By Libby B Bushell

Special to the Homer Independent Press

Hello from Katmai, Homer!

The meadows of June are sweet with the smells of tender angelica, geranium, yarrow and other wildflowers unfurling. The sedge is neon green and ripe with succulence — a bear’s favorite salad green. It’s been hot, but also rainy, the classic Alaska mix of weather that adds urgency to the short growing season. There’s a hormonal buzz in Hallo Bay that’s almost audible — the bears of Katmai are in love.

It’s mating season.

After a cold lonely winter, shaggy bears emerged from their dens, hungry for food and the males among them inclined to reproduce. The females in May wanted nothing to do with it. The guys, though, know the ladies will succumb to their charms eventually, even if their only charms are dogged pursuit.

May on the meadows looked like this: a male approaches a female grazing. She trots away and continues to eat. He follows at a long-legged walk. She runs again, but this time farther. He picks up the pace, sniffing where she stopped. She’s over the berm and onto the beach. She clams. He clams nearby. She pees, and he beelines to sniff it. She runs off. He looks up from her pee and follows her more intently now. She’s digging. He bluff charges. She drops her clam and runs. He scoops it up with his claws and eats it, sandy shell and all. She climbs up the sheer face of a short cliff. He takes the trail to the top. She lies down to nap. He naps nearby. When he’s asleep, she sneaks off.

But she won’t go far. And he’ll continue his pursuit for weeks.

From where I sit in June, I see three bears sharing a meadow to munch sedge. From their body language (close, tolerant and uninterested in each other) and their shape (cute, fuzzy and round), I deduce that they are females. The vibes are chill until a new bear saunters in. It’s a large, dark, older male, swaying his 700-plus pounds of bulk — the duke of Hallo Bay. I notice he has a limp. His back left leg is stiff at the ankle. What happened to him?

All the ladies have caught his scent from miles away, but they don’t react until he’s within chasing distance. They cannot be bothered with romance; they’re career-oriented females, and their job is to get fat. They continue to graze, glancing up at his approach until the big male is on the same patch of sedge as them. Only then do they scatter.

One big brown lady bear stops and looks back. He’s been pursuing her for weeks now, and the stress of his “courtship,” his constant attention and low-grade aggression has flicked a hormonal switch, changed her brain chemistry and now finally she’s receptive to him. She’s in estrus. She sits down to let him catch up.

Both male and female brown bears reach sexual maturity around 4 to 6 years old, but the males won’t have much luck at mating until they’re older — maybe 10. In a place as densely populated as Katmai, male bears have to earn their right to mate through size, strength and dominance displays. Occasionally it comes to tooth and claw. The boar at the top of the hierarchy will mate with whichever females he can catch, and his dominance will earn him the best spots to fish along the river later in the season.

This dark brown male is easily the biggest bear in Hallo Bay. His mass is enough to dissuade any other scrawny guy to bug off, but this limp creates a weakness that makes the hierarchy this season more interesting. Let’s see what happens.

The female walks away as the male approaches. She poops as he carefully sniffs the ground where she sat just before. He struts to her poop, gives it a sniff and then, to the absolute horror of the tourists who are sitting with me, he sticks out his long tongue and tastes it.

“We’re about to see some love!” I whisper, giddy to my guests.

Once a female is in estrus, she’ll be receptive to mating for several weeks. The males are constantly sniffing for that hormonal shift and when it happens the meadows get randy with action.

She is sitting down again, up near some logs in a patch of tall rye grass, a nice dry bed about 60 yards away from me. He walks to her, and they nuzzle necks. (Click-click-click-click-click-click-click.) The sounds of cameras fill the meadow like so many clatter-winged insects, though there are not a lot of actual insects here. It’s always breezy along the coast. A golden-crowned sparrow cuts through the noise, and I am reminded for the gazillionth time of why I love this job — the peace out here in Katmai is priceless.

The two bears bat paws, then she rolls onto her back, and he sniffs her belly. They cuddle and caress and wrestle, they give each other love bites and licks and canoodle like they’re animations in a Disney film. All signs point to imminent copulation (click-click-click-click-click-click-click), but then, along comes another bear. Two bears.

The lovers’ attention shifts. The first new bear is a smaller female, and the other is a medium-size male pursuing her. His nose is too busy with his lady’s hormones for him to notice the duke until he’s well within his personal space. Thirty yards from him, maybe 50 yards from me. Suddenly the scene changes. The sparrows sing in a minor key. A cloud passes over the sun and darkens the sedge. (I’m kidding about the clouds and the birds, but you get the point; it’s not a romance anymore.)

Our lovers separate. The duke of Hallo Bay stands with three legs — his back left leg immobile for the moment. The new female runs away from everyone and hides out in the willows. Her teddy bear face peers out from above a clump of angelica as the young male stands his ground. The duke lumbers toward him, left leg catching up as his dominance masks his obvious pain. He’s doing the cowboy walk — hindquarters stiff and bowed out with an exaggerated swagger as he pees down his legs and twists the pads of his feet into the meadow, marking this area and the females within it as his for the moment. The other male is at least 200 pounds smaller and abides by the hierarchy he’s known for all the seasons before this bigger bear was injured. He backs down, trots off to another meadow where he eats sedge like an insolent child, ripping it up in great thrusts of his head. The hierarchy is not disrupted. There won’t be violence between these two bears today.

But then, the duke turns his attention to the young blonde in the willows. The first girl is carelessly back to eating sedge. Bears are polyamorous so she isn’t concerned about his lack of attention; eating is her first love anyway.

The young blonde bear walks out of the willows and sits down on the edge of the meadow. She gets up and moves a few feet away. Our fellow walks over, takes a long sniff of the ground where she sat, looks up and suddenly it’s on. He gently bites the scruff of her neck to pull his weight on top of hers and then, well, that’s how next season’s bear cubs are made.

Libby B Bushell is a local author and wildlife guide. She spends summers in Katmai with the bears, and winters (the austral summer) in Antarctica with the emperor penguins. She is the founder of HoWL (Homer Wilderness Leaders) and is passionate about helping people get outside. It’s better out there!