AS WINTER APPROACHES in the Canadian Yukon, a few unusually late salmon runs can be found swimming red up rivers banked with snow. For more than five years, photographer Peter Mather has been following a unique subculture of grizzlies as they fish for those salmon well into November, when most of their kin have already settled down to hibernate. Mather calls them the "ice bears." "I first heard about these bears from an elder named Robert Bruce in the Gwich'in community of Old Crow," Mather says. "The old people would say you couldn't kill these bears because your arrow couldn't penetrate the ice that coated their fur."
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