Bears Mating
With trembling excitement and anticipation we settled down in the seats and looked out of the small viewing slit to the clearing in the trees. I was still scrabbling to get my camera out when the first bear appeared. All through the night bears kept coming and going, feeding and foraging, playing and fighting, interacting with each other, climbing trees and generally putting on a great performance for the lucky few in the hide.
We’d travelled a long way to see the European Brown Bears, and they certainly didn’t disappoint. From a former border guard station, Markku and Oili run Matinselkonen Wilds Centre, a large 6,000-hectare nature reserve right on the Finnish-Russian border. To get to this pristine wilderness we took a flight via Helsinki to Kajaani, followed by a 200km journey along almost traffic-free undulating roads cutting straight through the Finnish taiga. The last part of the journey to the main lodge was on a gravel road, and from there you were taken on a dirt track for a further 20km or so before you left the car at the end of the road and continued the last 2km on foot. The path took us through pine and birch forest and over mosquito infested swamps to the small hide in a clearing.
The bears are attracting to the area surrounding the hides (there are six hides in total, accommodating between one and nine people) by a careful programme of summer baiting. The programme has been running since 2002 and now attracts a huge number of bears from across the Russian border. Since the first season, there has only been one single night that the bears didn’t show – I am really curious as to where the bears went that night. With continuous daylight through the night during the bear season, Martinselkonen is now considered the best place in Europe to see and photograph Brown Bears.
On the second night, a large male bear became very friendly with a small smaller female. After a long time of tender foreplay, they finally got it together. And boy, were they active! After nearly an hour, the female maneuvered herself and the 'attached' male to the feeding area, so that she could eat whilst he was trying to impregnate her. She was visibly bored with the whole thing, and when he had to stop to catch his breath, she saw an opportunity to get away. He tried to mate a second time, but she was having none of it, growling and finally running away!
Bears Mating
With trembling excitement and anticipation we settled down in the seats and looked out of the small viewing slit to the clearing in the trees. I was still scrabbling to get my camera out when the first bear appeared. All through the night bears kept coming and going, feeding and foraging, playing and fighting, interacting with each other, climbing trees and generally putting on a great performance for the lucky few in the hide.
We’d travelled a long way to see the European Brown Bears, and they certainly didn’t disappoint. From a former border guard station, Markku and Oili run Matinselkonen Wilds Centre, a large 6,000-hectare nature reserve right on the Finnish-Russian border. To get to this pristine wilderness we took a flight via Helsinki to Kajaani, followed by a 200km journey along almost traffic-free undulating roads cutting straight through the Finnish taiga. The last part of the journey to the main lodge was on a gravel road, and from there you were taken on a dirt track for a further 20km or so before you left the car at the end of the road and continued the last 2km on foot. The path took us through pine and birch forest and over mosquito infested swamps to the small hide in a clearing.
The bears are attracting to the area surrounding the hides (there are six hides in total, accommodating between one and nine people) by a careful programme of summer baiting. The programme has been running since 2002 and now attracts a huge number of bears from across the Russian border. Since the first season, there has only been one single night that the bears didn’t show – I am really curious as to where the bears went that night. With continuous daylight through the night during the bear season, Martinselkonen is now considered the best place in Europe to see and photograph Brown Bears.
On the second night, a large male bear became very friendly with a small smaller female. After a long time of tender foreplay, they finally got it together. And boy, were they active! After nearly an hour, the female maneuvered herself and the 'attached' male to the feeding area, so that she could eat whilst he was trying to impregnate her. She was visibly bored with the whole thing, and when he had to stop to catch his breath, she saw an opportunity to get away. He tried to mate a second time, but she was having none of it, growling and finally running away!