Beyond the 806
Fat Bear Week opens for Alaska’s heavyweight crown. Can Chunk, the 1,200-pound champ, win again? - NBC News
Fat Bear Week voting opened Tuesday for the 12th annual contest crowning Alaska's most oversized brown bear at Katmai National Park and Preserve, and last year's champ, Chunk, is back to defend his title.
Chunk, officially known as Bear 32, won last year's crown at an estimated 1,200 pounds after a summer spent packing away sockeye salmon. This year he's up against Gully, or Bear 903, the offspring of two-time champion Grazer. The whole thing works because these bears spend all summer gorging themselves before winter, and the contest just celebrates whoever got the roundest doing it.
None of this happens in Lubbock, obviously. Katmai sits in Alaska, thousands of miles from the South Plains, but Fat Bear Week has turned into one of those internet rituals that people here follow every fall right alongside everyone else. Folks check bracket updates on their phones between errands on 19th Street or scroll through bear photos at a coffee shop near Tech Terrace.
For anyone who's clicked through Fat Bear Week brackets the last few years, this is your yearly reminder it's back and the competition looks stiff.
A wild brown bear just spent months eating nonstop specifically so strangers online could vote on how fat it got.
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