I Camped in Bear Country and Captured the BEST Wildlife Footage of My Life

In this video we are spending 100 hours in Katmai National Park tent camping amongst the most beautiful brown bear mom with three cubs. It's going to be an awesome video and you're not going to want to miss one minute. Now we're going from Barrow to Katmai, polar bears to brown bears. Let's take a quick little flight shall we? First things first before we do anything we had to first set up our camp which is protected by an electric bear fence. It didn't take long to find this sow with three cubs and we were able to spend a little bit of time with her. Notice how mom does this move. It happens a lot during our time with her. Also all photos will be at the end of this video and you'll want to stick around because there are some unreal moments that I captured on photos that I didn't capture on video. All right so we got the tent and camp set up and then we headed out and got some really nice footage of some sow with three little koi. Pretty bright out today. Lighting could be better. This brown bear came up to us and was pretty relaxed but you'll find out in this video any bear around the mom of three cubs will have her on edge. One of the most amazing things about wildlife is just watching animals when they aren't stressed they're in a cave. Just pure fun for these three little brown bear koi. Also you may hear me say koi a bunch in this video. Koi stands for cubs of the year which means these tiny fluffballs were born just a few months ago. In case you haven't noticed this video is a long one because I really want to show you as much as possible what it's like to be in the heart of Katmai National Park. It's one of the few places in the world where you can watch a bear be a bear with its wide open landscape and a place free from hunters. I still don't know why but this mother constantly loved picking up her cubs and throwing them around. I don't know if it's a stress reliever, a playful act, or if she's just trying to teach them a lesson. Again this mom isn't worried about humans. She knows we are just observing. She has one job and that is to protect her cubs no matter how far a potential threat is. A mom with cubs will often like to stay close to humans because it's an added barrier between other bears in the wild. When bears get close it's important to hold your ground and let the bear know they are too close and need to back off a little. Yep that's a bear in a rainbow. All right so we had a pretty nice eventful day here and we just got back. We're getting ready to go to bed but eating a little late night dinner and wow awesome awesome moment that we shared with this mom with three little koi. Steve is secretly laughing at me. No he's got such a good voice. He does a good job. If I did that I'm like I remember when I said I'm walking down the boardwalk. All right guys it's just me and trusty M&Ms here to say good night. We are gonna wake up early try to find that mom with those koi. She's been known to clam out here on the beach and we would be really really excited to capture that at sunrise in the morning. So see you guys tomorrow morning. Let's go to bed. Well good morning it is just about 5 30 in the morning and the sun just rose a little bit ago so we just woke up and left. So you didn't miss anything here. The low tide when it's low tide here goes out like feels like miles especially if you have to walk out there to get your gear. Ask me how I know. We're going to be looking for some bears that are just climbing in this low tide and usually you get some epic shots when they're climbing. Hopefully we see the mom and koi climbing. Well no luck on the mom and koi just yet but we decided to cross the river and maybe we'll see a wolf. It's pretty funny the first time I ever came here I'd want to shoot every bear and there's a bear just 75 yards away but when you get spoiled you're like eh it's not doing anything. So as you progress as a wildlife photographer you stop really looking at the animal and start looking at what the animal is doing and if it's not doing anything and you've already shot that animal before it's really not worth shooting again unless you're just in love with that personal animal or something like that. But nothing really eventful going on. If it was nice lighting or something sure. I mean that's small it's gotta be. You saw the mouth. Yeah. The sea otter ribs are usually more curved like this. You think this could be a sea otter? No. We're trying to debate here if this is a cub which is really really small vertebrae or sea otter but without a skull and only a couple pieces of bone we're not going to pretend like we know because sometimes you just don't know. Way out there is our friend Casey and his group and he said we're welcome to join them anytime and they got the mom with cubs. We enjoyed our walk but it's time to get some footage on this memory card. Finally we get to see bears clamming. The cubs love these high protein snacks and sometimes things get a little territorial. We will sit observe and relax and move around once it's safe enough without making the mama feel like we are invading her space. It's a mutual comfort with bears and Katmai. It's important to know avoid stressing out bears and as soon as they give a sign of being stressed you need to be aware and back