The guns of Polar Bear Town
- Thread starter Gatehouse
- Start date
- Location
- Somewhere on the Hudson Bay Coast
An RTL trapper can get an ATC, if he's willing to jump through the hoops, then he can use a handgun to dispatch trapped animals here as well. Of course Joey, living in AK, doesn't need to put up with useless cost and paperwork in order to do the same thing.
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the spank
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Planet Earth Wearing My Tinfoil Hat
I knew a fellow many years ago who used to travel the pack ice each season taking pictures for National Geographic. He carried a 30-30 and a 12 gauge. I can recall him telling me stories of the Inuit hunters using 22-250 Rem for bears and walrus. He said other than shooting returning geese in the spring with the shotgun he carried the 12 gauge loaded with slugs for protection and used the 30-30 for killing food for himself and his dogs.
- Location
- Somewhere on the Hudson Bay Coast
Well now, last night's episode did have me yelling at the TV! Friggin Dennis babbling on about those old snare sets, there's lots of them around here, as if someone was actively poaching bears. The truth is that the snare sets were the traps used prior to culvert traps, and can still be used, although the movement of the dump has changed the bears' travel patterns, so now they mostly avoid the old snare line out back of Pounder's house, just east of the old dump. There are a few snare sets along the coast, but I haven't seen one used in the last 15 years or more.
The snare's spring only lifts the loop up on the bear's leg to ensure he doesn't slip out of it before it cinches up, and causes no trauma. In fact, when a female with cubs was caught in the snare, typically she'd lie down in a relaxed manner, and her cubs would cuddle up to her. There is no stress associated with her being separated from her cubs, and lessens the chance of separated cubs being killed by males, because the CO didn't know about them, so didn't pick them up.
The advantages the culvert trap has is not only mobility, where the snare set is static, but a bear can be trapped and put in D-20 without being drugged, and it can be released the same way once the bay freezes over. A bear caught in a snare has to be drugged, then it takes lots of guys to lift it in the back of a truck, and lots of guys to get it out of the truck, where just one or two guys can hook up to the culvert trap and drive away with it. The trap is backed up to the cell in D-20, the trap's door is raised, the bear walks into the cell, and the cell door drops down behind him. The culvert trap is then rebaited and put back into service, all in less than an hour, and the guys resume their patrol.
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I had a buddy who was a Northern BC bush pilot (working out of Atlin) many years ago who was licensed to carry a handgun for safety, in his case a Glock 10mm (he told me at the the time he was one of only two pilots in Canada licensed in this way).
It was nice to know we at least had something to anger the bears with
when we'd pick up 200Lb. totes of Salmon in the middle of the bush (landing/departing from an old river bed); needless to say we kept the prop a'spinning the whole time.Cheers D
Ardent
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
I had a buddy who was a Northern BC bush pilot (working out of Atlin) many years ago who was licensed to carry a handgun for safety, in his case a Glock 10mm (he told me at the the time he was one of only two pilots in Canada licensed in this way).
It was nice to know we at least had something to anger the bears with
Cheers D
I can tell you on good authority there is more than one other ATC'd pilot in the north.
BigUglyMan
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- New Scotland
I knew it would happen eventually!
Just don't do an "Elvis".
As I said it was many years ago, 1991/1992 IIRC and if I recall he was referring to being one of two licensed for Rotary aircraft to be allowed to carry (along with fixed-wing sorry for not making that clear) though we were flying a fixed-wing aircraft at the time.
Cheers D
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