2025 GBMP crew on mocktail/cocktail night. Left to right: Emma, Kieran, Kirsty, Sierra, Sue. Horizontal: Darío. Missing in the photo but there in our hearts: Olivia and senior biologist Cam.
Smelling like scent lure and loving it
Written by Sue MacKinnon and Sierra Makasoff; photos contributed by the whole crew.
The final days of hair snag sampling in the foothills north of Hinton, in Bear Management Area 2, were officially in sight. Kieran, Sue, Sierra and Kirsty packed up their gear (and our emotional support snacks) and headed to Kakwa for one last round of sample collection and to dismantle 40 sites scattered across the northern reaches of the zone.
We convoyed into camp, heading toward our beloved second home for the very last time. Five rustic cabins, one main cook house, a leechy pond with a questionable dock, a sprawling yard perfect for games, and no cell service. Kakwa isn’t just a work site; it’s summer camp for adults who never really grew out of playing in the woods. The grizzly bear crew arrived ready for it all, one last time.
Planning work days in Kakwa, however, required a certain flexibility. When the rain hit, the roads transformed into a muddy slip ’n slide – but nothing the crews couldn’t handle. After all, what’s a field season without a few dramatic access obstacles? Each day, we set out to check trail camera images, collect hair samples from the barbs, and dismantle each site. Many of the 40 sites had earned their own stories or nicknames, and we shared our favourites as we took them down, giving each a proper and sentimental goodbye.
With the famous “Kakwa mud” clinging to truck tires, boots, and possibly our souls, we returned to camp each night to take turns preparing family dinners. Evenings were filled with friendship-bracelet craftsmanship, board games, strolls around the “leechey pond” to observe the beaver family, and roasting marshmallows over the propane stove.
While the Kakwa crew wrestled mud and nostalgia, Olivia and Emma held down the fort in Hinton –slaying regular hair snag sampling like champions. There’s a special bond in knowing that even when your teammates are hours away, you’re all out in grizzly habitat together, pouring scent lure, collecting hair, and doing your best not to question your life choices when you smell like fermented cow’s blood. We depended on one another, kept each other going, and collected solid data for a project that is important to each of us in our own way.
Then came the next shift, featuring the legend himself: Charles Daychief. Teaming up with Sierra, Sue, Kieran and Emma, the expanded crew tackled the final hair snag collections and dismantles for the sites that monitor the corridor that links grizzly bear populations from Hinton to Fox Creek, and the remainder of sites that monitor the foothills north of Hinton. That’s 52 sites, two field crews, and a collective willpower fueled largely by Sour Patch Kids and pure field-season grit. Following the same dismantle protocol used in Kakwa, the crews checked trail camera images, collected hair samples, and took down each site, leaving the forest looking almost exactly the way we found it, aside from the blood-stained former bait tree (nature knows what happened there).
Each night, everyone reconvened at the GBMP camper trailer parked at Gateway RV – our unofficial headquarters – for family BBQs. The evenings featured stories, laughter, and a nightly round of show-and-tell which, in field tech terms, translates to photos of plants we couldn’t identify in the field, slime molds looking like alien lifeforms, Olivia holding yet another toad like it’s her precious field companion, and blurry wildlife images that we swear are very impressive.
With all sites north of Hinton dismantled, one task remained: cleaning the sea can. Oh, the sea can… an enclosed metal storage unit infused with the lingering aroma of all four scent lures slowly cooked in summer sun. Anyone who stepped inside walked out smelling like they’d been marinated – not that the GBMP crew minded. After a full season of lures and field funk, we’d long since achieved collective nose-blindness. We tackled the cleaning with the optimism only field techs can muster, sanitizing and scrubbing until it was allegedly clean enough to spend a night in there (an inside joke we will not be explaining).
And then came the moment we’d all been waiting for: the end of August scent lure mocktail/cocktail competition. With last year’s bar set dangerously high, each team member, having randomly drawn their grizzly bear scent lures earlier in the season, was responsible for turning those lures into a food or drink creation. The judges – our Program Lead Darío and an biologist Solène – arrived prepared. The stakes? The coveted grizzly bear cup. The bragging rights? Eternal. Sierra stole the show with a parsnip-cream-filled donut that somehow embodied her scent lure perfectly. She was crowned the 2025 champion, and the night spiralled into delicious chaos involving good food, good friends, and enough laughter to echo off the foothills.
Another summer field season for the books: a season of mud, hard work, field tech firsts, unforgettable wildlife moments, endless laughter, and a team that feels a lot like family.
