A Polar Bear Tried to Eat My Neighbor — and Other Close Calls With Nanuq in Alaska’s High Arctic

A gunshot rang out from subsequent door. My spouse, Tiffany, and I paused in the course of our Christmas dinner. Seconds later a telephone name broke the silence.

“I simply shot a polar bear that’s been attempting to get into our home,” stated the village reverend. “I can’t get out the door as a result of the bear broke it. Are you able to assist?”

It was 1992 within the distant village of Level Lay, Alaska. The Inupiat group numbered lower than 100 folks again then. Situated on the sting of the Chukchi Sea, 230 miles north of the Arctic Circle, Tiffany and I had been two of 4 faculty academics within the village.

I caught my head exterior to check the climate. Temperatures hung at 30 levels under zero. There was solely a slight breeze. We’d been locked in snow since early September. Twenty-four midnights consumes the Far North this time of 12 months.

Getting dressed, I crammed Tiffany in on the main points of the place I used to be going. The reverend shot on the bear with a .45-70 by the entrance door. He was assured he hit it, because it let loose a loud growl. However he had no thought, the place he might need hit it. I deliberate on attending to the home, seeing if the bear was lifeless, and if not, monitoring it down.

“You watch out,” Tiffany stated as I headed out. I knew what was going by her thoughts. It weighed heavy on me, too. We didn’t carry it up. Two years prior I had tracked down and killed a man-eating polar bear right here. It was a horrific ordeal. A narrative for an additional time.

I made it to the reverend’s home and noticed polar bear tracks throughout it. There was blood on the entrance door. No signal of the bear. The highest hinge of the heavy, steel door was popped from the body and the thick door was bent inward at a 45-degree angle. Desirous to get on the bear whereas it was contemporary, I’d ask for the main points later.

A crimson blood path glowed on the white snow underneath the beam of my flashlight. I moved quick. A .220-grain mushy level was already chambered in my .30-06 rifle. The blood flowed regular for 75 yards. I used to be scorching and sweating underneath my down garments. Flashbacks of the man-eater from years previous loomed in my thoughts.

Alongside the way in which, two clear footprints caught my eye, one from the entrance paw, one from the again. They appeared oddly small. I didn’t cease.

The blood path ascended a 20-foot pile of snow and ice, pushed there by a bulldozer that cleared a street within the village. I slowed down, looking out crevasses for the bear. Clearing an increase, I held the flashlight underneath my barrel, lighting up the snow in entrance of me. Peeking over the rise, down towards the banks of a frozen Kasegaluk Lagoon, the sunshine’s beam moved alongside the blood path. By the scope, a polar bear twitched on the ice, 25 yards in entrance of me.

“Whatchya obtained?” the reverend stated, placing his hand on my shoulder. It startled me. I used to be so targeted on the bear I did not see and even hear the reverend by my facet. I didn’t like that. When looking wounded predators, your senses are heightened and your thoughts laser targeted. Nerves are wound tight. Nothing on the planet exists in that second in time, apart from the duty at hand. One mistake or second of hesitation might imply demise. I choose checking out conditions like this alone.

I pointed to the bear. The reverend had his .45-70 prepared. We crept nearer. The bear was on its facet. From 10 yards we watched because it took a closing breath. Steam rolled from its nostrils and bleeding mouth. Blood-stained snow surrounded the white bear.

The polar bear had been attempting to make its manner into the home for almost half an hour, however the reverend and his spouse stored it at bay. They first seen it staring into the kitchen window, its black nostril pressed in opposition to the glass — two ft from the place the reverend’s spouse stood over the sink. The lady screamed and hit the bear within the nostril with a frying pan simply because it broke by the window.

The bear moved to the again of the home, the place it tried going by a door. It failed however stored circling the home, checking home windows and doorways as factors of potential entry. Lastly, the bear’s urge for food obtained the perfect of it. That’s when it tried breaking down the entrance door. The person had no selection however to shoot the bear.

The small dimension of the bear stunned me. Possibly 125 kilos and a bit of over 5 ft from head to tail.

That winter in Level Lay, polar bears had been thick. Kids had been escorted to highschool by mother and father toting weapons. Adults patrolled the streets to maintain bears away.

In the course of the time we known as Alaska’s North Slope house, from 1990 to 1997, Native hunters killed roughly 110 polar bears yearly in Alaska, with most being taken at the hours of darkness winter months. Male polar bears are lively all through the winter, not like pregnant females that search dens to enter their deep winter sleep and provides delivery. That 12 months in Level Lay, the pack ice created an open lead very close to shore. Seals hauled out on the perimeters of the open water. Throughout winter within the Arctic, the place there are seals, polar bears might be close by.

