
Chunk, officially known as Bear 32, secured his first victory in the annual Fat Bear Week contest after three consecutive years of finishing in second place.
According to AP, Chunk, a towering brown bear with a broken jaw, swept the competition Tuesday in the popular Fat Bear Week contest.
The annual online competition allows viewers to follow 12 bears in Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve on live webcams and cast ballots in a bracket-style, single-elimination tournament that lasts a week.
Chunk beat out Bear 856, who doesn’t have a nickname, in the final bracket, according to totals posted on the organizers’ website.
Chunk’s weight was estimated at 1,200 pounds by contest organizers. While they do not weigh individual bears during the contest because of safety concerns, Chunk and others have had their density scanned to bolster weight estimates in the past using laser technology called LIDAR.
“Despite his broken jaw, he remains one of the biggest, baddest bears at Brooks River,” said Mike Fitz, a naturalist for explore.org. Fitz said Chunk likely hurt his jaw in a fight with another bear.
The contest is wildly popular. This year it attracted over 1.5 million votes from fans who watched the ursines gorge on a record run of fall salmon as they fished in the Brooks River about 300 miles from Anchorage.
It is the largest glut of salmon in the living memories of the bears or the humans who have been running the Fat Bear Week contest since 2014, according to Katmai Conservancy spokesperson Naomi Boak.