The Klukwan residents who responded to a call about an injured brown bear on the Haines Highway last month are no strangers to late-night bear calls but it’s a rarity to get such a call in late November.
For the past several years, mother and son duo Deanna and Dakota Strong have volunteered as Klukwan’s only wildlife protection – the local bear patrol.
Deanna, 50, said their latest bear call came in around 10:30 p.m. on Nov. 21. A village resident called to report seeing a bear lying on the highway near Klukwan. It had been hit by a vehicle and was clearly injured. The Strongs drove to the site at about Mile 19½ of the Haines Highway and located the struggling young brown bear.
“When we first got there, it would barely move its head to look at us,” said Dakota, 29.
Deanna estimated the bear was 6-to-8 months old.
“We could hear and smell Mama (nearby). She was not happy at all,” she said, noting that they kept talking to both bears calmly while they assessed the situation.
Once they decided the young bear was suffering and not likely to survive, Deanna shot the young bear and the pair moved it out of the road, offering words of condolence to the sow while they did so.
The mid-November bear call was the month’s first for the Strongs. Deanna said usually the bears are asleep by now, but in recent years, the problems, and the calls, have continued after the temperature drops.
“This weird weather has their time clock off,” Deanna said. “It seems like they’ve been (starting to hibernate) later and later.”
This year, Klukwan had more fall bear problems from August to October than in years past, she said. The village had some smaller black bears, probably a sow and cub, trying to check out smokehouses into the fall, and a big black bear that couldn’t stay away from trash despite local efforts to make it inaccessible.
“They’re supposed to be the bear-proof trash cans, but he’s figured out how to get the trash out,” Deanna said. “… Most of the time he just bats them around like a beach ball.”
The problematic bears are hungry bears, both Strongs said.
In recent years, bears seem to be eating fewer salmon and other types of food and searching for more sustenance in Klukwan, Dakota said. He attributes some of the changes in behavior to a fence going up around the dump, which caused bears to start looking for other new sources of easy food.
But, he also thinks major highway work along the Chilkat River may also be changing fish behavior, spooking them away and impacting the bears that eat those fish too.
A FAMILY AFFAIR
Deanna said her patrol started several years ago, when a bear was bothering the family smokehouse, which typically held 40-60 sockeye salmon at a time. Deanna said her dad asked her to keep it away and she enlisted her son’s help. Their effort quickly grew beyond their own smokehouse.
“It kinda went by word of mouth,” Dakota said. “One (smokehouse) turned into 10 – turned into the whole village.”
The bear patrol also expanded to include other wildlife, like moose, coyote and wolves. At that time, Klukwan didn’t have a VPSO and getting an emergency response from Haines Police Department or Alaska State Troopers was delayed, if there was any response at all. So the Strongs provided the most reliable source of help to their community.
Now, Deanna and Dakota keep a regular bear and wildlife watch, and people know they can call them if they think a problem is developing, Deanna said.“We’re pretty busy all throughout the season, once they wake up until they go to bed.”
Peak bear patrol season is usually from June to August, Deanna said.
“The smokehouses are in full swing, everybody’s doing their fish, it gets pretty active,” she said.
During that busy season, the two spend many of their nights driving around Klukwan, often foregoing sleep. Sometimes they drive together, and sometimes they drive alone and stay in touch using radios. They take the same gear most nights: dark clothes to hide any grime, a light for visibility around people and cars, noise-producing deterrents to scare off bears and pistols and rifles just in case.
Dakota said the bears around Klukwan seem to know the sound of a vehicle, and respond when they drive by. “They’ll hunker down and be quiet when we are around,” he said.
Most nights on bear patrol are “downright boring,” Dakota said, but even so they’ve had some close calls and some scary encounters with upset or hungry bears.
“It’s very nerve-wracking, especially when you’re close to the forest and you know they’re right on the other side of the treeline,” Dakota said.
It’s rare that they have to shoot a bear like they did last month. Both said the goal is to scare the bears away. Before the Nov. 21 call, the Strong’s last bear call was in late October. Someone had hit a bear near Klukwan. In that instance, Dakota said it wasn’t too injured and they were able to scare it off.
Although they have seen more bears than usual this fall, most were not causing trouble.
“We try more often just to scare them out,” Deanna said, adding that they only consider putting them down when they are a danger to people in the village or a significant menace.
Usually, the Strongs use noise and light to scare bears away when they’re causing a problem. Deanna said they use anything from Roman Candles to loud shots from a rifle, although they save bigger bullets for animals that need to be shot.
“We usually try to do the noise makers,” she said. “… As long as it’s loud, it seems to work. Firecrackers are a really good one.”
They also talk to the bears.
“My father was a firm believer that they listen to us,” Deanna said. “The whole time we’re there, we’re talking to them.”
Deanna said her father wasn’t just the reason they started, he was also a guide in their work, offering advice on how to handle particular situations. And, Dakota said, he was “strict about culture” and reminded them to treat the bears with respect even after death. The Strongs are Lingít.
Her father died three years ago, Deanna said.
“I hope we make him extremely proud,” Deanna said. “It has been a little different to continue this without his guidance. I’m constantly asking myself what he would do.”
A GROWING NEED
Although their first supporter is no longer present, as the calls for help have increased, so has local support.
“We both know that we’re helping our community. They feel comfortable enough with us. They do call us when they have problems or need help with something. It kinda feels like they know we’re reliable and we are going to do what we can to help them,” Deanna said. “It’s a good feeling.”
The Strongs initially paid for all their own supplies – gas, ammunition, deterrents and other gear. But community members have started donating cash and supplies, sometimes even useful things they didn’t know they needed, like a giant flashlight they got this year.
“It [has] been a huge help,” Deanna said.
There are also a few people who check in if they hear a gunshot and know there might be a problem bear around, or offer to help with the patrol if they know one of the Strongs is out alone for some reason. The pastor at the Klukwan Church, Al Giddings, is a trained first responder and fire fighter who has been a big help, Deanna said. He shows up right away to help when he gets a call, and he’s also been able to help share training information with them, she said.
When her father first asked her to protect the smokehouse, Deanna said didn’t imagine the effort would grow as much as it has. Now, people even call the Strongs if someone has died and a family needs support, Dakota said. In those instances, he said they’ve confirmed there wasn’t a pulse or breathing if needed, called the police, and sat and waited with the family until an officer could come.
Now, they’ve got the titles to match that expanded role. The Strongs were hired by Tlingit & Haida as new Village Public Safety Officers earlier this fall. They officially began their training on Nov. 12. They’ll head to the Trooper academy soon to finish their training.
“I had no idea it was going to become this big,” Deanna said. “We were just protecting the smokehouse like my dad was asking us to. …It is a really good feeling to know that we’re doing even more, we’re becoming VPSOs, and that gives us a little more access to be able to help them even more so.”
• This article was originally published by the Chilkat Valley News.
