> much about bring down a polar bear. If I take a gun it would most likely be > a 12 ga or 16 ga pump shotgun with buckshot and slugs An Outdoor Travel Specialist on Spitsbergen, Andreas Umbreit, wrotes a handbook. It 4s now outt ion th 5th edition. There4s a special chapter about the topic weapons against Ice bears. I can4t write down the whole cchapter, too much to translate. The basic Information are: the official recommend a MINIMUM caliber of .308. Umbreit writes, better bigger than .308 or a shotgun with slugs, caliber 12/70 or 12/76 (Magnum), but the shotgun is only enough for short range use Make sure you got enough shots, and take a gun handy nough to handle it inside a tent and fast enough to reload. Winchester might be a good idea. Umbreit had several encounters with polar bears, but till now (I got the 4th edition, few years old) he never had to shot directy on the ice bear. To secure the camp he uses alarm wires connected with training granates. Take Maroon munition also. It4s not the question how much bears are in your area. If its only one, hungry or angry is enough to take you away. On Spitsbergen they say, "only people without weapons get killed by polar bears, mostly". One incident, a man was aacked and he only got a handgun, Magnum or something else, he shot and the polar bear overrun him. Both died. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Fri Oct 31 2003 - 05:54:17 PST
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:31:10 PDT