Off with his head: Bristol Bay 2012
Wednesday, September 12, 2012 at 05:10PM 
As I continue to sort through this year's crop of photos, videos, and notebooks (endless notebooks), I wanted to post a link to some photos, mostly from in and around our fishing camp in the abandoned Graveyard Point cannery on the Kvichak River in Alaska's Bristol Bay. This particular set, consisting of photos shot on film with an old Olympus XA, can be seen in its entirety on my flickr page here.
A note on the above shot, which is the one everyone who's seen the flickr set seems to ask about: The short answer to the bear's fate is that it was a beat-up older male (various gashes and a broken jaw, likely from a fight with another bear) that was probably having trouble finding food, so started coming into our camp too often, eventually threatening a group of folks and getting himself shot. In AK, when you shoot a "nuisance" bear, legally you have to report it immediately to the Dept. of Fish and Game and then bring the head, hide, and paws to the nearest Fish and Game office (this is to discourage illegal killing for trophies). So, the short answer: the bear was being skinned/decapitated by the guys who shot him. Afterwards, the body was dragged down below the high tide line and the bear went out with the next tide.
And no, you do not want to know how many times he swung that hatchet.