Grazer 128 Is Crowned Her Royal Fatness

The bears have eaten and the people have spoken. The winner of the 2023 Fat Bear Week is an empty-nest mom named Grazer 128. The zaftig beauty beat out the competition at Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, where she won the final round in a landslide – 108,321 votes to 23,134.

“Though unaware of her title in this imaginary contest,” Katmai National Park posted on X, “her success is real! For bears, fat = success, & she's set up well for winter.”

Grazer was introduced to the Katmai buffet in 2005 as a young cub. “Since then, she’s become one of the best anglers at Brooks River,” according to the website explore.org, which hosts the annual contest. “Grazer is a particularly defensive mother bear who has successfully raised two litters of cubs. She often preemptively confronts and attacks much larger bears — even large and dominant adult males — in order to ensure her cubs are safe.”

The cubs have moved on, but Grazer’s reputation as a dominant force precedes her. Other bears, such as large adult male 151 Walker, regularly give her a wide berth. “Grazer’s combination of skill and toughness makes her one of Brooks River’s most formidable, successful, and adaptable bears.”

A semantic point for the pedants among us: technically speaking, bears don’t really hibernate. Rather, they retreat to their dens and enter a state of torpor, a deep sleep from which they might wake often and even walk about a bit. The Katmai bears will start their slumber in the coming weeks.

“Bears south of Alaska usually enter their dens later and emerge sooner,” according to the National Park Service, “but it all depends on winter conditions. They’ll stay there until the late spring when they’ll emerge thin and hungry.”

And then they go about the business of packing on all that fat again, taking another spin on the cycle of life.