Hunting The Polar Bear

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Roy Goodwin
Hunting The Polar Bear - Day 1
By Roy Goodwin
Mar 30, 2006, 09:40

Polar bears; it’s hard to believe that I’ve actually headed north (way north!) to chase these magnificent animals with stick and string! When I decided to focus my efforts on trying to harvest one of each of the big game animal species in North America with the bow some thirty years ago, you were not allowed to bring polar bears into the States. As a result, I pretty much crossed them off my personal list. After all, why would I want to go hunt something I couldn’t even bring home? About seven years ago that changed somewhat and the bears taken in certain regions in northern most Canada can be imported back into the States with the proper paperwork. When this change was made the prices of polar bear hunts went up considerably, especially in those areas where the bears could be shipped back to the States. In spite of the potential cost, polar bear got added to my personal “wish” list, and I started the research to plan a hunt.

There are only a few outfitters that offer polar bear hunts. All of them do this through local Inuit communities that control the limited tags, and all use the services of these local communities to provide the actual hunt services. I decided to use Canada North Outfitting, Inc. in Ontario (Jerome and Helina Knapp) to arrange the trip because they do more of this than anyone else in the business, I’d worked with them before, and they have excellent bowhunting references. When I contacted them over six years ago, they told me they were booked five years in advance, but could put me on a waiting list for available tags. Given that it would take a while to save the money, the potential five year wait didn’t bother me at all. They have a great arrangement where you forward a deposit of $1,000.00 to get put onto the waiting list for these hunts. When your name comes up they notify you of the tentative schedule for your hunt (at least six months advance notice) as well as the actual hunt cost. The cost can’t be arranged when you send your deposit because it will be so many years before your hunt, and prices do keep going up! If you decide, at the time of your notification, that you no longer wish to do the hunt, they will return all but a small ($50.00 at the time) portion of your deposit and take you off the list. I sent the deposit, crossed my fingers, and started saving my money!

In the fall of 2004 I got a letter advising me that my turn had come and I could be scheduled for the spring hunts in 2005. While this was great news, I hadn’t saved enough of the money, and had some work and personal commitments that were going to make it tough to get away that spring. Canada North was very understanding, and allowed me to shift my dates to the spring of 2006. I sent them a significant increase in my deposit so they knew I was serious and we started talking tentative dates. The hunts start in early March, but the weather is much colder than in April. April also seems to produce bigger bears as the big boars are out prowling for females as well as for food and cover great distances at this time of the year. Some even go in May, but the ice break ups that can occur this late in the season had me concerned. I try not to be away from home during our anniversary in mid April, and therefore picked mid March as the best compromise, because even with bad weather I’d be home early April.

Knowing that the time for this adventure was getting closer kept polar bears foremost in my mind these last fifteen months, and makes it seem even more unbelievable that the trip has actually begun. Actually it began a couple days ago, but I wanted to condense the travel portion of the trip into one segment to keep from boring you all to death! I’ll relay the travel here just to give a feel for what the total experience is all about.

After weeks of packing, and re-packing, to get everything just right, and making the final contacts with all concerned, the limo picked me up at 4:00PM yesterday to bring me to the airport. It may sound overly extravagant to take a limo to the airport, but here in the Boston area it is actually cheaper than driving yourself and parking at the airport for a stay exceeding one week. In addition to the cost savings, its nice getting dropped off and picked up at the terminal building and therefore eliminate the need to carry a hundred pounds of gear to/from the parking garage.

I should stop here and discuss briefly the contact statement. You can’t just bring a polar bear hide, skull, or mount back to the States after your hunt! There are papers to be filled out and sent to both US and Canadian authorities to get the correct permits for the transportation back home of any polar bear parts. This paperwork can only be done “AFTER” the hunt. This means arrangements must be made prior to the hunt as to where the trophy will be shipped prior to all the paperwork being completed. An “expediter” must be arranged to provide these services, and all involved need to be made aware of the plans. There are hotels to be booked in both directions, and plane tickets to be confirmed. To make this all go smoother I used Canada North’s travel division, Global Expeditions, to book all travel arrangements and one of their recommended expediters to handle the trophy after the hunt.

In an attempt to minimize difficulties with customs and getting all my gear to the far North Country, I arranged to get to the airport a full two and one half hours prior to my flight. This seemed to work well as I was at my gate almost two hours reading and waiting for the boarding call. Better to be early, and have extra time to kill, than to take the chance of missing your flight! The trip from Boston the Ottawa was short and uneventful, getting in about 9:15PM. I had a room booked at a nearby hotel and planned a good night’s sleep before starting again this morning. That was the plan, but everything doesn’t always go according to plan!

On arrival in Ottawa I went to the baggage claim area and found my two gear bags with no problem. My bow case, however, was no where to be found! An hour later, after exhausting every possibility at my disposal, I left for the hotel with no bow. In its place I had a slip of paper telling me that the airlines was going to do everything they could to find my bow case and get it to me as soon as they could. Great, I was in route to the ends of the earth to chase polar bears with a bow, and had no bow. Sleep, as you might imagine did not come easily!

This morning came frightfully fast, and I made my way to the airport to check on my case. Actually by the time I got to the airport I had called three times, and knew they hadn’t located the case. Seems I was on the last flight in yesterday from Boston and the first flight in this morning was scheduled to arrive about five minutes after my flight to Iqaluit (pronounced I-cal-o-wit) was scheduled to depart. Basically there was “no way” my bow and I would travel together! We were on the ground in Iqaluit less than forty minutes, but that did give me time to contact Air Canada again to see if they had located my bow case. No good news!

The planes kept getting smaller as we got further north, and the last leg to resolute Bay was in a small prop job that had almost no space for travel on items. It should be noted here that I listened well to the fine people at Canada North and had packed wisely. I could have fit everything into one huge gear bag, but I would have had great difficulty with the airlines on the last two legs of the journey. By breaking things down to two bags, each weighing less than 44 pounds, I had no trouble at all. I had one bag just for the heavy/bulky outer ware, and reserved a back pack inside a carry bag for everything else.

We got to Resolute Bay late this evening and got settled into our hotel. Before leaving the airport I checked with Air Canada and found that they had yet to locate my missing case. Everyone seemed optimistic that it would be found, but this didn’t make the knot developing in the pit of my stomach go away! I’ll take a few pictures in the morning and send them off with tomorrows report. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to report that my bow arrived and we are packed up and heading out onto the ice in search of bears. Until then, good hunting.

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