WASILLA -- Two weekends ago, a Talkeetna area man woke up to a sow and three cubs breaking into his cabin. He ended up blasting all four, including a 250-pound bruin he shot from inches away as it pushed its way through his back door.
Two days later, a Talkeetna grandma had an equally scary encounter when a brown bear broke into her kitchen in the middle of the night. She escaped by shimmying out her bedroom window in her pajamas.
Those are just two of the up-close bear encounters in Mat-Su this summer, which is shaping up to be unusually busy, according to a biologist.
The number of bear encounters are up and so are bear deaths. At least 13 bears have been shot and killed in the Valley this summer in defense of life and property cases. That compares to the usual number of about five a summer, according to a state game official.
Tony Kavalok, a state game biologist based in Palmer, said his office has been getting a steady stream of calls about nuisance bears, including a sow with cubs getting into trash at a Girl Scouts camp off Knik-Goose Bay Road and another bruin nosing around a fish-counting crew camped on the Deshka River.
There have also been at least two bears hit by vehicles, including one last week on the Old Glenn Highway near the Eklutna Tailrace.
"We do seem to have bears coming out of the woodwork everywhere right now," he said.
He said the incidents have run the gamut from Talkeetna to Big Lake to the Butte.
At least one man is also facing legal trouble for shooting a bear. State wildlife officials Sunday cited Randall A. Brown, 47, for illegally feeding game and taking a sow bear after he shot a sow in early July at his home on Knik River Road. Brown had an estimated 100 to 200 bags of garbage on his property which attracted the bears, said Lt. Tory Oleck
There's no clear reason why this summer has been busier than usual. But, Kavalok said, king salmon returns have been poor which might make bears more likely to move around in search of food.
The hot weather has also made for low water levels in non glacially fed streams that could allow bears to move about more.
The good news is the overall number of incidents is still small. Also none of the encounters have involved people running into bears while biking or hiking, he said.
Rather the encounters have happened in the usual places -- around salmon streams or near homes or Dumpsters where bears are trying to get at potential food.
But that's little salve to those whose heartbeats are still racing from their own personal encounters.
Yukon Don Tanner, a safety manager for Matanuska Electric Association said he's still not sleeping well after his July 6 run-in with a sow and three cubs at his cabin near Talkeetna.
Tanner said he was wakened about 4 a.m. by a noise outside his house.
"I have a squirrel that fusses around, but I thought that's not a squirrel noise," he said.
He got up, grabbed his Marlin .45-70 rifle from a table near the door where he leaves it loaded at night and looked out his bathroom window.
Outside he saw a bear 60 feet away.
He though it was a lone boar -- which is legal to shoot -- so he fired a blast, right through the screen window, he said.
The bear dropped, and Tanner thought that was the end of the story. But as he got ready to get back in bed, he heard a noise on his back porch.
He went to look and saw another bear -- one of the sow's cubs -- peering in at him through a screen window near the door.
"I take three steps toward the noise and this bear head pops up right in front of the screen so I shoot that one through the screen," he said.
At that point Tanner is standing next to his door, rifle at his knee when he said yet another cub -- a 250-pound bruiser -- starts to push the door open.
Tanner said he instinctively shot the bear in the face and it turned around and ran. Finally, as he went out to make sure the bear had died, he saw yet a final cub in his yard.
He thought it was running toward him and he shot that one too.
"In about three minutes, I shot four bears," he said. "(My adrenaline) was about Mach 2. I couldn't sit still. My knees were shaking. I thought, 'Holy cow! I'm under attack.' "
Sharon Lawrence can sympathize with Tanner's feelings.
The retired nurse is still shell shocked from the early-morning raid last Wednesday in her home near the Talkeetna airport in which a bear broke through a screen window, upended her garbage and helped himself to a bag of brown sugar in her cupboard.
Lawrence said she first heard the bear outside about 1:30 a.m. She saw it out her window, but when she went to look again, it was gone. A second later, she heard a thump in her kitchen.
"It sounded like everything was getting thrown around," she said. "I thought, 'Oh my gosh,' and those weren't my exact words, 'I have a bear in my house.' "
Lawrence couldn't get to the front door so she crawled out her bedroom window and ran to a neighbor's house. She came back with a friend who was armed, but the bear was gone.
The next night her son-in-law, Todd Kingery, slept in the house and when the bear returned, he shot it, she said.
Lawrence said she feels bad for the bear, but everyone has told her it would have kept coming back.
Find S.J. Komarnitsky at adn.com/contact/skomarnitsky or 352-6714.
Interactive map: Tracking bears in Anchorage
By S.J. KOMARNITSKY
skomarnitsky@adn.com