Youth trapped on ice floe forced to shoot polar bear
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Independent Minds
AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Canadian Forces
A photograph made available by Canadian Forces shows the teenage hunter trapped on an ice floe in Hudson Bay
A teenager spent two nights adrift on an ice floe in the Canadian Arctic with three polar bears for company before being dramatically rescued, it emerged today.
The 17-year-old youth, named as Jupi Angootealuk, was forced to shoot dead one of the bears after it ventured too close while rescuers desperately tried to locate him from the air.
The young hunter was stranded on an ice floe which had broken away from the mainland and drifted out to sea in weather that regularly dipped below minus 15C.
Mr Angootealuk had left his native town of Coral Harbour, an isolated hamlet of 700 Inuit hunters on the northern edge of Hudson Bay, with his uncle Jimmy Nakoolak on Friday morning. The polar bear season had just begun and the two hunters headed out on to the frozen seas with their rifles to test the ice and look for prey.
But, 18km into their journey, their snowmobile broke down and the couple were forced to risk the journey back on foot. As they walked, they were separated when the ice began breaking up and drifting away in opposite directions.
Despite having badly injured knees, Mr Nakoolak managed to stumble across a search-and-rescue party on Sunday morning who helped raise the alarm that his nephew was stranded on an ice floe.
The floe that Jupi was trapped on was now 10km out to sea and contained a polar bear and her two cubs. At some point the adult polar bear was shot dead by the youth in self defence.
Two aircraft were scrambled to look for the missing teen. Late on Sunday afternoon Phil Amon, a pilot with Kenn Borek Air Ltd, spotted the boy on a patch of ice little more than 30 metres across.
“We circled around him for about 40mins or so,” he told The Globe and Mail. “He never waved at all. I don’t think he really wanted to move because the bears were so close.”
Unable to land on the ice, all Mr Amos could do was drop an emergency rations kit and alert a Hercules transport plane which was carrying a specialist search-and-rescue team.
The Hercules spotted the boy that evening but Jupi was forced to spend a second night on the ice as the plane’s flares failed to keep the area sufficiently well lit to continue the search. The following day two officials parachuted on to a larger ice floe and made their way to Jupi.
Jean-Pierre Sharp, an official at Canada’s Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre, said: “The fact that our technicians were able to parachute in to land on an ice floe close by is an amazing thing for them. It’s kind of like if you would imagine trying to jump from lily pad to lily pad out on some ice and slushy water.”
Yesterday the boy was recovering from hypothermia alongside his uncle in the nearby town of Churchill. Speaking through Coral Harbour’s mayor Jerry Panniuq, Mr Nakoolak described his relief at finding out his nephew was alive.
“It was nice to know that he had a rifle with him and I was kind of worried that he might have been attacked by a bear or something,” he said. “When I heard he shot a bear I was happy to hear about it.”
Despite their critically endangered status, Inuit communities in Canada are still allowed to hunt a limited quota of bears throughout the winter. Each year approximately 450 bears are killed, with snowmobiles replacing
dog sleds as the primary way of stalking the bears.
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Comments
He was there polar bear hunting, and by coincidence, he found he NEEDED to shoot the polar bear. He isn't some poor trembling innocent "forced" to shoot.
Poor cubs.
Traditonally, hunters would have used muscle power to get themselves to their prey, and would have pitted their wits against the selected animal, using skill and strength to make the kill. Now its petrol-driven snow mobiles and high-powered rifles used against creatures that don't stand a chance.
Then, when it all goes wrong, thousands of litres of fuel are used in the rescue.
No wonder there are nearly 7 billion humans overpopulating this planet and so few of anything else.
What happens when the petrol no longer aririves (Peak Oil is now) and the ice has all melted?
For the moment, after the hiunting trip it's back to the central heating and junk food bought at the supermarket. But that's not going to last much longer.
The collapse of the present [chemical based, oil-based, money based] system will result in a return to normality, but the transition will be rather nasty for most, since so few are prepared for it.
