Hunting The Polar Bear

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Roy Goodwin
Hunting The Polar Bear - Day 2
By Roy Goodwin
Apr 2, 2006, 06:43

Morning came slowly as a result of restless sleep all night. I couldn’t get the nagging thought of my missing bow case off my mind. What will I do up here close to the North Pole, on a once in a lifetime trophy polar bear hunt, without a bow? I have to stop thinking like that…it will come, it has too!

Hotel to the Stars

After waking and getting organized, it was down to breakfast with the rest of the crew. In Ottawa I met Warren Strickland from Alabama who would also be bowhunting, and two good guys from out west that were going to try for their bears with rifles. We all met at the dinning room and had a hearty breakfast.

The head guide came over to let us know that weather conditions were not favorable, and we wouldn’t be going out on the hunt today. Of course, I wasn’t going anyway without my bow. What this news meant is that I wasn’t going to really loose a hunt day due to the bow problem, unless the plane from Ottawa couldn’t land either and my bow would be delayed yet another day. Time to call the airport!

The report from the airport wasn’t good. No planes today, and no confirmation anywhere that my bow had even been located. Several people offered to loan me a rifle, until I explained I have no interest in taking a bear with a gun. If I don’t get one with my bow, I’ll go home empty handed, thank you very much. God help the airline if it turns out that way however!

Between breakfast and lunch we each killed some time digging though gear bags and getting our clothes organized for the hunt. When you figure out how much you’ll actually be wearing when you go out, and then take away what you know you’ll not need (travel clothes and the like), its pretty easy to repack down to only one medium sized gear bag and “hopefully” a soft bow case.

Lunch ate up some more time as we tried to get into the swing of the general attitude of the North Country. No one is in any hurry to do anything, and if you try to rush anything you’ll only frustrate yourself. Go ahead, ask me how I know! After lunch I dressed up (it is forty-one below zero with 30-40 mile per hour winds after all!) and went out and took a couple pictures for all you guys down south. One is the front of the hotel we are in and the other is the sun porch off the second level of the same hotel. Not many people out catching the rays today! Perhaps tomorrow?

The Hotel 'Sun Porch'

Just before dinner we all got together and went down to the garage building to get fitted up with our caribou skin suits. That was interesting! Because I may be stranded here another day or two, I’ll close for now and save the caribou suit part of the story for tomorrow’s installment. Dinner was good, and I polished off the first of two books I brought along for the trip. My fingers are crossed for better weather and a bow case tomorrow, so the story will get a little more interesting. In the meantime, they tell me to expect to spend about half the trip sitting around waiting for weather to clear or flights to come. Evidently this is S.O.P (standard operating procedure) up the high north.

Until tomorrow, Good hunting
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