This is what happens when after 3 years you finally get static particles to work. You go around applying them to everything not nailed down.
Even though hubby tells me this is a finished image, I still am not satisfied with it. So I’m posting it here and opening it up to constructive crits.
You all are hereby invited to rip it apart, nicely of course. 
The bears look cool but I would like to see a closer view. The trees look fantastic. Nice scene.
Paradox
Something about the perspective seems a bit wonky to me. Kinda like the ground plane and the back wall plane aren’t completely orthogonal. Was this intentional? It’s a pretty cool stylistic adjustment that reminds me of the old Japanese Ukiyo-e prints. However, there’s always the chance that I’m talking out of my ass.
Fweeb: yeah the perspective is a little odd, and no it wasn’t on purpose, it just sort of happened. It might be an optical illusion, the ground plane isn’t perfectly flat, which may not be obvious from the camera angle and the textures.
Paradox: Here are close ups of the bears.
and the trees turned out to be a pleasant surprise, I just randomly pushed buttons in the static particles and that was the result.
ever thought of using the subsurf button?
Very nice render, I’m also skill up my particles system use. Did you make a armature for these beers? 
Thanks for the close up of the bears.Overall very impressive use of static particles. Bet it took a while to render. On the bears overall effect is great but some dark bands on the arms have me puzzled. Did you use shaded particles, they may be affected by your halo lights. Thanks for sharing. The trees look interesting up close but in the original picture look very realistic, probably from the randomity of the effect. I like the scene and the bears but my favorite part is the trees.
Paradox
have you ever tried the scritp that make grass?? it can be used in the bears fur too…
Conversely…has anyone tried making grass with a particle system?
It’s really good, especially the hair, but I would like to critisise the repetition of the rock pattern, and the grass pattern. It could use a more uneven surface, and a less tiled look. Also the tree needs roots.
Something that would look pretty sweet is having the ground rise a little where the tree starts.
Thanks for all the replies, yes I did make armatures, but ran into a problem with the particles not wanting to follow the armature.
blendermax: I did use subsurf, just not very high, I only set it to 1
The grass script never seems to work for me, then again, python and I don’t get along well.
paradox: I think the banding is a result of the subdivide i did on some of the parts. and it only took about 15 minutes to render, which I thought was pretty good. I really liked the trees too. especially since my trees generally look really bad.
I like the bears, always liked bears. The light rays are a nice touch. Very sweet imagery, I betcha kids would like it a lot.
Lol, my kids liked it, especially when I printed it out and ironed it on a canvas bag. They thought that was pretty cool.
P.S. If you look at the gallery on my website, you’ll see I like bears too.