Bear Hunt, Alaska

Bear Hunt          Tales From Conley


The sighting of a polar bear in the part of Alaska I lived in for awhile was not common, if at all.  You would hear stories now and then that one had been observed a few years back, but never who it was who actually saw Ursus maritimus.  I figured it was the village version of our urban legend.

However one day my teaching partner, George, came back to the village after an afternoon tundra excursion all excited and said he had spotted what looked like paw prints down along the beach several miles north .  The towns people grew very excited because they knew George would not fabricate such a story.  So off they went in search of the polar bear.

They returned several hours later and nothing to show for their efforts other than empty gasoline tanks and a touch of frostbite or two.  George was a little crestfallen because the hunters of the north had not even been able to find the tracks where he told them to look. 

The next morning George called me on the phone and asked if I knew how to fire a rifle and was I comfortable driving a snowmobile.  Yes and some was my reply.

We met about an hour later, mounted our snowmobiles, equipped with rifles, one camera and a GPS.  An hour after that we were standing over the paw print of, what seemed to me , must have been a tremendous size bear.  The tracks were leading north down  along the beach.  George took several pictures to prove to the villagers that what he had seen was true.  I thought that would be all we needed.

George on the other had thought we should track the bear and see if we could take some close up pictures.  I thought this was a terrible idea especially when he mentioned taking close up pictures.  He countered that our snowmobiles could out run the bear, but I still had no desire of being chased along the Bering Sea by a pissed off creature. 

Logic eventually prevailed and we returned to the village with picture proof.  Problem was the camera had not worked.  We tried to convince the villagers what we had seen was accurate and we had GPS data in hand and it was worth another try on their part, but they had more important things to do. 

George never did quite forgive me for talking him out of tracking the bear.  It was not that I was afraid to you see, it was just I remembered a friend of mine telling me once that "you never hunt anything that is big enough to hunt you back."