My favorite wildlife subjects by far have been birds. Upon retiring in February and having more time for photography, I decided to make a concerted effort to photograph other subjects. Black bears were an obvious choice for two reasons: 1) Eastern North Carolina has one of the the largest concentrations of black bears in the U.S., and 2) Good locations were within 2-3 hours of my home.
In the last two months I have made five trips to photograph black bears, two to Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge and three to Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. I had much better success at the latter location.
I’d read that bears have poor eyesight (but excellent senses of smell and hearing). However, I noticed that bears would quickly spot me at a long distance, even when downwind. [More recent research has revealed that bears have good eyesight–on par with humans during daylight and much better than ours at night.] I quickly gave up on trying to approach bears and decided to settle on a location and let the bears approach me. It was fairly easy to locate well-used bear trails where bears would exit the woods and cross over to corn and soybean fields. Using a 200-600 zoom with 1.4x teleconverter (840mm equivalent focal length), I would set up at a respectful distance from one or two trails and wait.
Some bears would see me on exiting the woods and retreat back into the woods and cross over at a more distant location. Many bears however essentially ignored me, although I’m sure all quickly became aware of my presence.
Below are some of my favorites from the trips.
In the image above, a mom and her cub came out of the woods just before a light drizzle turned into a downpour. I thought of calling the image “Three Fools Sitting in the Rain,” but actually it might have been just one fool (me). They were probably enjoying the cool respite from the summer heat.
UPDATE: I made two additional trips to Pocosin Lakes NWR, one in November and another in December. I didn’t have as much luck as on other trips–no cubs playing or mom with cubs posing for me. But I did get several nice portraits. One afternoon I spent 3 hours in a light, steady rain to get two opportunities with bears close enough to photograph (the last two images). All images taken with Sony A1, 200-600mm lens with 1.4x teleconverter.
