Brown Bears Mythical or real

I have been backpacking since I was 16.  Back when brown bears were found on coastal habitats and grizzly bears were 100 miles inland.  Now they are known to have the same DNA so the grizzly bears became brown bears.  I have hiked through the northlands of MN, the Black Hills, the Bighorns, Yellowstone numerous times, the Tetons, Glacier National Park several times and the Sierras.  Never have I come across a brown bear.  I have seen plenty of black bears.  I even worked with them in MN where I worked with a professor who was doing a heart study on the black bear population.  We would set traps for the bears and when one was captured we would tranquilize it and do a ultrasound of its heart.  Once we caught a pregnant female and I got to see the cub inside her stomach.  It was totally cool.  Yet I never have had a chance to see a brown bear.

A few years ago we drove up through the Canadian Rockies National Parks on our way to Alaska.  Every quarter of a mile were signs that said beware of wildlife and usually there was a picture of a brown bear on the sign.  Did we see one?  NOPE.  We were in Alaska for 10 days and everywhere we went people would say "you just missed a brown bear".  One night in Juneau we arrived at our camp sight way after dark.  We quickly set up our tent and zonked out for the night.  I awoke to the sound of water splashing.  Not knowing what to expect I crawled out of the tent. We had set up camp four feet from a stream where salmon were running.  Not just one or two but quite a group of salmon.  When I surveyed the rest of the camp site it was surrounded with salmonberry bushes and the berries were large and ripe.  You could not have asked for a better calling card for brown bears.  We spent three nights there.  How many bears did we see?  0!!!!!  After that trip we started saying that brown bears were just mythical creatures.  We had to admit they were real after we finally saw one in Yellowstone last year.  We saw a female and two cubs in a valley and we sat on the hillside just watching the cubs play while the mother ate.  It was Awesome.

Yesterday I read the book "River of Bears" by Tom Walker and Larry Aumiller.  This book talks about the brown bear population on the McNeil River just north of Katmai National Park. The book was about the history of the brown bear in that area.  Like Katmai, the brown bear population there is quite high and also like Katmai they come first over human visitors.  As both places keep human influence at very low levels the bears have gotten use to humans and tend to ignore them.  Which leaves visitors with a chance to see the bears at a very close range.  In the book it describes some of the experiences people have had.  For instance, a couple were able to see a mother nursing three cubs just yards away from them.  After finishing the book I had chills.  I am going to be able to experience these things first hand.

Katmai has over 3,000 brown bears.  The males and subadults should have left their dens by the time I get there.  I wonder how long it will take me to see one when I get there.