In Britain, one of the most advanced nations, it electricity has only been widely available sice around 1920. And electricity is largely generated by burning rapidly depleting fossil fuels (especially in Austrlai, China and the US etc.) Duncan 'The road to Olduvai' postulates that the grid will start going down some time after around 2013. (it already is in many nations).
We are at Peak Oil, Peak Coal and will soon be at Peak Natural Gas. There is only one way after that -down. The entire system is dependent on rapidly depleting resources for which there are no replacements
I know it is not what people wnat to hear, which is why denial of reality is so widepread.
I don't think the liberals sitting rind a dining table you mantioin have any idea at all what is on the horizon with resp[ect to energy and resources and wouild refuse to accept it if told the truth.
Only when they cannot afford to buy food or the supermarket shelves are empty will they wake up.
It's natural that no one likes to read people babbling falsehoods, even worse is when they (you) are actually convinced your falsehoods rule the roost.
You should have taken some science courses in high school, as you appear severely lacking in your knowledge of physics and what electricity even is. There are numerous green methods of generating electricity without a carbon footprint. In fact, these methods are even employed today and are a rapidly growing industry as regulation and investment subsidies aimed at clean energy sources instead of use of fossil fuels. Even more, methods of generating clean electricity has existed since the birth of electricity use in modern commerce, PREDATING fossil fuels.
Peak Your Ass. The world will have switched over to these clean energy sources before it becomes depleted of the fuels you bark in a frenzy of confusion. You know why? Another subject I would recommend you take a community college course on is macroeconomics. As the cost of clean electricity becomes down as technology hones more efficient solutions, they will simply become cheaper to operate than high carbon fuel systems.
Get a life and a clue.
I have an Honours Degree, specialising in Industrial Technology and am on the Executice Board of ASPO-NZ.
You, poor soul, are obviously completely clueless.
Please don't boher me with any more of your nonsense.
Much as I feel sorry for the young man finding himself in an awkward situation in the company of a mother bear and her cubs, my greater sympathy is for the mother bear who didn't ask for a homo sapiens to be sharing an ice block and ending up being shot by him. It was obviously a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.....for the mother bear, I mean. Poor motherless cubs, what will happen to them?
The biggest concern is for the bear cubs, with little emotion shown towards the young Inuit hunter. These particular creatures have been a cultural staple with the Inuits for hundreds of years. Whether or not they have incorporated new technology to obtain the bears is irrelevant. Only in a culture of self-aggrandizement would the "carbon footprint" of such a hunt even be mentioned.
The Inuits way of life is vastly different from most "western" lifestyles. Their diet is also considerably different as a result of their geography. Too many times we hear the self-righteous criticize hunts of animals they happen to think look cute in pictures or miniature stuffed replicas on their children's beds.
I read in shock someone's "greater sympathy" for the mother bear... this is based on a mutual feeling the author has with said creature? One would certainly expect the stronger feeling to be towards the fellow human, but when the traditional role for the Inuits/Aboriginals has been that of inferiority to their colonizers, funny how quickly the old roles and attitudes resurface.
I would suggest further reading of the culture and history of the Inuit, along with a study of the geography and available food sources before the instant critics voice any more misinformed, politically-correct garbage which clearly favors animals over people.
Also to add that he shot the polar bear in question because it ventured too close.
Presumably, if he hadn't shot it, we would instead be reading a story about a young hunter stranded on an ice-flow who was eaten by a family of polar bears because he suddenly decided that it was not right to shoot and should instead sacrifice himself as lunch for the family.
For all that, I do hope that the polar bear cubs are being looked after properly with the aim of releasing them into the wild in due course.
You obviously know little about polar bears or bears in general. It sounds as if the hunter was stuck on the ice with the polar bears some time before it "attacked him". Most likely, it was just curious, and playing dead would have been the best defense.
An offensive/predatory bear probably would have attacked right away. Especially if it felt threatened. But it sounds as if this bear didn't attack immediately. It's more likely that the youth was hostile toward the bear and thus provoked its interest, resulting in it "coming too close". Of course if it had outright attacked him, there would be no other choice but to shoot the bear. Though it seems clearly implied that the bear merely wandered toward the boy.
