About 5,000 resident hunters apply each year for a chance at the 319 bear permits that are available for them. See Hunting Kodiak Brown Bears. Only one person has been killed by a bear on Kodiak in the past 70 years. About once every other year a bear injures a person. When in a standing posture bears are usually defending either their cubs or their territory, and often both.
Body postures are how bears communicate.
Males and females only come together for breeding, having no interest in each other beyond that. For a Kodiak to survive the winter it must consume 400,000 calories, and in the fall they gorge themselves on berries, converting the sugar to fat. Kodiak bear populations are healthy. They enjoy relatively pristine habitat and well managed fish populations. In most areas the number of bears is stable, but there are some places where bear density is increasing.