Alaska’s polar bears are divided into two populations. Throughout our time, the Beaufort Sea inhabitants was estimated at between 1,800-2,000 polar bears whereas the Chukchi Sea inhabitants was estimated between 3,000-5,000. With so many boars competing for meals, youthful and weaker bears are displaced. These bears sought out simple meals sources within the village.

A couple of weeks previous to the Christmas bear encounter, a gunshot blast from certainly one of my neighbors stunned me. A fast second shot adopted, then a 3rd. 

I regarded out the entrance door to see Charles, an area man, pointing his rifle barrel between his ft. He fired another shot. Homes within the Arctic are constructed on stilts to maintain the muse from melting the permafrost, and the home from sinking. Most of the locals put their canine homes underneath their houses to guard them from the wind and to maintain polar bears from getting them.

Charles’ pack of canines incessantly barked blood curdling screams. Then, underneath the glow of a streetlight, I noticed what Charles was taking pictures at. A polar bear was after a canine, attempting to pressure his manner beneath the staircase to kill it.  Elevated 4 ft on the highest level, the steps tapered to the bottom and left sufficient area for the canine to retreat. The bear was too huge to maneuver into the small cubby to make the kill. When Charles noticed what was taking place, he darted inside his home, grabbed a rifle and shot the bear by the gaps in his porch earlier than it dug its strategy to the canine. 

After the taking pictures was over, I attempted serving to Charles pull the bruin from underneath the steps. The bear’s again ft had been monumental, its hair lengthy, the pads like tough abrasive paper. We couldn’t budge it. 

A crew loaded the polar bear onto a sled and took it to the firehouse the place the skinning commenced. Although squaring over 9 ft, the boar was skinny. It ought to have simply carried one other 200 kilos of fats. This was frequent amongst drawback polar bears.

Twelve days later, an Inupiat man drove his snowmachine throughout the frozen lagoon to get some whale blubber from an ice cellar positioned on a spit, about two miles from the village. This ice cellar was dug by hand, many years prior. It was nonetheless used to retailer whale meat and blubber for the villagers.

When the person reached the doorway to the ice cellar, a big male polar bear was there. It ran off, however got here again. It obtained aggressive and approached the person. He shot and killed it. I helped pores and skin that huge bear. It squared over 10 ft and weighed effectively over 1,000 kilos.

One 12 months in Level Lay, the choice was made to vary the runway lights. With the incessant storms that 12 months, bush pilots stated crimson lights could be simpler to see than the present blue ones. Quickly after the change was made, a polar bear walked down each side of the runway and swatted each crimson gentle. They had been changed. Once more the bear broke each crimson gentle. Blue lights had been reinstalled. The bear by no means touched them.

When in Barrow — referred to as Utqiaġvik, right this moment — for a basketball match with the highschool workforce I coached, I visited with an area man. It was December, 1993, and the person had shot two polar bears the day of our arrival. He shot each bears on the frigid pack-ice, just a few miles off the shoreline. Driving alongside the ice seeking tracks, the hunter discovered contemporary signal on the outskirts of the village. Following the tracks for over two miles he lastly caught a glimpse of a bear’s yellowish cover reflecting within the headlights of his snowmachine. The bear was oblivious to the person’s intrusion as he crept nearer. Stepping from his machine, the person shouldered his rifle and located the bear in his iron sights. A excessive shoulder shot dropped the nanuq at 60 yards.

Pulling his snow machine subsequent to the big beast, the person labored its heavy, blubber-laden physique onto his sled and headed house. Since he was solely minutes away from the village, he might make it again rapidly and start skinning the bear earlier than it froze.

Touring a brief distance, the person encountered one other polar bear. It was strolling his freshly made snowmachine path. It was strolling proper at him, head held excessive, nostril probing the chilly air. 

Stopping, the person dismounted and shot that huge bear sq. within the chest. The second polar bear was the largest the person had ever killed, and one of many largest he had ever seen taken throughout his greater than 50 years dwelling in Barrow. With an estimated weight of over 1,300 kilos, I measured the cover of the good ice bear. Sprawled out on the snow by his entrance doorstep, the frozen cover taped out at 10 ft, 11 inches. Had it been thawed and relaxed, the cover would have simply gone over 11 ft. The lesser bear squared out at 9 ft, six inches.

