Bear:30 in Alberta's Canadian Rockies - Kananaskis Country Golf Course goes Grizzly

KANANASKIS, ALBERTA - Our last round of the trip in Alberta’s Canadian Rockies and we’d all seen plenty of elk, deer, coyote cubs, mountain sheep, ambitious squirrels running off with our Twix…

But alas, no bear sighting.

Lo and behold, on the 4th hole of our final round at Kananaskis Country’s Mt. Kidd Course, we stumbled upon the mother load: a grizzly and cub creeping its way onto the golf course.

Kananaskis is known for its full tee sheets, thanks to its value price point of $90 and just an hour from Calgary. That said, no one really seemed to be complaining about the backup the bears caused on the 4th tee.

The 4th hole of Kananaskis Country Golf Course (Mt. Kidd) was the scene of the bear sighting.

The grizzly and cub waded through the water together before finding land just a few yards from the golf course.

The bears then strolled down the bank of the river towards the golf course.

They then waddled their way around the sand trap before disappearing into the forest.

The staff there say they’ve seen the Grizzly and cub in the area for about two weeks now and thankfully, have shown no signs of any kind of aggressive behavior, even with the little cub around.

A few holes later, we heard a booming gun shot echo through the mountains. No, Yogi and Boo-boo weren’t offed in the woods, that’s just to scare them off the premises. Albertans pride themselves on their ability to safely deal with wandering bears.

Jim Byers of the Toronto Star was in my group and caught the action as well. Here’s his take from his travel blog.

Stay tuned for more stories from the wild in the Canadian Rockies, including the Fairmont Jasper Park and Banff Springs. Also, the courses of the Rockies have recently put their own golf course collective together, you can visit their new site at CanadianRockiesGolf.ca.

You can follow Brandon Tucker’s golf blog and more on Twitter: http://twitter.com/brandontucker or follow WorldGolf.com at Twitter.com/worldgolf . Have a golf travel question for Brandon? Email him by clicking here