Year First Observed: 2019
Year Last Observed: 2026
Age: 20

Bear 806 is an adult female who made her first Fat Bear Week appearance in 2026 with one of the most unusual families on the river: her own spring cub and an adopted 2.5 year old named Biggie, the daughter of two time champion 128 Grazer. Her summer showed both sides of a mother bear, the caregiver and the predator.

How to recognize her

806 has round ears with blond tips and grizzled brown fur. In early summer she can have a short mane of longer fur around her head and face.

Background

Rangers first identified 806 in 2019, when she was about three and a half years old, so she was born around 2016. She is believed to be the daughter of 132, another experienced Brooks River mother who competed alongside her in 2026. Fans who follow the bear cams closely remember her as a young bear who liked to fish the lip of Brooks Falls, sometimes right next to Grazer.

She has had three known litters. Her 2023 spring cub, a lively little male who got swept downstream and even over the falls more than once that summer, won Fat Bear Junior that year.

Biggie

In late spring 2026, Grazer's 2.5 year old cub, a female known as Biggie and the 2025 Fat Bear Junior champion, separated from her mother. Nobody saw the first moment Biggie and 806 met, but it was likely Biggie who took the risk and approached the new family. 806 accepted her, and for the rest of the summer she raised Biggie alongside her own spring cub. It showed a flexibility and willingness to care for a cub that wasn't hers that is rarely seen in brown bears.

A complicated summer

On July 28, 2026, a spring cub belonging to 909 swam across the river while its mother fished near the river mouth, ending up close to 806's family. After a few minutes the cub ran, possibly confused about where its mother was. That triggered 806 to chase it, and she killed and partly ate the cub. Rangers and naturalists believe it may be the first documented case of an adult female killing a cub at Brooks River.

It's hard to picture the same bear taking in another bear's cub one month and killing a cub the next. But mother bears carry both instincts all the time. The urge to protect and feed their own family lives right alongside the drive to hunt, and which one shows up depends on the moment. Judging her as good or bad misses the point. She is a wild brown bear, and Brooks River is a wild place.

Fat Bear Week

• 2023: Her spring cub won Fat Bear Junior

• 2026: Fat Bear Week debut, with her spring cub and adopted Biggie

Quick facts

• Sex: Female

• First identified: 2019, about age 3.5

• Mother: 132 (believed)

• Known litters: 3

• Adopted cub: Biggie, daughter of 128 Grazer

• Known for: Adopting Biggie, her 2023 Fat Bear Junior champion cub