Alaska Fish & Wildlife News
March 2015

Nesting Bears
Bear Dens on Prince of Wales Island

Say “bear den” and for many, the cartoonish image of a cave comes to mind, the entrance littered with bones. Boyd Porter and his colleagues spent the past four years studying black bear dens on Prince of Wales Island in southern Southeast Alaska, and for him the word that comes to mind is “nest.”

“They’re nesters, although people wouldn’t necessarily put them on a list of nesting animals in Alaska,” said Porter, a state wildlife biologist ...   Nesting Bears Article Continued

A Far Walk From Here
Hunting mountain goats and deer on Kodiak Island

"In order to arrive at what you do not know/You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.”

- T.S. Eliot, from East Coker

Getting There

I’m staring at a mountain. It’s early morning in late November, my mug of coffee billows in the shallow light. The snow of yesterday, which tops those spired peaks beyond, melted overnight. What remains is open ground; a canopy of rock and lichen, bent grasses and wind. I’m at sea level. ...   Hunting on Kodiak Article Continued