By BOB BIRD
July 10, 2026 – It’s midsummer in Alaska, and with the crush of tourists, both, American and foreign, spreading out over the Greatland, it is a time of abundance.
It also is for our gigantic wildlife, and they need the summer abundance of fish and flora to feed themselves and their young. They are very protective, they are not cuddly squeeze toys nor cartoon characters, and they are dangerous.
They are also everywhere. We recently had a black bear enter the produce department of a military commissary. The Kenai Peninsula is home to the planet’s largest moose, dwarfing those in New England and elsewhere. Some 40% of their calves wind up as bear food, and anyone — including the family lap-yapper dog, can easily be perceived as a threat.
We all know how mindless tourists react in Yellowstone when they see a moose, buffalo, or best of all, a bear, but my 50 years in this state has fortunately seen very little of such idiotic behavior.
But beware, all you dipnetters coming down here: there is NO SHOULDER when you go through Cooper Landing, and when the Kenai River comes alongside the Sterling highway, that is where you might find BOTH lanes blocked by a tourist. Seeing their first moose, black or brown bear is like seeing Bigfoot.
All precautions of traffic safety, visibility at curves in the road and common sense take a back seat to their “bucket list” that they need fulfilled on the phone cameras.
With all this being said, we had a close call here the other day in a Kenai Subdivision, located VERY CLOSE to where dipnetters will be packed near the mouth of the Kenai River.
A brown bear sow and two cubs came waddling through a subdivision on K-Beach Road. One early rising neighbor watched them cross his property and sought to call and alert his neighbors. However, at 4:55 in the morning, most have the cell phones off and re-charging.
Too bad. Nearby a woman let her two dogs out for early morning relief, only to come smack-dab into the three bears. There was no Goldilocks. One dog came back into the house, but the other — and this is an admitted presumption here — likely “defended” its family and turf by annoying Mama Bear. Eager to protect her pet and frighten it away, the woman grabbed a .410 shotgun. No, she had the sense not to shoot AT it, merely to make a loud noise to (hopefully) get it to skedaddle.
Instead, it charged her on the front deck, mauling her sufficiently to crack 5-6 ribs (a more serious injury than it sounds) and make a dozen or so lacerations. Medevac’d to Anchorage, her condition is serious, and fortunately not life threatening.
Click here for full details: https://radiokenai.com/woman-seriously-injured-in-brown-bear-attack-at-kenai-home/.
We Alaskans can easily be lulled into complacency: “I’ve walked my neighborhood for fifteen years and never had a wildlife encounter.”
Click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M26ug8MGYlY.
Everywhere in Alaska, summer and winter, we need to be aware, and always assume the worst. And you can be sucker-punched, despite all precautions: Over 30 years ago, the first tourist bus at Denali Park found a typical retiree woman mauled and killed in the parking lot at the main visitor center. Nearby, unknown even to Park Rangers, was a moose carcass, serving as a food cache for a grizzly.
Just last year, an experienced wildlife photographer in Homer, eager to take snapshots of a moose cow and her calf, was a safe distance away. But then he maneuvered around some brush for a better angle, and losing sight of them, found out that they had moved as well. Surprising them, he had no chance as the cow trampled him to death.
In your defense, then, despite making noise, despite giving a wide berth, and despite keeping your dogs on a leash, what do you do if you are attacked?
The column cannot contain all the options. Make your own decisions about pepper spray, guns, playing dead or fighting back.
And remember, Alaska is NOT a theme park.
Bob Bird: 70th Anniversary of the Andrea Doria/Stockholm Disaster
2 thoughts on “Bob Bird: Bear attacks are reminders for Alaskans, warnings for tourists”
Sometimes it’s hard to determine which is worse, a mad cow moose defending its young, or a mad grizzly. They both can kill. A grizzly mauling with teeth and claws versus being front kicked and trampled by a 1000 lb moose. In the woods or on a four-wheeler trail, my defense of choice is a S&W .44 mag revolver. Big enough to take either out as long as you can get to it in time and squeeze the trigger accurately without being overly panicked.
I think people today are more jumpy, surprising, or unpredictable and uncourteous around wildlife than generations before; as well as less “spiritual”like if the birds were singing around you and they got suddenly quiet it might mean there is a predator like a bear in the area. Or sometimes teaching yourself how to slow down and remain calm and talk quieter knowing how to remain in control. Humans are the masters. God designed Adam and Eve to have dominion over the animals. They are the dumb ones and humans are supposed to be smarter than them and control the situation.
Like for example my great grandmother (born in the late 1890s) she came face to face with a black bear while they both were blueberry picking. She stayed calm, stoic, and assertive and in control and Commanded the bear “ you stay on your side of the bush and I’ll stay on my side, there are plenty berries here for us both. The bear never bothered her.”
The ancestors of Alaska (both brown and white Alaskans) they knew how to face unpredictable animals sometimes with a gun and sometimes without a gun. The old timer Alaskans knew how to live around wildlife and they knew how to respect them.