The People Who Live With Giant Bears | BEAST BUDDIES SPECIAL

THREE daring sets of animal owners have taken their love of BEARS to the next level – by treating them as part of their family. We start this Beast Buddies grizzlies special by visiting Jim and Susan Kowalczik who have dedicated their lives to rescuing and releasing injured animals. The couple look after 11 bears, including a Kodiak brown bear that weighs a colossal 1,400lb. Next up, we’re in Florida at the Bearadise Ranch with Monica and Johnny IV Welde. The mother and son duo spend their days rolling around with bears that weigh up to 1,000lbs and have looked after grizzly, polar and black bears for the last 91 years as a family. And finally, we meet Jeff Watson in Indiana – a professional bear handler for more than 29 years, Jeff now sees his two grizzly bears as family members.

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[Music] we're one big bear family our bear family it's like every other family and stuff you love them to death but there's other times we drive you nuts right Jim and Susan run a Center for orphaned wildlife in Otisville New York I'm there every day but he is the one that walks in the door and everybody lights up hey it's kind of funny because they just love him to death and I'm the one that does all the work and he just has to walk in the door this is Jimmy a 21 year old Kodiak bear rescued from a closing Wildlife Park he's just one of the 11 bears that lives with them they knock you around a little bit and stuff nothing you know not maliciously you know but you gotta watch you don't get scratched or poked in the eye or something I know better than that what are you doing it's all right they kill you you know he just have to hit you one time Kodiak bears are one of the largest species in the world he's about 1,400 pounds and if he stood up on his hind legs he'd probably be about nine feet tall I think the strongest person you know or whatever and even magnify that by a thousand times yeah he's big I mean a small bear I'll kick your butt and he's got so much strength all he would have to do is lay on you he's like that he's to bear he has no no fear of them it's really amazing we've had Jimmy for 21 years now got him as a little cub and he's been with us his whole life taking care of bears throughout their lives means that Jim and Susan developed deep bonds with the animals yeah it's you know it's the same thing we spend a lot of time with them we care so much for them we lost four altogether so far here it would be just like burying one of your family members back at the center it's lunchtime in the wand these bears need to eat up to 90 pounds of food every day everything from baby Elks to spawning salmon fairies and plants guys ready and here the Bears enjoy a daily diet of meat grains breads fruit and vege with the occasional marshmallow treat these bears the once in a while they're always looking for food they really don't want for anything other than attention one of the other bears of the center is Jenny when the Bears are little and they're with their mother after they drink their milk do not suck Eliza for a time and they they make this little noise that you hear she just never grew up she still does this she looks at me as if I'm her mother she gets to the painting she likes to just bite down on that pinky I've loved being around her and I'm happy that she feels that way about me still after all these years Oh peanuts it's all a wonderful thing to watch them grow up and and to have them from very little and to make an impression on them they're like your children that's how much you love them and they give a lot back to you too you know they they love you just as much if sometimes you take it for granted but it is a special relationship yeah the Bears are everything to me I would do anything for them I spend all day with them every day this is our life and we're one big bear family [Music] do I prefer bears to humans you play with your tongue well actually sometimes I do my name is Monica weldie I am president owner and a senior trainer here at Paradise ranch my bears are part of my family right now we have 14 bears over the course of 91 years some of our bears have been born in the family some have been adopted we're licensed to take in bears that need homes so our oldest bears right now are 23 years old and our youngest ones are five my son was raised with the Bears he started to interact as a young child I've been around the Bears since I was three years old our bears live on the back of our property behind our our main house they're like family to me I see them every day so they're just my siblings basically I go out and take care of the Bears feed them clean them interact with them a little bit you know talk to them you let them out in the habitat so they can run around play be bears here at Barrow dice ranch our bears have natural habitats to come out and enjoy they have a springfed pond we have pools grass trees my husband and I thought it would be nice for our bears to live like a bear this year we lost my husband my partner suddenly unexpectedly passed away it's been a huge loss for our family and our bears but my son and I decided to continue the family legacy and go on for my husband the Bears have been in their family 91 years and he's greatly missed but I see my husband everywhere I look I know the Bears miss him they do notice his absence [Music] well my dad was my teacher my best friend my he taught me everything I know my mom is also very close to the Bears you know they're her family to my mom and dad they were everything to them so she loves the Bears very much I'm very proud of her for carrying on my dad's legacy with me it's uh it's not easy but we're we're getting through it this is Kenai he's a five year old male grizzly bear we adopted him about three years ago he's not full-grown he's got about five more years to grow he loves attention and he knows I have a honey bottle behind my back oh yeah big creases your sloppy kisser I'll put a little bit on your parquet I know you want the whole bottle our daily interaction with our bears is communication loving petting they thrive on that physical contact we never forget they're a bear they're a bear first even though we share our lives with them we respect them for what they are and we want them to live like a bear so we built bear a dice ranch what the sticky chance you got sticky kisses Ski nice sticky kisses good job good job right now I'm petting Lucy Lucy and her sister Tootsie these two are both eight years old I'm Misha I'm Misha that's one of Kenai sisters Nisha is five years old good girl yeah to us they're very safe they're not big on strangers but which is understandable we've raised them self to us they're very very sweet come on Freddie boy good boy this is Fred and Ginger they're both 23 years old European brown bears we had both of their parents and their siblings and when they were born they fit in