ANCHORAGE, Alaska – A video that shows the legal but apparently easy kill of a grizzly by hunters in Katmai National Preserve early last week was posted Friday on YouTube.

Get ready for the controversy over hunting the popular Katmai bears to flare up anew.

The 4-minute-plus video, made by professional videographer Daniel Zatz of Homer, Alaska, shows a female being hit

with an arrow from a bow fired by a man who was able to walk to within about 40 feet of the bear. The incident, Zatz said, occurred Monday, the first day of a three-week open hunt in the preserve portion of Katmai National Park and Preserve.

The video shows two hunters and their guide, according to Zatz, as they move in close to a blondish brown bear at Narrow

Cove, an arm of Kukaklek Lake.

The bear has 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.

The issue of brown bear hunting in the Katmai preserve, on the Alaska Peninsula, already was contentious. It pits the many people who enjoy watching the plentiful bears there during the summer against the relative few who hunt them every other fall and spring.

The video’s depiction of hunters standing or walking close to several grizzlies, sometimes within 10 yards or so, while the bears exhibit no apparent concern is nearly certain to add fuel to that quarrel.

In an interview with the Anchorage Daily News on Friday, Zatz said he made the video to reopen just such a discussion. He 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.

“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.”

“Fair chase” 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.


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, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s regional biologist for a large part of the state that includes the Alaska Peninsula.

“It’s not fair chase.”

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

Phone calls seeking comment from Rod Arno, executive director of the Alaska Outdoor Council, an organization that supports hunters’ rights and access to wildlife on public lands, were not returned Friday.


Another person shown in the video, according to Zatz, is the man who owns the guiding concession for the area, Jim Hamilton. The man who guided the hunters who shot the female grizzly works for Hamilton, said Zatz.

Attempts to reach Hamilton by his cell phone, office phone and e-mail Friday were unsuccessful.

He issued a written statement to KTUU this week in which he defended the hunters and criticized those who brought cameras to Narrow Cove, including a news crew.


In a statement, Hamilton says that Monday was a “very sad day” because the “hunters were participating in a perfectly legal hunt (and) had their entire experience ruined by others who chose to use illegal methods to harass and interfere with their hunt.”

Also in the statement to KTUU, Hamilton said those he mentioned might face “criminal and civil charges.”

Alaska has a law against willful interference with a legal hunt.


A formal complaint against KTUU regarding Monday’s hunt and its videotaping was filed this week with Alaska State Troopers, said troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters.

But the men’s hunt was successful, and KTUU did not intend to interfere, so there was nothing to pursue, Peters said. She declined to name the complainant.

Hamilton’s statement said those who believe the bears have gotten so used to people that they are as easy to shoot as “fish in a barrel” are mistaken. The Katmai hunt is fair as well as challenging, Hamilton says.

“There are no mechanized vehicles used to locate or stalk animals, they are not fenced or held captive by any unnatural means,” Hamilton writes in the statement to the station. The hunting environment in the area resembles a common coastal brown bear habitat that presents “many similar scenarios of large numbers of bears concentrated on feeding in nearby salmon streams.”

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WATCH THE VIDEO

-http://community.adn.com/mini-apps/vmix/player.php?GID118&GENRES0000 0194

– http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/podcast/2007/bear-hunt-katmai-nati onal-preserve-sporting-or-ethical

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(c) 2007, Anchorage Daily News (Anchorage, Alaska).

Visit the Anchorage Daily News online at http://www.adn.com/

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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ARCHIVE PHOTOS on MCT Direct (from MCT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): KATAMI BEARS

AP-NY-10-06-07 1415EDT

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