life. My final bear story is a scary “what if” story, and I remember it every time I spend a few days alone at our lodge. I hope when I tell these stories, I make it clear to my readers how much I respect bears. They are intelligent, powerful animals, and I try never to forget they are not the interlopers in my world; I am the intruder in theirs.
My husband, Mike Munsey, his four sisters, and one brother grew up at the lodge we now own.
They spent most of the year at the remote lodge in Amook Pass but moved into the town of Kodiak during the winter so the kids could attend a regular school for a few months. When Mike, was 14 years old, he, his five siblings, and his parents moved into town for a few months during the winter, and the Amook Pass lodge in Uyak Bay remained vacant.
One day, a winter watchman from a nearby cannery stopped by the lodge to check on it and found the living room window shattered. He heard loud noises inside the house and knew a bear had broken in and was ransacking the place. He contacted Mike’s parents, Park and Pat, and Park reported the incident to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G).
Park flew out to the lodge with Mike and an ADF&G biologist. Park climbed through the broken front window and saw a sow and her yearling cub sitting on the dining room table, eating the tablecloth. The bears were so hungry, the smell of the minute food particles on the tablecloth attracted them to it. The biologist determined the bears were starving to death. They would not survive the winter and probably would return to the lodge even if the humans forced them to leave now. He decided the bears needed to be destroyed so they wouldn’t suffer.
Park positioned Mike in the front yard with his rifle aimed at the front door. Then, Park went through the rear door into the kitchen, hoping to chase the bears from the dining room through the living room and out the front door. His plan went awry when he yelled, and instead of running away from him, the bears ran toward him. Park shot into the kitchen floor, and the sow and cub turned and fled out the front door, where Mike shot them.
When ADF&G biologists examined the bears, they found they were emaciated, and their stomachs were empty, except for part of the tablecloth and a roll of baggies. For the first few years, I lived at Munsey’s Bear Camp, the kitchen cupboard doors still bore the bears’ claw marks, and the oven door never closed properly because the sow sat on it.
Kodiak bears usually have plenty to eat between berries and salmon, and they have no trouble making it through the winter hibernation, but on those years when the berry crop fails, and few salmon return, a long winter can be tough, especially for a sow with cubs.
I often have wondered what thoughts ran through Mike’s head as he stood there, waiting for the bears to run through the front door. Hearing the unexpected shot from his father in the kitchen must have startled him, but he remained calm enough to stand his ground and shoot the bears when they ran out of the house. Mike learned the hard lessons of nature at an early age. Over the years, we’ve watched deer die during brutally cold winters and have seen bear sows abandon their cubs when the mothers could not find enough nourishment to sustain themselves and feed their young. Nature is not a Disney movie. It can be cruel and harsh, and kids growing up in the wilderness understand this stark reality. I know Mike enjoyed the praise his father heaped on him for possessing the composure to follow orders and shoot the bears, but I also know Mike hated killing the sow and cub. The experience left him conflicted but a little wiser.