So stop generalizing and passing judgment from your own comfy armchair.
I don't know what point you are trying to make and I would like to ask you that if you were on a floating icecap in the middle of nowhere and in a life or death situation would you perhaps be tempted to shoot and kill a massive mother polar bear in protective mode towards her cubs or would you sit back as a 17 year old young Inuit man who would know the nature of these animals a lot better than you or I and just wait and see if it would attack you out of sentimentality and while this massive predator 'wandered' towards you, you would be there just thinking 'oh dear, I think I may have to kill this poor bear I feel so sad about it and so many people are going to be angry with me because they have seen nature programmes and Disney cartoons and be angry with me'. Get real you idiot.
It's almost absurd how meat headed your post is. It is YOU that appears to know nothing specifically about polar bears.
These are bears that swim from floe to floe and hunt prey of walrus, seals, whale, fish, and other assorted game they discover on the floe they climb onto and turn into their home base. A mother with two cubs on a 30 meter ice floe she discovers she's sharing with a 17 year old Inuit that could easily substitute for a nice tasty walrus or seal to feed her young and begins stalking toward the kid staking out her territory is very much on the prowl for food.
You obviously have no idea of Inuits, who have hundreds of years of experience in hunting polar bears and train their young hunters wisely. Not like some redneck GOP American who has nothing better to do but to provoke bears. The Inuit kid, if you were able to read the whole article, didn't even move when the first copter approached for fear of drawing the two cubs' attention to himself. The kid was obviously taught properly how to deal with polar bears. They also respect the bear and aren't like redneck republicans that go shooting game for sport and leave the carcass there to rot. The Inuits are taught to respect the bear. If it was your kid, then yeah I would expect that he would have tried provoking it and that there would be three dead bear carcasses on the floe.
I do appreciate the Inuits for wanting to carry on with their tradition, which includes limited hunting of animals, only for the amount of meat they and their families would need for a period of time. Unlike hunters from citified communities who bring their (dead) bears home for trophies to decorate their sitting room, to give it a manly appearance.
But what I still would like to know, because we are all being told about the number of polar bears
diminishing from year to year, and that's why stringent laws were passed to prevent the species from disappearing altogether, is...was the young Inuit after that mother bear in particular because he was near them to begin with, before the ice broke off? Fair enough, he was hunting..fine, BUT......
if he was quite close to the mother bear then he had his sights on her, and would have shot the bear even if the icepack hadn't split off.
My question is about the legality of shooting bears with cubs, because in all countries, that wouldn't be allowed. If "fallenpedant" or "bertie07" can give me a satisfactory answer and explain to me the refinements of the hunting of the wild law, in particular the polar bears, then I shall be very thankful.
at last the voice of reason
well said mr canook
please don't judge all brits by the comments of a few misguided but well meaning city dwellers
They don't understaaaand the countrysoide, see......
even the EU has now passed a resolution against import of seal furs for that reason, so I suppose, I'm not the only who can't be indifferent about that cudgeling.
Sit back and risk being attacked??
And as for the "thousands of litres of fuel used in the rescue," imagine that were your seventeen year old son out there... would you not expect every effort to be made to ensure his survival?
That the icepack broke off was an unfortunate conincidence, of course, for him and the bear family.
But I wouldn't certainly be advising any family member to put him or herself in danger anywhere, chasing after an animal with cubs.
yes i have had a beer- beirut is awesome for a night out
what sort of world will it be without those magnificent creatures??..
Anyway, enjoy your beer.......at the Commodore in Hamra.
Don't get me wrong-- I like bears, and I wish the Inuit didn't kill them, but if I were trapped on an ice floe with a hungry polar bear, I would be very happy to have a high-powered rifle, shotgun, or RPG launcher with me. Hell, I'm a tree hugger, don't even eat meat, but you powdered flati have no concept of the extreme situation this kid was in. The Canadian Forces guys who rescued him, incidentally, did a very impressive job.