off for the day. But for now this mom is totally comfortable and we are able to watch some amazing nature. Having the privilege to film and photograph cubs is something every wildlife photographer dreams of. They are just kids at heart. All that digging made the family tired. It's a great feeling knowing a bear has the trust in you to lay next to you and take a nap. A nap that took longer than expected led to what will forever be known as the greatest wildlife moment of my career. Katmai's bays are known to go extremely high and low with the tides. Things can move fast. These bears are left stranded on a sandbar and the mom knows the cubs are a little small to move on their own. There's only one way across. It seems every post I make on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok provokes AI comments. I don't know how else I could show you this is real when I'm filming with my phone, Canon cameras, and Insta360s on my head. Obviously this isn't AI but I will tell you it's hands down the most surreal moment I've ever captured as a wildlife photographer. Hey Jen what'd you think of that uh experience there? What a great morning. Never seen anything quite like that have you? Best thing I ever captured. What was the best part of it? That I hopefully got something in focus. I think you did. Yeah man those three cubs hopped on the mom's back and velcroed in. One time they got thrown off. I think I got that recorded. I'm pretty sure I got one of them recorded. It happened like twice I think. Yeah but we sat out here waiting. You guys saw we were right next to those bears. They came up to us obviously. Even the rangers came in and said how you doing. So obviously we did nothing wrong. Bears came up to us. Tide was coming in so we said okay let's get out of the tide. The bears found the one little spot that the tide hasn't come over yet and what happened was finally everything is just surrounded by water and the cubs are too small to swim over. So they had to hop on mom's back. That mom does not like that. So she was kind of getting like frustrated just like wanting the cubs to stay on. The one cub fell off a couple times. So as soon as they got to shore she got thrown off. Now I didn't record that unfortunately. I was switching cameras but uh what a freaking. I mean I don't know if wildlife photography can get any better than what that was. It was simply the best. On the way back to camp we saw Scott Stone aka the guy who changed my life by showing me the ins and outs of Katmai. Scott hosts bear camps and I made a few videos from his camp. Check him out. Hey everyone I hope you're enjoying Katmai National Park. I just wanted to take this moment to let you know that if you're interested in learning wildlife photography or videography I do have a wildlife masterclass. Whether you're using a big $12,000 lens like this or have a cheap $650 lens I'll make sure you can get good photos. If you're already a well-established photographer and looking to dive into the videography world we'll have a full videography section as well. There's over four hours of video content. Everything will be in pdf format and there's also full in-depth videos on Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, and Premiere Pro for your video editing needs. To learn more about my masterclass click this link in the description below and use code ERMY for $100 off if you do want to purchase it. Now let's go show you more bears. All right so this is how we eat here. We have a bear bin. This is a bear proof canister here and for me I just went with a bunch of dehydrated meals. They went with some fresh fruit and stuff and a bunch of dehydrated meals. I didn't even think about bringing fruit for this trip. I kind of wish I did but uh I got my trusty M&Ms so that's uh my snack. I probably brought a little bit more than what I needed but you never know it's better to bring a little more than a little less. Although I could probably starve for a couple days and still be overweight so maybe I shouldn't have brought any food to begin with. But yeah I just wanted to show you guys this is how we eat. We have a little stove to boil some water and we can make some coffee for coffee. I just have some boulders instant coffee so stuff's not bad actually. It's pretty good especially when you don't have access to any coffee at all. So yeah I just want to show you guys what we eat here and we bring our own water and then I just fill it up. I got two of these Nalgene bottles and uh I do like to drink a lot of water but when uh there's three people I'm gonna try to be a little bit sparing of our water. We do also have a backup hydration filtration system so uh yeah I just want to show you and then when I'm out in the field bring a couple protein bars with me and I got some beef jerky. This is just really nice if you end up shooting with the bears all day and sometimes you just would rather be out with the bears than eat and uh like what we got today already I would be out all day and not eat if I didn't have to. But the bears kind of went off and did their thing with all those people so we came back and I don't mind eating this stuff. So I just want to show you guys what we eat. I will say I'm excited to try this peach cobbler little dessert here and my favorite peak meal now is this one here. Backcountry bison