Video raises issue of fair hunt

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – A video posted on YouTube is raising the question of whether it is sporting to hunt the bears in the Katmai National Preserve, an area on the Alaska Peninsula shared by the famed McNeil River bears.

The professionally done video shows a sow first being hit by an arrow from a compound bow and then being shot after hunters were easily able to get close.

The bear was shot Oct. 1, the first day of a three-week open hunt in the preserve portion of Katmai National Park and Preserve to the west of the McNeil River State Game Refuge and Sanctuary.

Videographer Daniel Zatz of Homer told the Anchorage Daily News on Friday that he made the video to reopen discussion about the Katmai bears and fair chase. That is the question of whether a given hunt is ethical and sportsmanlike, or if the hunter exploits an unfair advantage over the prey, as defined by hunters’ organizations.

“This is about bears who have learned to trust humans,” Zatz said. “It’s a question of ethics. It’s a question of fair chase. People can decide on their own when they see the video if this is fair chase.”

Zatz and others say the Katmai bears have become so tolerant of the presence of people, including the many sport anglers who fish the area’s waters and visitors who are flown in expressly to observe the animals in their habitat, that it’s unfair or unsporting to hunt them.

The hunters who shot the Katmai grizzly achieved “their proximity without much of a stalk. It looks more like a saunter through tundra,” said Sean Farley, Alaska Fish and Game Department bear biologist.

Farley saw the video Friday. It surprised him, he said.

“It’s not fair chase,” he said. “I feel personally remiss as the regional biologist that I haven’t thought it out that this is what’s going on out there.”

The video also shows hunters standing or walking close to several grizzlies, sometimes within 10 yards.

“Not until I saw the video did I realize how bad it is. It’s not appropriate,” Farley said.

The video shows two hunters and their guide as they move in close to a blondish brown bear that had been fishing in the water and is walking through brush above the cove. One of the men lifts a crossbow to his shoulder, pauses and shoots. The bear jerks sharply, twists and jumps away.

Another man – the guide, according to Zatz – fires a rifle to finish the animal.

Jim Hamilton, the owner of the guiding outfit that brought the hunters in, said in a written statement that Zatz and a television camera crew from Anchorage interfered with what was a legal hunt.

He also said Katmai bears are no more used to people than bears at other salmon-rich streams. He described the hunt as challenging.