Oh, yeah, one more thing. I'm a Canadian. I know ice. I know bears.
I and a lot of people all over will miss the "diabolical animals" when they've disappeared from the planet. But never you mind, with a high-powered rifle, shotgun, or RPG launcher, one can still target
other animals that walk, squawk, fly or swim.
-The article did not specify what the pair went out to hunt.
-Where I lived, 'polar bear season' referred to the time of year that polar bears move from the land on to the ice. The bears generally move in a northerly direction along the sea coast, looking for ice floes. Due to the bear's increased activity and movement on land, everyone needs to be extra alert not to stumble across and surprise a bear (which is the same colour as the terrain).
-The pair were returning on foot when the ice floe broke up and separated them. If the bears were close at that time or the two hunters would have been staying closer together as a form of protection.
-Polar bears are well known for their explosive speed over short distances.
-Anyone who lives in that area will tell you that you should never be within 30 meters of a polar bear.
-This young man had the cold to deal with as well. Hypothermia makes you sleepy and slow. Frostbite (depending on where you are affected) makes your movements slow and difficult. SIn this situation, shooting a bear within 30 meters with a rifle is not a guarantee. That young man was in extreme danger.
-As a rule, people in this area do not travel out on the land or ice alone and always carry a gun. People are not on the top of the food pyramid out there. Polar bears are usually quite fearless. They don't usually seek people out as food but they are opportunistic hunters. The bears do not eat during the summer so they are very hungry at this time. The young man was clearly in an very dangerous situation (not just because he was close to a bear) and was lucky to survive.
he didn't really want to kill the mother bear
but he obviously had to choice to keep himself alive idiot
I know this boy, i live in the community.
I know about the North. WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT???
focus on the boy instead of the bear
the bear was obviously thinking of attacking the boy. You dont know the whole story, I do.
I know this boy, and you obviously dont know anything about polar bears. Well, the polar bear was probably thinking of killing this young boy to feed her little ones. We, inuits, dont kill mother bears with cubs. But he had no choice, inorder to survive for himself. The bear actually touched the boy when he was sleeping. The bear was too close to this young bear, and he just had to shoot it. If YOU were there, and the polar bear touched you when u were sleeping would u be scared? i would.
The polar bear touched him to see if hes alive.
THe young boy and his uncle broke down, and the young boy was walking home to go get help. The uncle had not enough energy to catch up with him. So they lost sight of each other. Just be glad this boy survived and didn't freeze to death. Brave young boy i tell you, BRAVE!
keep that in mind people
focus on the boy instead of the bear
the bear was obviously thinking of attacking the boy. You dont know the whole story, I do.
I know this boy, and you obviously dont know anything about polar bears. Well, the polar bear was probably thinking of killing this young boy to feed her little ones. We, inuits, dont kill mother bears with cubs. But he had no choice, inorder to survive for himself. The bear actually touched the boy when he was sleeping. The bear was too close to this young bear, and he just had to shoot it. If YOU were there, and the polar bear touched you when u were sleeping would u be scared? i would.
The polar bear touched him to see if hes alive.
THe young boy and his uncle broke down, and the young boy was walking home to go get help. The uncle had not enough energy to catch up with him. So they lost sight of each other. Just be glad this boy survived and didn't freeze to death. Brave young boy i tell you, BRAVE!
keep that in mind people
You've been telling them what to do for 400 BLOODY YEARS and they are sick of it. For your information, the cost of a single tomato in Nunavut is around $5. The cost of a box of cereal is in the range of $11. I know this because my boyfriend and I have worked in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, for the geological survey. Until these people make 6 figure salaries, they're going to carry on doing what they've been doing for centuries, so they can feed their KIDS.
And the whole "well if you want to kill bears and salmon and seals, you need to hunt traditionally on foot with a spear because using a snowmobile is cheating and skewers hunting quota" argument is frankly, complete crap.
Dude would probably say the same thing in inuktitut.
These people are marginalized for a reason.