Brown Bear and wildlife watching hide
We offer the possibility to spend an unforgettable night in our Brown Bear and wildlife watching hide. The hide is situated in Alutaguse, which is a huge area covered with taiga forests and vast bogs in N-E of Estonia – home for about half of Estonia’s 700 brown bears.
The new hides have windows on both sides of the hide. Northern windows overlook a taiga forest and the most common mammals to see would be Raccoon Dogs and Brown Bears. Woodpeckers, Red Squirrels Nuthatches, Crested- and Willow Tits and Jays visit the feeders.
Southern windows offer a view on a stream and a flooded meadow. Sometimes Elk and Roe Deer come to feed on the meadow and European Beavers or otters can occasionally swim by. Ural Owl and Red Fox come here to hunt for mice and sometimes also Goshawk, Sparrowhawk, Golden Eagle, White-tailed Eagle and buzzards come by and look for prey. Rare visitors to the scenery include Wolf, Lynx, Eurasian Otter, Mink and Wild Boar.
We have also made a list of species that have been seen or heard from the hide.
The Brown Bear and wildlife watching hides are simple, comfortable and cosy. There are 2 hides, each one of them has room for 9 persons. Both hides have separated cabins with bunk beds and a dry toilet. One cabin has room for 4 persons – 2 bunk beds/4 sleeping places in total. One bed is situated between the 2 cabins.
If the visitors wish, they can take pictures through the windows (without flash) and photographers are allowed to take photos through special photography holes.
They are located in Alutaguse, N-E of Estonia. It takes about 1,5-2 hours to drive from Tallinn or Tartu to Alutaguse.
In spring 2020, we also installed a live camera next to our Brown Bear Watching hide. Brown Bears have been seen wandering around already on several occasions. Let us know if you see one! There’s also a forum thread with lots of photos and videos about activity in front of the camera.
Look at the French TV 2 story – http://bit.ly/2AW08bx-2
Read the reviews from TripAdvisor 
Book brown bear watching with us: info@natourest.ee or by phone: +372 513 7141
Claudia H visited with her family 30/08/2020
Dear Peep. We had such a wonderful night in the hut. And Helge did a great job explaining so much about bears and everything. The kids are happy and me too 🙂 Thanks a lot for the experience of a lifetime! Best wishes, Claudia
Dena visited our hide on 4/07/2020
Marco from Italy 12/08/2019
We spent a wonderful night in the hide.
The place it was comfortable and with excellent observation points, all inside we had a great time.
Around 6pm the birds started to arrive, first the treecreepers and the blackcaps, then later the Jay. When they began to lose hope, the first bear appeared around 8:30 pm, go away and returned a little later.
According to a second bear, the bigger one who stayed longer to eat. Only then did the raccoon dogs arrive Three roe deer, birds and raccoons popped up this morning.
However fantastic experience, you see the bear from so close it was wonderful. Thank you, I hope you can continue to organize these tours as well as small groups of passionate people. For us an indelible memory. Thank you.
Marco
Alex 8/07/2019
Hi Peep! Yes, everything was awesome 🙂 We saw a lot of bears and raccoon dogs and Andreas had the binocular for us. We left it in the hide because Andreas was not there in the morning. I hope that was Ok. Big thx for all and I can recommend your hide to all people. Perfect and really interesting place.
Ursula Zeilinger 4/08/2018
Dear Bert, it was a great experience. We saw one or more Brown Bears and a Raccoon Dog family. We were really happy that we had so much luck. We left both binoculars back in the hide. Thank you for organising it and greetings to our friendly guide. Kind regards, Ursi.
Luc visited the new Brown Bear hide in July 2017:
I just wanted to thank you very much for the night. It was amazing! The bear came many times! Better than the zoo 😉
Kalevi 21/09/2013
Thanks for your mail and thanks for stay at the hide. The week has gone by so fast since I got back from Estonia.
I had a successful two nights. Yes saw a bear on both nights. The first night it came at about 7.30 pm and second night sometime after 8pm.
The weather was great too.
George 28/06/2013:
We found the starting point with no problems – I had downloaded it from your website to my phone before we left. Andres was waiting for us and so we knew we had arrived.
The weather was not great as it was raining and the overcast sky made it a little too dark for photographs. It also made the mosquitoes particularly troublesome. However, we found the hides and once we had changed our wet clothes we settled in.
We saw what we came to see.
About 21.30h, a raccoon dog visited 4 or 5 times staying a few minutes each time (searching out the bait that had been left). The light was good enough for viewing through binoculars and we watched it for a about 30 minutes in total. That was really good as I didn’t expect to see a raccoon dog. Each time it visited, it took away some of the bait it could drag from where it was placed under the fallen tree. Had the light been better, it would have been easy to photograph. Even though the light was quite good for viewing but for photography – iso set to 2400 and with F4.5 lens – the resulting shutter speeds were still too slow.
About 23.30 a large brown bear visited. We had a good view of the bear for about 1 hour. Even at this time of the day it was not very dark and so we could watch the bear easily (Even though it was too was too dark for photography – 1 s exposure times at ISO 3200). Again, it took the bait that was left (the bait the raccoon dog had left behind). Clearly the bear found no problem in moving the tree and revealing the bait. Again, the bear would take some bait and go and eat it a few meters away and then return.
We also saw a fox 3 times and had a visit from a group of 3 wild boar – they looked young to me and were quite entertaining.
Also seen, 3 visits from a fox, a small bat, and pair of woodpeckers.
So, overall we were very satisfied. Clearly, if we want to see bears in daylight, we need to think more about the best time for a possible visit in the future.
Dipl. Biol. Sebastian Rogahn in May 2011:
Watching time really was great! The adult male (Brown Bear) came out at 21:03 PM and stayed there for almost half an hour! Before there only was one red fox, a goose hawk, ravens and one magpie.
Ben Hoare from BBC Wildlife visited Natourest Brown Bear hide in May 2010:
I was determined to see my fist brown bear. Not least because bear tourism has become big business in Europe, with hides in Sweden and Finland offering success rates of higher than 90 percent. By now, our party had recorded bear prints, scats and claw marks raked across tree bark, and even the remains of a boar that had been stripped to the bone by these opportunist omnivores. So we were quietly confident of observing the real thing. Waiting for the bears to appear was nerve-racking. Two ravens and, bizarrely, a nuthatch of the ghosty northern race visited the site to pick at its flesh, while a pine marten zipped across the cleaning and vanished up a tree. And then, illuminated by the setting sun, a mother bear and her cub ambled into view. Read article
Location:
View the location of Natourest Brown Bear Watching and Photography Hide on a larger map
EU Leader Virumaa Koostöökogu (VIKO) supported Natourest Inc for buying nature observation optics and trail cameras.
