Kicking October off with a roaring finish, Fat Bear Week 2024 has come to a close. Originally started in 2014, Fat Bear Week is a tournament-style vote that allows fans to crown the fattest bear of the season. This year, the voting was fierce, with over 1 million votes reported.
What is Fat Bear Week?
Hosted annually in October through explore.org, the stars of Fat Bear Week reside in Katmai National Park, Alaska.
Katmai National Park offers bears a longer feeding range at Brooks River, where the salmon population allows for feeding from late June to mid-October. The Fat Bear Week competitors take advantage of this, with one of the more dominant bears eating 42 salmon in a single day.
Through explore.org, voters can watch live streams of the park’s most popular feeding spots and read biographies on each of the 12 competitors.
The real draw of Fat Bear Week is the crew of bears competing. From mothers with cubs to the most dominant male bears in the area, Fat Bear Week casts a wide array of characters.
This year’s group includes 747, a bear previously known for his colossal size. He was once estimated to weigh 1,400 pounds and took home the Fat Bear crown in 2020 and 2022. While 747 might have previously been the big bear on the block, this year his age seems to have caught up to him.
Another notable addition to 2024’s Fat Bear Week is Gully. Named for his innovative approach to hunting, Gully doesn’t hunt exclusively salmon, but also gulls. Most bears ignore birds, but Gully had to find creative ways to pack on the pounds.Â
Who Won Fat Bear Week 2024?
This year’s Fat Bear Week champion is no stranger to the spotlight. 20-year-old brown bear Grazer, the defending champion from Fat Bear Week 2023, reclaimed the title this year with an impressive 71,248 votes.Â
Grazer’s final contestant, a 18-year-old male brown bear named Chunk, raked in only a little more than 30,000 votes.Â
This rivalry between Grazer and Chunk is nothing new — she beat him out for the 2023 title, and Chunk only increased the bad blood this summer with an attack on two of Grazer’s cubs. While one recovered, the other passed away from its injuries.Â
Safe to say, Grazer’s win this year was motivated by a little more than salmon.Â
With Fat Bear Week 2024 over, the furry stars will start to begin their final preparations for hibernation. While fans might miss the daily updates on their favorite bears, Katmai’s most famous residents will return bigger, and hungrier, than ever for Fat Bear Week 2025.