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Welcome back to Scary Bear Attacks! Today’s episode takes us to southwest Alaska and a small island just nestled into Uganik Bay of Kodiak Island. Though the island is known for giant bears those bears aren’t only on Kodiak, but also on the neighboring islands. One of these is Sally Island which only rises to about 1000 feet in elevation. It is a diminutive island only measuring about 2 miles wide by just under 2 miles long.
Sally Island is covered in very dense foliage composed primarily of huge stands of alder interrupted with meadows of grasses. There are no rivers on the small island which means that brown bears on the island either have to search for fish off the shore or swim to the main island. This is easily done on the south end of the island as Sheep Island comes close to connecting all three islands.
Deer are just about the only animals on the island that are not predators, and that is what brings a handful of hunters to shore each fall. The brown bears on the island are directly related to the giant brown bears on Kodiak, so their temperament and power are well known.
Now, a pack of bears is known as a sleuth or a maul, but bears aren’t known to run in packs. There are a few exceptions to this rule and one of them is when they are siblings or juveniles. Some call a pack of bears a sleuth because of the way bears search through the forest as if they are detectives looking for facts.
A pack of sibling bears is called a litter, but as they grow this reference to them loses its applicability due to their age. When the cubs reach around two years of age, the sow will frequently run them off so she can more easily fend for herself. But, if the cubs contribute to her survival then she will tend to hunt with them. When the litter becomes a sleuth, their mother manages to keep the litter together and raise them into juvenile bears, and they remain with her, as a very dangerous and efficient killing team.
When a sow has a litter of cubs, the litter is usually between one and three in number. Cubs have a 34% mortality rate in Alaska and frequently spend at least two years with their mother. This means that only two cubs in a litter of three will survive to venture out on their own.
The survival of the cubs depends on a few factors including the availability of food sources and the willingness of the sow to defend them. If she can offer a violent defense of her cubs from boars then her cubs will stand a good chance of reaching independence and success.
On Thursday, October 30th, 2014, 68-year-old Michael Snowden and his 38-year-old hunting partner, Jeff Ostrin arrived at their hunting camp. Each year the men would hunt together for a week on Sally Island and frequently filled their tags, refreshed their friendship, and filled their freezers for the winter.
Snowden was a native of Alaska from Sitka and Ostrin moved up from Camas, Washington. The men were hunting with the help of a guide in a party of about ten deer hunters. They used a boat, dubbed the Mary J, to deposit the hunters on various locations on the island to hunt for the day. At the end of the day, the hunters would all reboard the boat to return to camp for the night. The first six days of their deer hunt went very well with fun and surrounded by beautiful scenery.
On November 4th, 2014, the men’s hunt was going just as planned. They had climbed the steep slopes of the island after coming ashore in the early morning. Pushing through brush and glassing breaks in the alders for bucks to emerge made the day slip by in a relaxing manner. At around 10 AM Ostrin observed a buck at the top of the island and stalked within shooting range. A well-placed shot from his hunting rifle brought the buck down and filled one of their tags.
As the buck disappeared below the brush, Snowden and Ostrin walked toward the spot where they last saw the buck. Upon arriving at the buck's location, they immediately started to process the deer for recovery by removing its entrails, or gutting it as hunters refer to it. While one man removed the entrails of the deer the other would stand guard watching for brown bears.
Some bears tend to head to a location after hearing the report of a hunting rifle. These bears are called dinner bell bears, with a shot being the equivalent of calling them in for dinner.
The hunters knew that time was key to avoid a confrontation with a hungry bear and after gutting the deer began dragging it toward the island’s southeastern shore. The Mary J was drifting just off the shore, and they would radio for it to pick them up when they were ready.

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