this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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I went for a walk on the Hudson Bay coast of far northern Ontario once when I was a teenager and we saw a polar bear. We're Indigenous and my family has connections up there so we went to visit them many times when I was growing up.
We had seen the bear a few days before from the safety of a frieghter canoe filled with a group of hunters with high powered rifles. We were in a 24 foot canoe and the bear was a huge adult that was probably about 12 to 15 feet long on four limbs and probably 20 feet standing. We looked at each other for a while and then dad and his hunter relatives fired warning shots next to the bear. The spray of firing a high powered shot in mud and clay is like a mini explosion or a land mine going off. It scared the bear enough that it started running. The land there is completely flat and featureless and the bear was gone on the horizon as a speck in a matter of minutes. We didn't want it near our camp.
My cousin and I went for a walk later, we came across the big claw marks of the adult polar bear in the mud and clay of the seashore. The marks were huge and it looked like it was made by a small backhoe or tractor. Clean cut marks from four huge claws with each limb. We were impressed and measured them with our feet and hands and head. We said to ourselves, hey this thing could tear us apart in seconds.
It was then that we realized, we about an hour long walk back to camp, we're alone and this bear could reappear at any moment and come running or even just walk fast at us from far away in a matter of minutes. All we had were shotguns to go bird hunting and we were just 16 year old kids. And we couldn't really walk fast in the muddy clay and tundra marsh where we were.
If the bear had been anywhere near us that day ... we would have been one of those little box newspapers stories of two teens that got killed by a bear in the northern wilderness.
Ooo!
Ok, this isn't nearly as unique or exciting, but the last time I went backpacking with my dad in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, we were hiking around a lake and saw some really nice deer tracks in the almost muddy soil of the lake shore, like you could make nice molds out of. We go a bit further, and I'm looking at the tracks because they're so pristine, deep, and perfect, and I see a cats paw join the tracks. The paw print was bigger than my hand, and I'm a grown-ass man.
I was half worried about meeting that cat; I'm no tracker, but I suspect the tracks had been made the previous night or that morning. The other half of me was sorry for that deer.
We weren't hunting and had no guns, but I bought a Pelican case for our next trip; that was our last one together, though.
You had shotguns, could have rescared the bear
Yes, dad taught us that a shot gun wouldn't defend against a bear. He said if we were ever in that situation to aim for the face, eyes and nose and hope to blind it and give you a chance to run.
But with a bear as powerful as polar bear, chances are still high that that won't work.
A 303 rifle shot in the mud is like an explosion, it's very dramatic, loud and visual. It does scare a bear.
A shotgun blast in the mud is not as dramatic, unless you fire it about 20 feet away from you .... which is too close to you and the bear.
First time I fired my AR-15 (NOT a high powered rifle) in the swamp it was raining mud. On my brand new white gun. LOL, I felt like an idiot.
Or simply pissed it off enough to attack. It's a gamble antagonizing any predator when you do not have the means to actually defend yourself.