ball. Now um I bought all this with my own money they're not sponsoring or anything but uh yeah they're pretty good. Backcountry ball is really really good. I like that. Get this food nice and organized again here and uh in a little bit we'll head back out. Woke up from a little nap here. It's like 2 30 in the afternoon and uh you know there's not a whole lot of bears around here right now and what happens is a bunch of day trippers come out from Homer and maybe there's some from Kodiak right now. I don't know. I think most of them are from Homer and they just flood the mom and cubs. So what we did was to come back, relax, take a nap. It's kind of like a middle of the day harsh light kind of cloudy a little bit of drizzle but once those people leave then we can kind of go back out and we don't want to overcrowd the mom and cub. Obviously she's really comfortable around people but still we don't want to be a part of the 700 people crew but which is that's one of the nice things about camping out here is you can go out for not only better light but with less people too. But we're just gonna hang out for a little bit and uh hydrate and we'll go out in a little bit. So this evening is one of those examples where patience is uh kind of just making you wait a long time and it's nice to actually just kind of sit around. It did get cold. Starting to rain a little bit but uh I learned yesterday that when you wait around good things happen. We were just waiting for these cubs and mom to do something but uh yeah it's just a nice little relaxing evening here in Katmai National Park. Later on this evening we were back on the mom and cubs. It was pretty cute when Jennifer asked for the cubs to climb up on the log and then look what happened. Wow guys another day where patience paid off. We waited for a few hours and then finally everything came to fruition. It was really really cool. As soon as the BBC filmmakers left and I'm like within 20 seconds of them leaving the cubs came up and they played on this uh branch which was like a tree stump which was really nice. I played in front of us. She went back out to the beach and I got some really nice shots. The cubs did not like the mom going into the water. She was trying to fish and they kept crying and crying. I got some cool shots I'm really happy with. The mom ended up getting in a bad spot but she crossed back so maybe tomorrow morning things will be good again. Man we are drenched though. The rain has come down and we are just soaked so I'm excited to get dry. Get my clothes dry. We got a better rain jacket that I'll use tomorrow. It's supposed to rain for the rest of this trip but it's okay. We come prepared. Bald Eagle here has been there every time I'm here the past five years. It's always in that same exact spot. You think it's a statue but it is real. On day three we found the cubs and mom in the morning playing on some logs and then another bear came by and forced the mom out to clam again. It's a bear party and you're all invited. She's taking a nap. We had her to ourselves. We walked really far this morning and then another young bear came out and just chased her all the way back to camp over here. A lot of walking for no reason really but it was actually really nice because I needed some exercise. I need to burn off some of these calories I've been eating and it helps me stay warm. It is raining out and that's one of those things being a wildlife photographer. Sometimes you just got to sit in the rain and the best thing with wildlife photography that I can give the best advice I can give you is have the right gear for the environment you're in because if you have the right gear you can have patience and patience always rewards you at some point. What you're about to witness is the mom and three cubs nursing on the beach. These are the intimate moments you live for and suffer through in heavy rain and windy conditions for. After their nurse and nap they make their way over to the barnacle reef and have a crunchy snack. They make their way straight to us and give us a cute little personal show. For super close stuff a long lens can give you some really intimate shots but I also like to use it as a time to bring out the 70 to 200. Oh have I mentioned how fast the tides can come in? Look at the water as it's about to sweep away my camera bag. Good thing I had the rain cover on to protect it. Let's put the 70 to 200 away for now. Alright well I hope you guys are still enjoying this video. I wanted to take a moment and show you my PJY Tech 50 liter flex. This bag is really really nice and I've been using it as my daily driver and my wildlife photography setup. I can fit my 400 in here with a camera body. I just flipped the lens hood around because this is half the lens so I flipped that around. It fits in here just fine but the feature I wanted to show you like you saw on the water there was being able to quickly move your gear. So most camera bags if you want to move you're going to have to zip everything up and that you know sometimes that can be quick but sometimes if a zipper gets caught it can take a second. This has a nice feature. It has these little tabs right here that have a magnet on them and you can see the bag is open. I'm not going to zip it up. I'm just going to flip this magnet onto these tabs here and what I can do now is