Bear defense gun?

That's being determined for a bear . It's one thing to go ice fishing in minus 40 50 and freeze your man jingles for 8 hrs. Screw 18 days . That polar bear can keep his damn coat .
 
We did have a heater in the tent................til we ran out of fuel on day 15...........I wouldn't say it was FUN, but it was an adventure for sure and I did get a 10 1/2 ft bear!! Paid my dues on that one !!!

18 days........no toilet.......no shower.......no chairs........and the most absolute silence I have ever experienced........EVER !!! Kinda cool actually, no birds, no critters and when the wind dropped a couple nights the silence was absolute. It is unimaginable until you experience it......what with all the racket in our daily lives. It occurred to me after how much auditory garbage we endure 24 hrs a day every day of our lives........... even out in the bush or high country there is always still birds and squirrels and rocks rolling or wind or pikas whistling. The absolute silence for a few hours will stay with me for the rest of my life as one of the coolest experiences I've ever had.
 
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I can attest to that. There is nothing quieter than being on the pack ice or down on the Antarctic plateau with zero wind. So quiet you can hear your heartbeat in your ears. I was always amazed at how loud the crunch of the snow sounded beneath you feet when everything else was so quiet.
 
Me three. I hear you when you say it will stay with you. IMO There's something about the arctic that changes your spirit and the way you think. I have a few spiritual homes now. If I spend too much time in one I miss the others. They are very different places.
 
I don't know about "Spiritual Home" there PG, as I can tell you I wouldn't want to live there, but I will always remember the experience of the high arctic..........and the silence..........I guess that is what being deaf would be like, instead of the cacophony that is everyone else's daily life. That kind of silence definitely allows one a different kind of internal reflection, and I pity those who will never be blessed with the high Arctic or Antarctic experience of absolute silence.
 
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There are bears my son and then there are bears. If yur packen a mares leg in Alaska or the coast in Northern B.C. or the Yukon save the last bullet in your magazine for yurself. For black bears, a 30/06 should be sufficient or even a 12 bore loaded with slugs, do not use buckshot.
 
In my military service I had the odd luck of more travel into the north then trips to West Germany. With once to Greenland, twice to Alaska and twice to Inuvik, NWT.



Somewhere along the line I truly appreciated these trips to our north. This is Herbert Glacier in Alaska.
 
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Ten years ago, my wife and I had the opportunity to travel north of polar bear habitat. If you're north of the seasonal ice, and into the zone of permanent multi-year ice, there is nothing for a bear to eat, so he won't go there, except by accident. That's not to say you can't see one, but it would be unusual. Such a spot is Isachsen on Ellef Ringnes Island, Nunuvut. The climate there is sufficiently extreme that grass doesn't grow, and the green tinge that can be seen from the air is algae. Another interesting tidbit, is that polar bears in the high arctic don't get as large as those found in Hudson Bay, or along the NWT, Yukon, and Alaskan coastlines. This follows the model for all arctic land animals, arctic foxes are smaller than colored foxes, arctic caribou are smaller than their mountain and boreal forest counterparts, and the size of polar bears diminishes with increases in latitude. The exception to the rule seems to be the arctic hare, which seems to be large anywhere I've ever seen them, but there were no arctic hares at Isachsen either.

 
Boomer: that looks like a beautiful place! I know what you mean about the hares.

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c-fbmi: I was lucky enough to spend a bit of time up there through summers and winters. It's an endless palette of beautiful colour. For a few days a year, the fall colours are intense. The winters bring pastels. Summers are green, pistachio and deep, dark blue.

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I would like to spend some more time there. Bugs and blizzards be damned.
 
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Thanks for the photo's, brings back memorys, I spent 2000 in the NWT, working on the NWS, (dew Line) out of Cambridge bay. As well as a few years in the diamond mines, Really miss the north, great people and for a Kiwi, from the others side of the world, a hell of an adventure.
Yellowknife, still the best place I have lived, in 17 years in Canada.
Thinking of selling everything up, and going back, to being able to move with a pickup and a U-Haul, Yukon bound, this time.
 
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Hi everybody

make me smile when people say that bear attacks are rare and we don't have to worry about that

when it happens to you , words does not count at all

i was attacked by a black bear of about 250 pounds and i for sure will not be telling you this story if i will not have carrying a rem pump 760 gamemaster in 300 savage

5 shots thru him from 150 feet to less than 20

he charged full throttle without any provocation from me

so now and since then i carry a 12 ga win. Mod 12 that i modified with ghost ring peep sight and short barrel

my advise carry a gun

too bad we can't carry a revolver but that is another story
 
"I personally have killed more bears than all the bears in NA have killed people."

That's the best response to that perpetual "bear defense" question I've heard in a long time.

I personally am more scared of people who bring guns camping because they are scared of the dark than bears.
 
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