Here's a story that was sent to me. I wonder how these damn bears survive sometimes!
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A month and a half ago the USGS polar bear boys were up here doing aerial
FLIR surveys for bear dens (looking for their infrared signature through the
snow). They came upon one den at which the female had recently been killed
by a male bear. So recently that she was still limber at �35 temps and his
tracks still glowed in the snow. Needless to say, they didn�t hang out long
on the ground to investigate. So they assigned us the task of returning to
the scene of the crime to see if we could locate the carcass and the den
site. They wanted us to retrieve the head and a long bone from the female
for analysis.

Well, we did manage to find the site due to my tracking lore (and a frozen
GPS) and hawk-like vision. Believe it or not, we could still find tracks
after a month and a half. We retrieved said samples from her and began
excavating the drifted in den, which was marked by a 12 foot spray of
arterial blood in front of the den where she had her throat ripped out. The
den was hard to find at first because it had drifted over with about 3� more
snow, but once found, it was well defined by its ice walls and entrance
tunnel. The terrible violence of the encounter was painted by more of her
sprayed blood inside the den entrance and the floor of the den, which was
pooled 3� thick with a mixture of frozen blood, bits of fur, and gristle.
It was also covered with an inordinate amount of feces/urine. The tale of
the encounter was pretty clearly written in the snow. Near as we could
piece together, the male bear had discovered the den by smell (probably due
to the excess feces/urine), and had pounced on and caved it in like he would
do a seal den. When she came out to confront him, he grabbed her by the
head and ripped her throat out before dragging her 50 yards out on the sea
ice where he ate out her entrails and left the rest for the foxes.

We were determined to find her cubs as well, and finally found them in an
ice chamber in the very bottom of the den, frozen in situ where they were
buried by the colossal battle at the den entrance. Their death was quick
and ignominious; buried alive under snow mixed with copious amounts of urine
and feces (which she probably vented due to the shock of the sudden
violence); they probably quickly succumbed to hypothermia. They were only
about 3 weeks old. It was a striking scene in a striking setting, facing
north across the tumbled ice of the Beaufort Sea from the bluffs of Pingok
Island.

I believe we are the first to ever document this sort of thing occurring.
Obviously it happens, but to our knowledge, no one has documented it before.
Pretty cool, in a disturbing sort of way.

MuskegMan: Not to be nosey, but do you work for the USFWS? Your story is grim but has a very strong Alaskan element to it.

Wow! What an incredible story.

Thanks for posting.

Regards,
Dave

Tough story to read. Reminded me of a mama dog and some very, very young puppies I tried to save in Iraq. It didn't go well.

Tough story to read.

Russ

Very intersting article. Better than any thing I have read in a magazine in a long time. It is stunning how cruel nature can be but intersting at the same time as we learn about other species. Do you feel that the male did this as some sort of territorial protection to eliminate future competeion from the cubs ?

I've read similar accounts of boar brown bears savagely preying upon sows, which where protecting cubs, on Kodiak Island.

Reminds me of some of the human predators that stalk women.

There needs to be a season opening on these kinds of predators. Like former Gov. Hickel said, "We can't just let Mother Nature run wild out there."

Agree wholeheartedly about the human predators, they need to get thinned out of the general population - humans are much more savage than any so called "animal" in the wild. Hot button for me, sorry, no hijack intended. KMule

by all the creative methods we come up with to f**k up our fellow humans - KMule

HI,


Talk about two extreams, Iraq and the north pole,two tough places,Kev

I think that such actions are almost common among large predators. Most female bears with young are very defensive around males.

African Lions probably are responsible for the killing of more of their own species than any other cause.

Even the little Bobcats in my part of the world, work their own kind over pretty hard. We had a study on Babcats some twenty years ago, that showed that over 90% of the cats living in the wild were no less than four years old. In fact, the larger percentage of the group were eight years old or older. These ages were determined from dental samples on some 400 cats killed in the year of sample. The sample also showed that there were far more male cats about than females. On many occassion, I've had young Bobcats and female cats killed in a trap by other Bobcats. At some points, we were catching 8 male cats to ever one female cat.

I don't think that it's always that extreme. But, I do believe that it is nature taking care of itself. If the population gets too high for the land, then nature will reduce the population.


All that being said: I do believe that hunters taking the large old male predators, actually encourages a growth in the total population of an area. I'm sure the "greenies" would never admit that. But, I believe it is true.


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