Welcome back to Scary Bear Attacks! This weekend's episode takes us to familiar territory. If you have watched our previous stories on Olga Moskalyova, Vitaly Nikolyenko and Alexey Ivanovski then you will know we are talking about the Russian Far East. We are returning to Kamchatka to a beautiful place called Lake Kurilskoye. As you can see by our map, we are now near the center of 5 cases regarding attacks we have previously discussed. The Sankebetsu Bear attack on Hokkaido, The Kinshur Island attack, the Olga Moskalyev attack, the Vitaly Nikolenko attack and the topic of today's episode. If you are picking up on a pattern here, you are not the only one. These islands are some of the most sparsely populated areas, yet we have documented some of the most tragic, violent and unfortunate bear attacks ever. After today’s episode you may agree with me, that this area of the world is most likely the most dangerous in regard to deadly bear attacks. The location is beautiful Lake Kurilskoye, with its clear waters and cool temperatures, it receives very few visitors each year. Any visitors that may find their way there might be photographers, researchers and possibly fishermen, otherwise you can count on solitude, peace and bears, lots of bears. Michio Hoshino is an extremely accomplished wildlife photographer, observer and researcher in his mid forties. He was born in Japan and moved to Alaska to photograph brown bears in the 70’s. His photos, videos and artwork have brought the farthest corners of the world into the canvas and lighting of galleries around the world. In 1996, he was hired to do photography on a documentary about brown bears. The first few days of filming went great, but on day three the photography crew lucked up on a very large male brown bear that did not mind the crew approaching within a few yards of him while he fished. The bear would simply ignore the crew and they recorded some amazing footage of the giant bruin as it gorged itself on salmon just a few meager yards away from their lenses. The next day they returned to the same spot, and there he was again. He seemed to relish the spotlight and played and showed off for the crews. He was not aggressive or threatening in any way, even though the photographers would sometimes approach within 5 yards to film him eating. The crew continued this for a third day and decided to make the hike to the lake to watch the big bear fish as part of their regular trip to gather footage. The big bear seemed content as he pulled in huge salmon and effortlessly tore them apart right in front of the crew. Some of these fish weighed about half as much as some of the men. It was on the fourth day, during the morning hike up the trail that the crew noticed large piles of scat close to their camp in the trail to the big bears fishing hole. They continued their hike and noticed his tracks and scat were placed over their boot tracks in the trail from when they returned to camp the prior day. Well, this is bear country and we are hiking on a bear trail, so a certain amount of that can be expected. The photography crew went on about their filming trek for the day, but when they got to the big bear's fishing hole, he wasn’t there. They were bummed but they could just return with a bunch of film of the same bear doing the same thing anyway. That would be boring. They finished up with a few shots of a sow and cubs that they watched for the afternoon and returned back to camp just before evening. As the men made it down the hill to the main trail back to camp, they noticed more bear scat. It was the big boar's tracks and this time his tracks were in their boot tracks from their hike up this morning.