Photographer Films ‘Longest, Most Intense’ Grizzly Bear Fight He’s Ever Seen
A wildlife photographer captured the “longest, most intense grizzly bear fight” he has ever seen in his two-decade-long career guiding brown bear photography.
Expedition leader and naturalist guide Brad Josephs filmed the pair of huge grizzly bears wildly battling for dominance in a brutal and mesmerizing battle that lasts almost nine minutes.
The two gigantic males were ferociously fighting for dominance on the border of Lake Clark National Park and Preserve in Alaska on May 8.
In the footage, a larger, older bear viciously squares off with a younger and smaller bear for breeding season dominance in a sedge meadow when Josephs discovered them.
“In my 25 years guiding brown bear photography and film crew expeditions, this was by far the longest duration and greatest intensity of any bear fight I have ever seen,” Josephs, who guides photographers on the Alaska peninsula, tells Outside.
“It just kept going and going. I was astounded by the determination and stamina of both bears as they battled for mating season dominance rights.”
‘The Most Amazing Things I’ve Ever Seen in Mother Nature’
According to Outside, grizzly bear fights are often raw, powerful, and short in duration — which makes the sheer length of the savage battle between the pair of males in the video even more astounding.
“This is 10 times longer than the longest fight I’ve ever seen. And more intense. They’re just destroying each other,” Josephs comments a little over halfway through the footage.
“That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in Mother Nature.”
At the end of the video, one of the bears admits defeat and backs down. In the footage, Josephs describes how the loser bows his head in submission in a gesture that acknowledges that the battle for dominance is over.
“He’s got his head down, he’s basically saying, ‘I’m sorry, I lost,'” Josephs says in the clip. “And the winner walks away.”
Alaska has the highest population of grizzly bears in any state or province. Of the 60,000 wild grizzly bears located throughout North America, around 30,000 are found in Alaska,
Brad Josephs is a wildlife biologist and wilderness guide with a specialty in bear biology and ecology of the north. Josephs is also an expert photographer and has taught photo and film classes for over two decades — with his work focusing on bears and wolves of Alaska and northwest Canada.
More of Josephs’s work can be found on YouTube, Instagram, and his website.
Image credits: Feature photo via YouTube.
