Chinook by George M Hosier II - Trouble Bruin

Is anybody else as thrilled and excited as I am about the rash of recent grizzly sightings in the Tanana Loop area? I love to view wildlife. I find it particularly exhilarating when I am able to have a close-up encounter with one of our woodland friends. There’s nothing like the adrenaline rush of having a squirrel take a scrap of bread from your hand, having a chickadee perch on your finger, having a butterfly land on your nose or being close enough to a grizzly to smell it’s rustic breath and count the darling little scraps of rotten meat jammed between its incisors.

The most frustrating thing about these recent sightings is the fact that although neighbors all around me have seen at least two different bears within a 50 foot to 5 mile radius of my property, for some reason I haven’t been fortunate enough to personally experience their noble presence. Ironically, they will go to visit some grouchy guy who empties a shotgun worth of buckshot into them for merely attempting to sample his dog on the front porch. They will drop in on a coworker in the middle of the night who has a paranoid husband that fires Roman candles at them. They will join a neighbor kid on an ATV ride, jog along like a devoted dog, and reach out to give him an affectionate slap, but will they come and see me? So far, not a chance! I have even taken to going out to my field and pinching my goats from time to time to make them squall in hopes that one of the grizzlies will perk up and amble over to investigate. Fat chance.

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