Spending the Borealis Summer with the Brown Bears
This has been our third summer as bear guides in Kuusamo, northern Finland, near the Russian border. Yes, that is the work that we do here with wild brown bears.
You may think, what exactly is bear guiding?
Read on, and we’ll tell you more.
PS. There’s a surprise for our paid subscribers in the end. :)
Spending most of our summer in northern Finland
For the third summer this year (2023), we returned to Kuusamo, northern Finland, to work as bear guides.
Our old friend owns bear-watching and photography hides near the Russian border in the wilderness of Kuusamo, and he has offered us the work. For three years in a row now, we have been working there for a few months during the Borealis summertime – and we love it!
Every year we return to our native Finland for a few months’ time and take a little break from our African Overlanding life.
Mostly it’s because we want to spend some time with our families and friends on this once-a-year occasion, but it’s also because we want to see our brown bear friends and earn some money to fund our Overlanding lifestyle.
One of the best things about this work is that it doesn’t feel like work at all.
And that’s the best work there is – to do something you love doing.
What we actually do, is that we take clients to the hides to watch and photograph the brown bears in the evenings. We spend about four hours with them at the hides, telling people about the brown bears and taking photos.
The bears are completely wild animals living in their natural habitat, so they will come and go as they please. This is also why it’s not 100% guaranteed that you will see the bears.
But as that particular area in Finland has a healthy population of brown bears, it’s highly likely that you may see them.
The spot is also located only a few kilometers away from the Russian border, and many of the wild animals come from the Russian side, where there is nothing but wilderness at that latitude.
We have no fences at the border between Finland and Russia, so wildlife can move back and forth between the countries. This is a wildlife corridor that is also important to keep open in the future, too.
What is hide photography in the North?
In Finland, hide photography is a pretty big business. There are many commercial hides for photographing bears, wolves, wolverines, and especially different birds.
Now you’re probably thinking that how do you get to see these elusive wild animals? Do you feed them? The answer is yes.
And yes, that is a controversial subject, too. And also a subject that we have had to think about a lot while doing this work. Animals’ well-being is extremely important to us as people who are pro-conservation. And it’s important how the feeding is done when it considers wild animals.
We think the most important thing is that you do not upkeep the animals with the food put up at the hides, so the amount is kept small. So that it’s like a little supplement only.
It’s not intended to fully support any animal, as they are completely wild - and are supposed to stay - as wild animals who can fend for themselves in nature. And that is exactly how it’s done in the place we work.
Keeping a safe distance between the hides and animals is also important. That means not putting any food too near the hide buildings!
But, unfortunately, that’s not the case at every commercial hide in Finland… And that’s a fact that we don’t like nor support in any way. Commercial hides are also not regulated in any way by any government department, but we think they should be, as that could improve the ethics of all the places offering hide photography services.
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We also acknowledge the ethical problems that hide photography presents. However, the place where we work does it as ethically as possible, and whatever kind of wildlife photography you do, everything presents some ethical challenges. You will have to define and draw your own lines of what you are willing to do.
However, always consider what is best for the animals first and then act accordingly.
The well-being of wild animals should always come first!
Check out more bear photos from Piritta’s fine art prints and get some northern Taiga magic to your walls, too:
Kuusamo is one of the best and most photogenic wildlife areas in Finland
We like this area of Finland a lot. The Kuusamo area is very picturesque with its diverse landscapes of many lakes and small fjelds (however, they are called “vaara” in Finnish because they’re not as high as proper fjelds).
Also, this area boasts many bird species. Especially in the Spring of May and early June, lots of bird watchers come to Kuusamo worldwide to watch and seek rare bird species (i.e., the red-flanked bluetail).
Of the time we spend in Finland every year, about 2/3 we spend in Kuusamo working as bear guides. And the rest of the time goes with our families and friends in Southern Finland. We are both originally from Southern Finland, and that’s where our families and friends live, too.
This is how our working evenings look like here in Kuusamo, Finland.
How did we end up doing such a rare job as bear guiding?
This story goes back to 2020, the time before Covid-19 started. We’ll try to keep this as a short recount for now.
Back in April 2020, we were house-sitting in Durban, South Africa. We had only returned from the Botswanan bush and had little to no knowledge of what Covid-19 actually was – and how serious a thing it would become.
In those two weeks’ time that we did the house-sitting, it got very clear, though.
And it quickly escalated up to the point in which basically everything was shut down in South Africa, and the Finnish embassy wanted to evacuate every Finnish citizen back to Finland immediately.
And all of a sudden, in a few days’ time, we had 24 hours to decide whether to return to Finland or stay in South Africa. All the commercial flights were going to be suspended.
So, practically we didn’t have any choice, as everything was going to be closed in South Africa (and in other countries, too), and we had no place to stay. So we had to return to Finland for an undisclosed time.
We flew back to Finland with an evacuation flight (which was an experience in itself) and left Honey Badger the Defender to the people’s yard whose property we were house-sitting in Durban. Luckily, their property was secure, and they let us leave our dear vehicle in their care.
However, they didn’t have a big enough indoor garage for our car, and our Defender was forced to stay parked outside. And that did no good for it when it becomes to rust… But we could do nothing about it because everything was closed, there were all the lockdowns, etc., so nobody could move it anywhere for many months.
When remembering this time, it felt devastating at the time. Our Overlanding journey was cut off before it had even fully begun. And we didn’t know for how long…
But Africa had already taught us that whatever happens, you can always make a plan!
Quick decisions, great outcomes in the end
And a quick plan we did back then. And magically, every piece of the puzzle went to its proper place in only a few days’ time.
Both of us took advantage of our former careers, and after those few days, we already got jobs for the next six months. We had also put a post on Facebook asking around about a house to rent from somewhere in northern Finland.
We didn’t have (and we still don’t have!) any house, apartment, or anything in Finland. We don’t own anything “solid” like that.
So, we had to rent someplace to live in while we were going to be back in Finland.
And then, straight out of the blue, Pekka (the owner of the bear hides where we now work) contacted us and offered to find us a place to stay and to come to the bear hides!
We agreed immediately! How we knew each other, then? We had only visited these bear hides once as customers in July 2017. But somehow, we had stayed in Pekka’s memory, and now he happened to see our Facebook post. And then the Universe took over. :)
We cannot help but think that Universe tends to always sort things out for you. And most of the time, it turns out to be the best way possible.
It sure turned out amazingly with this bear guiding. In 2020, we lived in Kuusamo for almost eight months before Covid-19 started to fade off and the borders started opening.
And when they did, we returned to Africa as soon as we could.
But the time we spent in Finland was made so much more pleasant by the brown bears, and the times we got to spend with them.
And every year after this, we have returned to Kuusamo to enjoy this beautiful area and the exciting work as bear guides.
We have also made lifelong friends – with and without furs. ;)
So, when thinking about all this now in hindsight, many good things came out of Covid-19, too.
So we ended up doing this bear guiding by accident (if there is such a thing as “accident happenings” in life…?). And we’ve loved it ever since.
And we will probably return here as long as our bear friends will live. <3
Stay wild & Stay safe,
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