Bear sits down beside photographer in Alaska

[David Ure]

I am thinking that this video is old news but what would you do in this situation apart from potentially soil your shorts. This is quite awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbE53XUtVw0

[Daniel Pittman]

First, I wouldn't be in that situation. But if I was, I wouldn't be that scared. During a salmon run when there's plenty to eat, the bears are much less aggressive. What do you like to do after Thanksgiving dinner? I like to avoid conflict with my family and find a comfortable place to take a nap. Bears adopt a much more sociable demeanor when sated. Not that you should push your luck. And if the salmon aren't enough to go around and there's a crowd of hungry bears, it's time to go.

[David Ure]

Good for the photographer to keep his cool!

[Philip Tschersich]

That was obviously at McNeil River (well, obvious to folks who live here). Those mainland bears are very (very) used to folks hanging out right by the falls. Basically at Brooks Camp, along the Katmai Coast, and at McNeil R, the bears have no more interest in humans than they do in a rock. Literally. I did think it was funny that the bear almost sat on the gun though. Being from Kodiak where most bears are plenty scared of humans, those critters in the parks kind of wig me out with their utter indifference. It just doesn't seem natural. Cool for watching, but weird from a human-animal interaction standpoint. Here in Kodiak, I'm glad when the bear runs. Over there, where they act like they can't even see you, it's just creepy.

[Anonymous]

"those critters in the parks kind of wig me out with their utter indifference. It just doesn't seem natural. Cool for watching, but weird from a human-animal interaction standpoint. Here in Kodiak, I'm glad when the bear runs. Over there, where they act like they can't even see you" Yeah, sort of like the bears in Timothy Treadwell's footage. Until all of a sudden one of them wasn't indifferent…… "it's just creepy." +1

[Philip Tschersich]

Yes, definitely don't act like Timothy and try to make friends with a an old, sick, starving coastal brown bear. One of you won't come out of the relationship in good shape.

[KRS]

[David Thomas]

Yeah, what Philip said. I've been to Brooks Camp. My wife has also been to McNeil River. It's all about the fish. Not about the bipeds. Both locations have been well-enough managed over the years to minimize bear-human interactions beyond mutual observation, that they remain remarkably safe for both species. In those settings, we're sort of like the sea gulls that are flocking around looking for scrapes. Gulls and humans don't effect the bears' fishing and don't change in the sometimes delicate interactions between bears, so they are ignored. Salmon are very tasty and the bears don't get any feathers or Goretex stuck between their teeth.

[Philip Tschersich]

Hey, David. I posted a couple of cool new vids in my Vimeo account if you haven't seen them. I hiked from Old Harbor to Larsen Bay, finishing the final leg of my hike-the-length-of-Kodiak-Island goal. I also did a salmon smoking and canning video. And one of climbing the third highest peak on Kodiak. Right here: Kodiak videorama

[David Thomas]

Philip, Great video on the smoked fish. Tightly edited, well-captioned and good music – like all your videos. A year ago, I switched from a wet brine to a dry-pack. I use 4 parts brown sugar to 1 part table salt. I like that it dries the fish out more during the brining process (I'm going for hard-smoked, without canning. Just brined, smoked, vac-packed, and frozen). If the day is cool or humid, I "finish" the smoked fish on the BBQ up to an internal temp of 145F. Then it keeps even longer – 3 years and its still good. When I wet-brined, I used a refrigerated brine (figuring that until it's preserved, it can degrade). An easy way to do that in the 5-gallon buckets would be to throw in some ice cubes so everything is cooler until it is in the smoker. Edited to add: I'd pat the fillets dry with paper towels after brining them. I figure everything I can do to dry the fillets out helps preserve them, but that's less important for you since you are canning them. I like the idea of cold-smoking by leaving a Big Chief or Little Chief smoker door open. I hadn't sent that before. Manfred from BPL stayed with us the first half of August and I taught his sons how to smoke sockeye (which I do a lot) and trout (new to me). It's easy to ignore 15" trout as not being worth the bother, compared to 6 to 8-pound sockeyes, but the smoked trout came out really nice.

[Philip Tschersich]

With the Big Chief doors cracked about 3-4" on top, the fillets stay below the cooking point until about 4-5 hours into the smoke when the evaporative heat loss lessens (with the drying-out of the surface of the fish) so the product temperature can start to rise, and you need to start rotating the racks top to bottom every 1-2 hours to keep the fish from cooking. It HAS to go into the cans raw, or you get crumbly, fishy-tasting charcoal as an end product. The fish needs to stay below 120F during the whole 10 hours. At the end, the skin peels off easily, and there is barely loss of interior moisture (and more importantly, fat!). I'd like to know how you get the dry brine off the fillets before smoking. A brisk shake? Wipe? Fresh water dip? Then hot smoke in a closed Big Chief? I actually always/only can smoked fish. I've never vacuum sealed and frozen after kippering/hot-smoking. I'd be open to trying it. I used to sometimes do cold smoked "squaw-candy" (please excuse the culturally-insensitive term), but the chance of food poisoning was a bit too acute.

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