When you stand in front of a bear (small or large), it makes you feel very inadequate indeed
The grizzly we harvested this fall relied on berries, roots, horsetail and moose. We encountered the big bear only 10 days before, on our trail to the river, and we were only 20 metres apart from each other. Luckily, he decided to turn around and walk away (you never hear a bear approach or leave!), but the chance was 50:50 of him deciding to come after us or turn around. One of our wildlife cameras captured him once more before we bagged him. We get many grizzly photos, but this is the first one we have harvested in 26 years of living out on the line. He might have been at least 20 years old (there was hardly anything left of his molars).
Each summer, we enjoyed watching a cow and either one or two calves feeding at the lake, but for the last three years, that was not so. This year we’ve only seen a cow, with one calf from last year, wandering through. We figured the grizzly had learned to stalk the cows until they gave birth, then he killed the calf. It seemed, as well, that his territory had shrunk in size, as we saw new signs from him more often—even bark ripped off of trees, and hair rubbed on a tree right beside our cabin. Whenever we’d walk our one-hour round trip, there were new signs—diggings, droppings and tracks.
Just this past summer, as we were walking along the river to check on the beaver, there was a moose kill from last year, with the dirt one metre around it worked up (grizzlies like to cover their kill to make the meat more tender and so other predators cannot get at it). The bear then makes a bed to rest or sleep not far from the kill site, where he can keep watch on it. If you should accidentally come upon such a place, alarm bells should start ringing loudly—because chances are that a bear is watching you!
We felt that the balance was off: our trapline is inhabited mostly by grizzlies (very few black bears, as grizzlies won’t tolerate black bears in their main territory) and lone wolves that team up to go after moose calves, as well. Now it feels like moose have a chance, once again, and we’re curious to see when a new grizzly will make his home in this place. We are hoping a moose cow will live at the lake again, to rear her young there. Maybe we’ll see a black bear more often and not just once every few years in the middle of the summer.
Trappers play a role in keeping the balance: depending on where a trapline is. However, it isn’t just trappers that harvest a moose. There may be others hunting only moose (alone in the wilderness while hearing wolves howling). And when it comes to those same wolves, hunters may choose not to harvest any of them because they don’t know how to properly prepare a pelt.
A trapper will want to stay on top of any changes in pelt-handling directives: there’s a big gap in revenue from sending out a proper taxidermied hide versus sending out a poorly-skinned one (say the animal is worth skinning for taxidermy but you fail to put in the work). Respect plays a role, as well: trappers should use everything they can from a harvested animal and prepare its meat or hide (or other parts, such as skulls) to their full satisfaction. A very good book to check out is Commercial Standards for the Marketing of Wild Fur, by Antoine Martineau-Rousseau, Pierre-Yves Collin, Gaetan Fournier, Andre Blais, and Roch Lessard (Yukon Trappers Association might have it in stock).
The Yukon Trappers Association also puts on pelt-handling courses that are open to all. As a hunter, it is good to know how to prepare a wolf (or any other mammal) for taxidermy purposes. Near the end of the Yukon Hunting Regulations booklet, there’s a page detailing the number of animals harvested the year before (which is broken down into Game Management Zones).
Yukon grizzlies (Ursus arctos) are undoubtedly the kings of the bush and are a symbol of the wilderness. The only competitor for a grizzly on a kill site is a wolverine. Adult male Grizzlies generally weigh up to 275 kilograms here in the Yukon.
The heaviest grizzly studied in the Yukon, as of the ’80s, tipped the scales at 430 kilograms. It is believed that he enjoyed prolonged meals of garbage. In the fall, grizzlies can put on one kilogram per day when enough berries are available (grizzlies can eat up to 200,000 berries in a single day). They den on south-facing slopes near the treeline; that’s where we saw (three years ago) a fresh track veering off our snowmobile trail towards the mountains. At that point we were already up at the treeline and coming back from the North Cabin. It was probably the same bear that was ready to move a ton of earth out of the hillside to make himself a cozy den that would be one metre high and one-and-a-half metres in diametre. A mattress of grasses, moss and branches would line the den. The bear’s heartbeat and breathing rate would be lower, but its body temperature would remain near normal, which means that it could wake up quickly.
Listen to the ice as it flows downriver; it’s time to get used to the cold once more! Sonja Seeber, Yukon Trapper