Two days later the person discovered me in the highschool fitness center. Following our sport he couldn’t wait to inform me the information. He’d simply shot two extra polar bears on the sting of city. I walked out with him to have a look. One squared over 10 ft. 4 polar bears in 4 days, two of which squared over 10 ft. All of the meat was consumed by members of the family, the hides used as blankets for tenting. That was a particular time in a particular place.

I additionally coached high-school cross nation. Village youngsters practiced for one month, then everybody flew to Barrow in mid-September for a single race. That was the season. A couple of days previous to the meet, a number of of Barrow’s whaling groups discovered success. Six bowhead whales lay on the seashore. Bowheads are huge, measuring 60 ft in size, and so they weigh about one ton per linear foot. Villagers pitched in to butcher the whales. Then a storm hit. Heavy snow, excessive winds and tough seas stored the whales from being butchered in a well timed style.

When the cross nation groups arrived in Barrow, everybody gathered for a gathering. With the storm and lifeless whales got here polar bears. Dozens of them. Fairly than have the race across the outskirts of the northernmost city in the USA, as common, it will be confined to 1 metropolis block. The course was roped off. The street was cleared by a bulldozer. Residents lined the course. Most held rifles and shotguns. The children ran the sq. for your entire race. It was snowing laborious and blowing over 40 mph. The wind chill was near 0 levels. Visibility was lower than 30 ft many of the race. However these youngsters by no means complained. They had been the hardest youngsters I ever coached — or met.

In the summertime of 1997, Tiffany I and moved from the Arctic. We took jobs as academics at a world faculty in Sumatra, Indonesia, a half-mile from the equator. Within the spring of 1998 I obtained an e-mail from a former Level Lay scholar, Invoice Junior. Junior and I hunted and trapped loads collectively. He was an amazing child, a hard-working scholar and athlete. We shared moments within the discipline I’ll always remember.

Junior stated that he and his girlfriend had been heading house on a snowmachine after they’d spent the day ice fishing 11 miles north of Level Lay. The wind started to blow, making it laborious to distinguish between the bottom and the sky. They traveled alongside the sting of the Chukchi Sea. Daylight was waning. Along with his imaginative and prescient restricted, Junior battled to maintain the snow machine on the path.

Midway house, motion caught Junior’s eye, 60 ft away. Stopping the machine, the distraction seemed to be an Arctic fox, its white fur and black nostril tough to decipher within the dimly lit circumstances. Junior grabbed his .243 and went after the white fox. Approaching inside 30 ft of the mound the fox had been on, Junior noticed nothing.

Then, in a strong flurry of snow and ice, a polar bear erupted from a gap within the snow. The large polar bear lurched ahead, hitting high pace in two strides. With no time to shoulder his rifle, Junior shot from the hip. The polar bear crumpled three steps from Junior’s ft. The tiny bullet hit the charging bruin within the heart of its left eye, penetrating to the mind. On the spot demise. Junior’s miraculous shot saved his personal life.

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Because the bear lay immobile within the snow, Junior stared at it, interested by what might have been. A couple of seconds later a cub emerged from the den. Following the scent path, the cub made its strategy to the sow. Junior tied a rope across the cub for his girlfriend to carry, so he might load the sow onto the sled. Junior, being Native, had taken different polar bears in his younger life.

Upon their arrival in Level Lay, residents gathered to listen to the story, see the cub, and provides thanks for the protected return of two of their youngsters.

Each bears had been in high bodily form, the sow nonetheless carrying fats left over from its lengthy winter nap. 

What he thought had been an Arctic fox was truly the top of the sow poking out of the den for the primary time. Individuals had been touring that very same path for 3 weeks and nobody had any clue a polar bear den was close to.

Earlier than leaving the scene, Junior caught his head contained in the darkish, stale smelling den to ensure there have been no different cubs. It was empty. As for the cub, a bit of sow, it was flown to Anchorage. The Anchorage Zoo didn’t have a polar bear and welcomed it. Junior named her Ahpun, one of many Inupiaq phrases for snow. Ahpun adjusted effectively to zoo life. I visited her many occasions over time. It was fascinating to look at the bear develop from a cub to an enormous feminine bear — it lived to be 20 years outdated. 

Greater than every other wildlife I encountered whereas dwelling within the Arctic, the polar bear commanded respect and awe. Their sheer energy, lighting pace, potential to swim over 100 miles within the icy ocean, and the benefit at which they endured temperatures that might kill a human in minutes, are nonetheless exceptional to me right this moment. 

Editor’s Word:  For personally signed copies of Scott Haugen’s finest promoting e-book, Searching The Alaskan Excessive Arctic, go to scotthaugen.com