the palm of your hand Fred weighs around 800 pounds and Ginger is about 400 pounds my mom hand raised both of these from Cubs my Bears have never attacked anybody we never had an incident with Republic or with ourselves I do have a few scars on me from their claws that's natural it's a very powerful animal they'll lick us and kiss us and and hug on us and touch us I've worked with bears 37 years and I have all my fingers so it's a good track record one more time you may kiss good boy Kenai good boy yeah I'm sure there's people out there that say you shouldn't have barren human care they should be in the wild you know open good boy hold it hold it good boy well what I have to say to people who say that first of all the wild is disappearing there are so many people on this planet we are taking all the resources from the animals all their habitat is shrinking six out of eight species of bears on our planet are threatened and endangered are my bears safer with me than in the wild I would say so I have spent 37 years of my life with bears and I plan to as long as I'm physically able to I will work with the bears till I grow up very old and I feel confident they will be taken care of after I'm gone we didn't see it ending with my husband's death so we aren't going to continue the family wealthy family legacy and keep paradise ranch thriving I love sharing my life with my bears I'm very blessed [Music] when you have bears there's no vacation these are wild animals they are apex carnivores and they rule the roost I've had an interest in bears since I was a boy I never thought I'd get a bigger 30 years ago I had been sick had a neurological disease was paralyzed at a young age and when I got back on my feet and I had this opportunity to get a bear I thought you know it's just to be my therapy I'll hang out with it in the woods and that's how it all began I started off with one bear Brody he would take 9 1/2 gallon calf models at a time started off at 8 pounds at a year old he was 400 pounds a year and a half his 550 pounds so i bottle-fed him for three years when you raise a bear you become the surrogate mother and they won't leave your side and they go through a lot of separation anxiety it's just a lot like a human being most definitely when they're young they see you as their mother I clearly remember the first time I realized that a bear isn't a dog it was a 60 pound bear cub that may sound silly but most people think that if they take a wild animal and they love it and they treat it just right that somehow they will get it to surrender its natural instincts and that'll never happen you can never tame a bear you can train one but you can never tame one the two bears I currently have are Bob and screech they're littermate brothers around 7 years of age and they came from a park in Georgia it was a tourist attraction and they went out of business and prior to going out of business a friend of mine had called me and said hey they've got a couple bear cubs they don't want I didn't pay for them they were given to me people asked me if I rescued them and to me that's kind of an overplayed word I took them I've raised them and I've loved and I tried to give the best life that we can give a captive bear who knows what their fate would have been when I started handling bears it was just interact with them nothing commercial but I realized it's gonna take a lot of money to facilitate this hobby so I tried a marriage a hobby with a profession I started doing commercial TV shows live appearances you'll play play and it evolved into the educational presentations where the animal itself can benefit and people can benefit so I can hopefully save the lives of people and ABARES and that's where I'm at now no bear likes to be surprised but if you surprise a brown bear and they perceive that as hospital you being a threat to themselves they're young they're food source and oftentimes these guys try to kill you because they're trying to eliminate that perceived threat that's why they tell you to play dead if you're out in the backcountry and you're attacked by a brown bear I've always been reluctant to tell people that they are pets because they don't meet the traditional definition of a pet most people don't have pets that can kill them but it comes with the territory these are wild animals they are apex carnivores and they rule the roost the main thing when you have them in captivity is to keep from being bored you know you see the neurotic behavior the pacing what they call stereotypic and zoos oftentimes these guys have a lot in this habitat that's one thing we don't want we don't want pacing we don't want them going nuts I feel my main focus right now with Bob and screech is to use them to educate people on how to behave in their country to save the lives of people and the Bears as habitat is shrinking there's less area for the Bears my main focus is just trying to keep people alive and keep bears alive when you have bears they take up all your time there's no vacations I've had bears 30 years and you're always thinking of you know whether it's getting food building new enclosures there's no down time this isn't an animal that's a low maintenance animal I worked on a program called project grizzly I was trying to take Bob and screech to captive-born captive raise bears to see if it was possible to release them into the wild the problem with a bear in the wild is if it loses his fear of people and becomes habituated or if it associates people with food and becomes food conditioned it's usually marked for death the question was can you take these captive animals and make them afraid of people and get them to stay away from people and the experts that we had involved some said that unless you use aversive conditioning with pain like oftentimes they'll use water bullets and rubber bullets and pepper spray and bear dogs and lots of different things to just make them scared to death of human beings but I wouldn't do it my bears were well cared for and protected but what we pretty much determined was it'll su implement that type of a person conditioning you're not going to get these guys in here humans you're a good boy muddle your claws I love them but I watch them boy I make sure that I keep my mind where it should be knowing these animals I wouldn't say to would turn on me turning on me and my opinion would be it coming out of left field a bear attacking me for absolutely no reason can't put your finger on it whatsoever but I know darn good well if I go in there with a hamburger I better bring it up for the whole class or I am gonna get hurt there's no surprises to that people ask me what does the future hold for bobbin screech I've made arrangements if something were to happen to me that they could go somewhere but their future at this time is just to stay with me I know some people would think that that's not healthy for them but once they've built a bond with somebody it's kind of hard to break that bond