Black Bear Moms and Cubs, Minnesota, 2018

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I had a small group of photographers on an HW Safaris tour photographing black bear moms and cubs. While there are a lot of black bears that wander in and out of the meadow, it is a hurry up and wait game for us as we are there for moms with spring cubs. This area has a lot of black and cinnamon black bears. The various colour tones of black bears make wonderful subjects.

This year we were lucky enough to photograph a mom with three cubs. We saw her a couple times on both the first and second days. We saw a mom with four, although you’ll have to take my word for it because by the time we got in position to photograph her, she and her cubs took off into the bush. We photographed a second mom with triplets in the evening of the second day for an hour or so. On the third day it rained throughout the morning. Outside the 8 boars that were in the area, we got lucky photographing a yearling on a log.

The third day was pretty quiet, but we persevered and just before it was time to leave, a mom and a single cub wandered into the forest on the edge of the meadow. They gave us some nice opportunities to photograph the cub as the little one went up a tree. Shooting between the canopy of leaves we had a couple brief opportunities to get a couple good images of her. Our black bear gallery can be seen here.

Throughout our three days we estimate that we saw a total of approximately 50-60 different black bears.

Our next Black bear moms and cubs safari will be in June, 2019. Check our itinerary for the dates and details if you are interested in a great opportunity to photograph black bear moms and cubs in their natural environment.