Expedition Grizzly

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Fifty Days With Casey & Brutus

Thomas Winston, Grizzly Creek Films Executive Producer and Director of Photography

I first met Casey and Brutus on the set of the independent feature film, Pretty Ugly People. The film’s script called for a bear to scare a group a city slickers on their trip into the wilderness, and Brutus was perfect for the part.

A few months later, I was hired to create a series of short grizzly bear educational videos for the Draper Museum of Natural History in Cody, WY. I immediately thought of casting Brutus as a mischievous bear, so I asked Casey if they would be interesting in participating in the project. The budget for the short films was small, so Casey volunteered both himself and Brutus, completely free of charge! It was then that I realized that this unique tandem wasn’t in it for the fame or fortune. Their true motivation was simple: educating the public about grizzly bears so Brutus’ wild cousins can thrive their natural habitat.

We also needed footage of wild grizzly bears for our short educational films. I’m no grizzly bear expert, so the thought of finding wild bears by myself was both daunting and terrifying. I asked Casey for advice on where, when and how to find the bears, and he offered to take me to his ‘secret stash’ of wild Yellowstone grizzlies in the early spring. After only two days of following Casey and filming bears in their natural settings, I felt like I was living in a National Geographic Special: tracking grizzly bears with Casey’s real-time play-by-play describing the unique springtime behaviors. I quickly turned the camera on Casey and filmed him as he analyzed a set of grizzly tracks or commented on a male bear attempting to mate with a disinterested female. We used the footage to pitch the show to the real National Geographic Channel, and two years later… We have a one-hour special!

It’s been an amazing journey. Our team spent nearly 50 days throughout the spring, summer and fall of 2008, tracking grizzlies and chronicling a year in the life of the Yellowstone grizzly bear. Some days we saw nothing, and on others we saw up to 20 bears in a single day! Casey and Brutus are truly the ultimate grizzly bear ambassadors, and we hope that our film will both entertain and educate a much broader audience than we could reach in our original public service announcements.