An Alaskan brown bear nicknamed Chunk has won the Fat Bear Week 2025 online voting competition, improving on his previous personal best as a three-time defeated finalist in past years.
The body positive competition showcases brown bears in the Katmai National Park at their corpulent best, following a summer of gorging to prepare themselves for their winter hibernation each year.
Half-ton omnivore with broken jaw
Formally bear 32, “Chunk” faced bear 856 — as yet without a soubriquet of his own — at the end of a one-week head-to-head knockout competition, claiming 96,350 online votes to 63,725 for his competitor.
Bear 856 trounced two-time defending champ ‘Grazer’ in the semifinals, but in Chunk he met his matchImage: A. Monaco/National Park Service via AP/picture alliance
Voters and viewers online could survey images and video footage of the competitors, including from a series of cameras placed in the Brooks River trying to catch the bears feasting and fighting for the best spots to fish salmon returning to their birthplace to lay their eggs.
Shots of the winner were characterized by his misshapen muzzle, the result of a broken jaw that did little to slow his consumption.
Chunk’s weight was estimated at roughly 545 kilograms or 1,200 pounds, albeit without a precise pre-fight weigh-in, with Mike Fitz, a naturalist at explore.org saying that, “Despite his broken jaw, he remains one of the biggest, baddest bears at Brooks River.”
Results were rushed out overnight to ensure the big bear reveal was not jeopardized by the US government shutdown.
The ‘Grazer’ rivalry: First Chunk killed her cub, now he’s claimed her crown
Bear 856 may well have done Chunk a favor in the semifinals, by defeating two-time defending champion bear 128, “Grazer,” and by eliminating a bear with whom Chunk has a longstanding and presumably bitter rivalry.
Grazer’s girth was only enough for a semifinal berth this time aroundImage: M. Carenza/National Park Service via AP/picture alliance
The female defeated Chunk in the 2023 final, and then again in 2024, with the public vote surely partly swayed that second time by Chunk being caught on camera in one of the park’s video feeds killing one of Grazer’s cubs after it fell down a waterfall and into his path.
Another member of Grazer’s litter, listed on the competition billing simply as “128’s yearling,” won this year’s “Fat Bear Jr” competition and even survived the first round of the senior event. The youngster was eliminated in the quarterfinals by another bear, 602, which Chunk dispatched in the semis.
To quote the competition organizers, ‘Grazer’s yearling has discovered that fishing at Brooks River comes with risk as well as success’ after losing a sibling to Chunk last yearImage: C. Loberg/National Park Service via AP/picture alliance
Edited by: Wesley Dockery