Looking for Alaska by Peter Jenkins Page B

yards, you don’t find it, period.
    Ted explained that bears know this country, it is their home. He is intensely respectful of them based on decades of experience. Mature ones know how to get away from humans; it is rather easy for them. They know to get in the water, enter swamps, backtrack, cover their tracks. They go over mountaintops like a set of stairs. They go down creeks, then come up again. They know to get into brush so impregnable that no man could follow except by crawling on his belly, and no man would want to do that. They are smart and they seem to know when they have done something that will cause people to come after them. They don’t need a compass; you can fly them a hundred miles from their home territory, and the next week they are right back.
    This high-powered, most-qualified search party found a place where a killing had taken place among the young and mature spruce. Little, inch-wide saplings were growing in this area too, several of which had been snapped off in a straight line. Moose hair was on the leftover portions of the inch-wide saplings, with a few small spots of blood on some of them. In some spots in these woods you couldn’t see more than twenty, thirty feet, or even less. There were a few small muskeg openings. The bear had obviously been chasing the moose, probably grabbed it once and it got away, then the bear killed it.
    Ted found the moose kill, completely covered with dirt and vegetation. You couldn’t even see the moose; it looked more like a big beaver lodge in the middle of the dark woods. The bear had cleared away a wide circle of vegetation and dirt to cover the dead moose. Ted said it was always surprising to see how bears dug up the country to cover a kill. It was not a sight one wanted to see on foot, the sight of one of the most dangerous spots on earth.

    Dale Bagley and his truck in Soldotna. P HOTO BY P ETER J ENKINS
    â€œWe found a big pool of blood on the ground at the edge of the place where the bear had covered the moose. We found his glasses, kind of ground into the dirt, and his rifle lying there too. The pool of blood was about three times the size of your fist.” Ted’s tone was deliberate.
    The search party didn’t expect to find the bear close by, although it would have been a relief. They split up into teams and walked in circles around the kill site. The State Troopers team was well trained; they would take a step, look, and listen, and the search was slow and methodical. They did finally find more bear blood, a faint trail that led them away from the kill site, away from the road.
    â€œThere was no real blood trail. Bears have thick, thick fur, a layer like an undercoat, and it tends to soak up their blood and so they tend not to bleed a great deal,” Ted told me.
    When they did find some bear blood, they got down on their hands and knees and searched for more.
    â€œThe next day we had a helicopter out there flying in concentric circles, looking for a dead bear. They saw no bear. Then we had a Super Cub fly the area; they found nothing.” Ted was not surprised it had gotten away. He had not expected to find it.
    â€œI have never found a wounded bear, ever; you just don’t find them if they are not within the first hundred yards. They are the ultimate predators, and I guess you could say the ultimate survivor, I cannot tell you how much respect I have for them.”
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    Dale recovered remarkably from his wounds, almost all of them to his head. He told me that every morning when he shaves, he sees the scars. He had over two hundred staples and stitches in his head and face, to minimize the scarring. On October 5, 1999, Dale ran in an election against the powerful incumbent Kenai borough mayor, Mike Navarre. Mike already represented the peninsula in the state house, he was well-connected in Juneau. Politicians running for borough mayor don’t run as a member of any party. To win the