It has been an especially dramatic edition of Fat Bear Week, the annual fan-voted competition to crown the brown bear at Alaska’s Katmai National Park who packed on the most poundage ahead of winter hibernation. You may remember last week’s horrors, when the start of voting was delayed by the inexplicable killing of Bear 402 by “Digger.” Neither of those bears had qualified for the knockout round of the competition, but if you read down in the story, you noticed one who has: “Chunk,” last year’s runner-up. Chunk was spotted stealing 402’s carcass from Digger, presumably to cache it as food. Cannibalism is not, we understand, specifically prohibited in the Fat Bear Week rulebook.
But Chunk has his own history, and infamy. He is biggest bear on the river, clocking in at over 1,200 pounds. He fell in the finals in 2023 to “Grazer,” a 19-year-old blonde female bear who pulled off the upset in fan voting. If only that were the only history between the two when they met for a finals rematch this year. This was a revenge game—for Grazer.
On July 27, 2024, Grazer was catching fish with her two young cubs, her third litter, atop the short waterfall on the Brooks River, when they slipped over the edge. One of them floated toward Chunk, who was fishing below. He immediately went for the cub, and severely mauled it before Grazer could get there and lock Chunk up in combat. You can watch the video here if you’re inclined.
The seriously injured cub was seen with its sibling and Grazer over the next few days, in increasingly worse shape. On Aug. 2, cameras captured the injured cub’s body going over the falls; it’s not known whether it was still alive at that point, but it was not seen again.
All of this—the unscripted, bloody drama, and the cheeky fandom of Fat Bear Week—captures the life cycle of these animals. Bears are mothers, fighters, killers, and fish-devourers who get very chubby then sleep for a few months. So it’s not at all in bad taste to pit two individuals with a violent personal history in a fun little tournament. It’s what the fans wanted, voting the two to the finals, where Grazer destroyed Chunk for the second straight year, 71,248 to 30,468.
Congratulations to Grazer. You are once again the fattest of fat bears.