May 26, 2026 Khutzeymateen Grizzly Bear Sanctuary – Day 5
“It usually starts with the male pursuing the female, which can be hours or even days,” says our guide. “At least this what the books says happens, but in my experience courting behavior can go on for hours, days, even saw it happen for weeks one time, and then another time there was a male and a female who both stood up, smelled each other and they bounded through the estuary – almost jumped on top of my boat – and finally met and headed to the woods and it was done.”
We have seen our share of courting behavior (a human convention – not sure what the bears would call it.) On the first day, we saw a couple digging clams, he tried to get close, she pushed him away, kept digging, then they did some play fighting and off to the woods – where he started something and she stopped that, so they just hung out in the trees. There does seem to be a lot of just parallel play that goes on in this courting ritual. They may just both be eating sedge or digging clams in the same area for a while. Then supposedly it is the female who gives a signal, some play fighting and off into the woods together. Being that they hibernate for five months and when they are awake they are busily getting themselves fat enough to last another winter, it is amazing that they find the time to mate too. They are not monogamous, so there may be lots of opportunities during this season for both sexes.
Interesting bear fact: The female actually carries a fertilized egg until the winter and only if she has enough fat stored up for hibernation AND taking care of kids will the egg mature into cubs that are born during hibernation. Pretty amazing stuff.
At the estuary this morning we see two adult grizzly bears munching away at sedge and seeming to be doing their own thing, just in very close proximity together. The guides tell us that they are either siblings who grew up together or more likely a possible courting couple. After a while the female leaves and starts to climb up a snow field (!) and disappears. The male keeps on munching sedge and after a while decides to follow her, up the exact snow field and then also disappears into the woods. This is the second time we have seen bears going onto the snow, which is something one of guides tell us they have never seen. We aren’t sure why they went up the snow, but the male was determined to follow her anywhere she went.
In the afternoon, our last time out, we are all concerned about how the story ended when the female grizzly and her cub were being pursued by the male grizzly. (See yesterday’s post for details). We decide to go back to the same spot we saw them yesterday and see if anyone is there. On the way up we notice a solo bear, that we first think is the cub, but our guides think is too big to be a cub. This cub seems to be very aware of their surroundings – always sniffing and a few times standing up to get even more smells and look for something in the distance. This is also unusual behavior – we have only seen one other bear rise up and this bear did it a couple of times. We move on.
Around the corner we come upon two bears and it looks to be the male grizzly and the female grizzly from yesterday, but there is no cub with her. We can speculate what happened to the cub, did it survive, was it the bear we just saw, or something else, we just don’t know. They are both eating sedge on their own without much interaction we can see, just that they are close to each other. We all start to make up our own stories of what might have happened after we saw them yesterday.
We head further up closer to the estuary, see a few more bears and a few eagles, and it is time to return back to the lodge and so we stop to see how this new couple is doing. On the second time by, the male is on a rock by himself – at one point we think he has fallen asleep – and the female is still near him eating sedge. If this is courting, it may be be one of those longer ones, who knows.
We go back to see the solo bear and they are still there very close by to the couple we just left. We begin to speculate some more. I take out my phone and look at yesterday’s photos to see if they match to this bear. We try to look for distinctive markings – is that a white spot on their chest? maybe a darker spot on the side? how about the nose – does it match? We go back to an earlier conversation that wouldn’t it be great if we had bear facial recognition software or we could put these images into AI and it would tell us if they matched. We enjoy the idyllic scene this bear is in, sitting next to a fast moving river and a good stash of sedge, clams and mussels.
We take our last photos, take a few more just in case, take a few more landscape shots of just the amazing scenery of these steep cliffs that edge the river valley and then are ringed by snow capped mountains behind. Back at the lodge we all are trying to match these bears so that we can have some closure to the story we were part of yesterday. There probably won’t be closure, since this story, their story, will live on long past our time in their home.
The Khutzeymateen Grizzly Bear Sanctuary is quite a special place and we feel blessed to be part of it and helping it continue as a sanctuary for these grizzly bears.
And so now our adventure in the Khutzeymateen grizzly bear sanctuary is about to come to a close. Hard to believe we have been here five days and have seen between 5-10 bears every day, some of them repeats, which for me has allowed us to get to know them a bit more and see their habits. It has been pretty amazing to be so up close – sometimes it seemed a bit too close – to these wild enormous creatures. It is also amazing to see that we as humans, even in a loud boat and being so close, are not seen as a threat. Since the sanctuary was designated in 1995, all the bears currently living here have only known a place for them without human intervention. Pretty amazing to think that we are truly the interlopers on their territory.
Tomorrow we pack up leave by boat back to Prince Rupert and start our drive back home. This is truly a special place and we feel blessed to have seen it and have been part of their grizzly bear stories.
Siri and David Adventures 