If you love fishing and camping in solitary places, you might want to scout out your surroundings, before you go too far afield.

This mama grizzly and her two cubs (probably last year’s) like fishing and hanging out in solitary places too.

The fact that she still has both cubs could possibly mean that the fishing has been good and that mother and cubs are healthy and doing fine. However, people and grizzlies in close proximity to each other are usually not a good combination. I hope, for the grizzlies’ sake, that there is no interaction that will cause them to be trapped and “dispatched.”

These bears are on Vancouver Island where grizzlies are making an appearance in the last few years. They swim over from the mainland, island hopping to shorten the distance they need to swim. It’s possible that in this case the mother is trying to keep her cubs safe from male grizzlies who would be a threat to them. In some species, the male would kill the young to gain access to the mother and “have some fun with her.” The big cats are another example of this.

This photo was taken by a friend of the Captain near a favourite fishing spot. Sometimes, discretion is the better part of valor, hence the blurry quality of the photo. If the photographer had gone closer, the picture might have been clearer, but he might not have been around long enough to send it.

I think the friend probably decided to take a raincheck on fishing that day.