Roy and Hans pose with trophy bear

We dragged him with the snow machine to flatter ground where it would be easier to skin him, and to get him away from the blood for the pictures.  I always try to keep the blood out of my photos, and it is sometimes difficult, but in this case it was a real problem.  With a snow white animal surrounded by nothing for miles but snow and ice, the contrast with the bright red blood was amazing.  Because the ground was frozen solid there was no place for the blood to go, and there was nothing there to clean things up with.  The pictures came out pretty good, but we were very limited with respect to shot angles due to the complete pass through shot and both sides of the animal covered in blood.

Once the pictures were taken I took out a tape and got the measurements the taxidermist needs to get the proper form.  This is a good time to discuss measuring your bear.  Guides looking for “bragging rights” like to skin the bear and stretch the skin out flat for measurements.  Traditionally they “square” the bear, which means taking the length and width of the hide added together, and then dividing by two.  The length is taken from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail, and the width is taken from one outstretched paw to the other.  With the skin off the animal these measurements are much longer than on the carcass.  And, on most bears, the width is greater than the length, so taking the average increases the number that you’d get by looking at the length alone.  It is due to the problems getting true measurements from the hides that the Pope & Young and Boone & Crockett clubs only use skull measurements to determine trophy ranking.  Ok, with that out of the way, I measured the bear from the tip of the nose to the base of the tail, while on the bear to determine the length.  While this is at least a foot shorter than a measurement taken solely for “bragging rights” it is the right way to determine the correct size of the form to order to mount the bear and have him look right.  My bear measured an honest seven feet.

After the length I got the girth measurement by taking the tape around the animals belly at the biggest point.  Pulling the tape tight I came up with 68”.  Bigger bears are taken every year up here, but it took three of us to roll him on flat ground and I figure he weighed around 600-700 pounds.  He’ll look just fine in the trophy room!  Then the real work began.  We had to skin him out for a life mount including removal of the feet and the skull.  This is a lot of work on any bear, but on a large bear in sub zero weather conditions it takes on a whole new perspective.  An hour later, with near frozen fingers, we finished the job.  We pulled the quarters and loaded them on the sled for the return to Hans’ house where they’ll be part of the family’s food supply for the next couple months.  The hide was folded and wrapped to freeze, with the skull neatly folded inside.  After getting this work done we cut all the reasonable sized scraps of meat off the rest of the animal and got the dogs fed.  The fresh bear meat is their reward for a job well done.

With the bear work complete we focused our attention on getting camp set up.  It was already getting dark and the process takes over an hour.  It was a repeat of the process I described two days ago, so I won’t bore you all with the details except to say that it is more interesting work after dark, with fresh meat laying all around, knowing you are in polar bear country!  Sleep came quickly after we got some hot food and hot tea into our systems.

We woke this morning to slightly colder weather and more wind.  Hans says the weather will get bad later in the day and he’d like to try to make it all the way back to Resolute tonight if we can.  He expects the dogs to be slow as a result of being over fed, and hopes we can beat the bad weather and make it all the way back.  He fears that if we don’t make it tonight we could be stuck out here for a few days waiting for the weather to clear.  In spite of this, we are getting a late start this morning because we all had a hard time getting out of those sleeping bags this morning after what was a very long day yesterday.  We also had a lot more to pack up this morning.

Guides Travis (l) and Hans under a frozen tent

I’m going to close for now, and deal with the trip back and hunt completion when I get back to Resolute Bay.  Before I do I’ll share a picture of my guides inside our little tent this morning taken at breakfast.  You should be able to see there isn’t a lot of room as well as the ice that formed over night on the inside of the roof.  Thankfully we had the right gear and were very comfortable sleeping out in this very harsh country.  My assistant guide, Travis, is on the left and Hans is on the right.

Good hunting

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