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A mother black bear hunts for salmon on Taylor creek in South Lake Tahoe
Who says you need to go up to Alaska to make a picture of a bear catching a meal of salmon. In South Lake Tahoe every year around October, Taylor creek turns nearly red with Kokanee salmon returning to spawn. October also happens to be the time of year when the lake’s population of black bears (yes, I know they look brown) are desperately trying to fatten themselves up before winter sets in. Nothing works better for fattening up a hungry bear than 10-20 salmon a day. So head out early in the morning when the bears are most active, and for the love of God, keep your distance. You would be amazed at how many fools I saw chasing this mother bear and her cub (mother bears are known to be very nasty when they think their cub is in danger, and a mob of people trying to make photos on their iphones certainly counts.) I was keeping a good distance with a long telephoto lens trying not to disturb the bears and I could not believe how many idiots would walk up about 5 feet from them and stick a damn cell phone in their face to snap a picture. If you are taking pictures on a PHONE it is not going to be a great picture anyway, so keeping back an extra 10-20 feet won’t compromise your artistic integrity.
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A black bear with a fish in its mouth at Taylor Creek in South Lake Tahoe. My wife took this shot at about the same time I took the next one from the road bridge above the river.
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This close-up shot of a bear munching on a fish in South Lake Tahoe was taken from a different vantange point at just about the same time as the one before it. The main highway crosses over Taylor Creek and standing on this bridge, the river runs directly below you. This is the one time I would say it is probably OK to be close to the bears. If you are standing still on a bridge and the bear sees you and decides to walk right under you and go about it's business, then by all means, stand your ground and snap away. Just don't drop anything on them please!
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Notice the look on the face of the salmon trying to not get eaten. I swear it is looking back at the bear in shear terror.
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This is a picture of the mother bear lounging in the grass before she decided to go fishing. Her cub is lying down behind her. I literally had about three people walk right in front of me, then right up to the bear, extend their arm holding a cell phone out to a few feet from the bears face, and take a picture.....with flash!
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One last shot of the black bear momma munching on a fish.
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This is a new control fence put in just across the road on Taylor Creek. The salmon tend to back up against it and the bears just pick them off. I have a lot of pictures of the bear cub fishing as well, it just occures to me that this is the only post with the cub in is. So if you are interested in any of those, let me know.
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Now for a bit of the sideshow. Shortly after some of the pictures at the top of this post were taken, people crowded along the shoreline so much that the bear freaked and ran right through a group of kids. I only caught the tail end of this from across the river.
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Need I say more? The bear doesn't look so happy does it. At one point there were about 4 people all crammed on this log, and they weren't even the closest.
I don’t want my tone to discourage anyone from taking pictures of the bears, or from bringing your children to see this amazing spectacle of nature. All I ask for is a little bit of that precious commodity, common sense! For any of you picture buyers out there, feel free to search my archive for a much larger selection of bear photos, just use bear or bears in your keywords.