After feeding on salmon near the shores of Narrow Cove in Kukaklek Lake for several hours the small female brown bear walked up the bank past the hunters and was shot, first by the hunter/client’s arrow, then by the guide’s high power rifle.

This was not the first brown bear I’ve seen killed by a trophy hunter, but certainly the strangest ‘hunt’ I’ve experienced. It was late in the fall of 2007 and I was standing with several friends near our tent camp, we had been dropped off in Narrow Cove by floatplane the day before. The goal of our trip was to document a legally permitted bear hunt that takes place in the Katmai National Preserve in Alaska.

This particular bear hunt has become controversial primarily because the bears being killed are often the very same bears that for many summers have been enjoyed by hundreds, if not thousands, of bear viewers that flock to Katmai. The bears grow comfortable with the presence of both bear viewers and sports fishermen and treat visiting humans with a surprising level of respect. It’s not uncommon to have a brown bear in this area wander within 50ft of a non-disruptive group of visitors. With opening day of the hunting season in Katmai Preserve things are different. Bear viewers with guns. As I personally witnessed, the bears don’t know the difference between bear viewers and bear hunters. This bear walked out of the lake and proceeded to climb up the bank well within 100 yards of the hunters who were moving towards the bear to intersect its path.

Do the bear hunters in Katmai Preserve practice fair chase? That is a question that our documentation efforts were to answer. […]