if I have to pick up my bag and move really quick I can pick it up and it holds all the weight that's inside which is really really nice. It definitely helped me and kept my national park. So a big big shout out to PJY Tech and to release the tabs you just go like this and you're good to go. So you know would I trust walking around forever in that like that? Not really but for quick moments where you need to move I trust it enough over water with a lot of gear like camera batteries, lenses, camera bodies, and all that fun stuff. So PJY Tech Flex 50 liter. If you don't need too much space they have a 40 liter as well. To learn more about this bag check out this video right up here. Later on this evening I spotted the mom and cubs close to camp and dreamed of her in the lupin. I got my dream shot and then some. Another bear was approaching and if you followed along you know what's coming next. The mom and cubs will be reacting to that. A few hours later the mom and cubs come down to the beach and eventually make their way directly towards us. This iPhone video captured by a park ranger shows how there is plenty of space for the mom and cubs to completely avoid us but again she is very comfortable with us and will walk right by us. And by the way that's me right there in the video. Well after a few hours of waiting and her coming back to the beach mom spots another brown bear off in the distance and decides to head back to shore where she feels safe. Another few hours go by and mom's back and makes her way back towards our camp. It was an evening of capturing other people capture bears in the wild. The next morning I spent a little bit of time capturing some birds around the beach while waiting to see if mom and cubs come out. Our final day we were able to spend one last morning with the mom and cubs. She came out but went straight to the tideline. She wanted a flounder. The cubs get their flounder and it made for some fun footage to capture. Clams, flounder, and sedge grass there is still no better nutrition than breast milk for any animal or living being. The mom decides to maximize her time on the sandbar looking for clams. After all she needs to eat too but if you recall from earlier these tides can come in quick. We've seen this story before with a cubs velcro on mom's back for a second time. Uh what's this? Is mom abandoning her cubs? Never mind she's going back for them. She sat down but the cubs aren't taking their hint to climb on mom's back. Mom is now frustrated as she grabs her favorite child and tries to get it across. At this point my heart is racing. Am I going to witness a cub die? Only one is on the back. One is swimming right behind mom and the last one is far back frozen in fear. Two out of the three cubs made it back. Where is the third one? Thank goodness the cub is still here and all three eventually made it back safe and sound. Well another gorgeous morning out here at Weeds. We waited and waited and but I'll let Jennifer tell you a little story. Well Chris always asks me Jennifer how do you get those little intimate shots those little special shots and and I've been telling him you just sit and wait and we sit and wait. Today was no exception. We sat and wait had water up to our waist and water's going to my waders. I got all of my waders and suddenly mom gave us the world. Cub on her back chub in her mouth and one swimming behind. Some tense moments but everything worked out. Yeah today was like watching a movie. It had my heart pumping. I felt bad like if that cub was gonna drown but they all made it back and I recorded some behind the scenes footage of it and hopefully it tells the story on what it's like to be a mom with three little cubs here. I can cap my events so far. Hopefully it's all worked out for you. Oh thank you man. Good seeing you buddy. Bye Jackie. I hope you guys make it out okay. Go ahead Steve we're good. Well Katmai you've outdone yourself on this trip. I really don't know if I'll ever be able to capture something so magical again. I just want to give a big shout out to Jennifer and Steve Smith for letting me join them on this bear camp. Thank you to Willie the owner of Kodiak Air Service for a wonderful flight out despite the weather being so rough. Stick around to the end for the photos from this trip. All right well I didn't demonstrate it but we had to pump our floats. The floats filled with so much water and that was a fun experience. You've done that before right? Yeah they only fill when you have to go out in big waves in order to search for calmer water. So yeah all was good but we just had to stop for a while and pump some floats and then we were off. Yep I wanted to record it but we were strictly business so we got moving and we're home now and yeah thanks for watching. Alrighty guys thank you so much for watching this video and suffering through the entire video. Well I hope we didn't suffer. I hope you guys really enjoyed the video and like I said in the beginning I'm going to leave you with a bunch of photos right here at the end and with that thank you again. I really appreciate it. Subscribe to the channel if you want to see more content like this, more Alaska. If you want to learn more about wildlife photography or videography check out the master class link in the description below and here's my photos from this trip.