Churchill Manitoba is known as the polar bear capital of the world.  In October and November, many bears congregate on the shores of Hudson Bay, waiting for the ice to form on the bay.  Once it does, the bears make their way out to hunt for their favourite meal – seal! The seals are excellent swimmers – much better than the bears – but the bears are smarter.  They park themselves at a seal’s breathing hole on the ice and wait for the unsuspecting seal to pop up for air.  When it does, it is lights out for the seal!

By October, the bears on land have been going without food for the past few months, while the bay is ice free.  They have been using up their massive stores of fat to keep themselves over the summer until they can hunt again.  Understandably, they are pacing and waiting rather impatiently for the ice to form.  Once they can access the seals, they will hunt, feast and start to replenish their fat stores, hopefully enough to keep them over next summer when the cycle starts all over again. 

We had the opportunity to make a short trip to Churchill to do a little polar bear spotting ourselves!  Frontiers North Adventures partnered with the Assiniboine Park Conservancy to charter small groups to Churchill.  We boarded the plane from Winnipeg in the wee hours of the morning and flew to Churchill, where we hopped aboard an awaiting Tundra Buggy. These are pretty cool machines designed to drive over the tundra and provide a safe viewing platform from which to observe the bears.

Tundra Buggy 15 was our home for the rest of the day.  Hangry polar bears are dangerous creatures and they can easily camouflage themselves in the snow and hide behind the scrub willow so we were not allowed to get out of the buggy once underway.  Fortunately the tundra buggies were warm and well-equipped so there was no need to leave.

Our morning of bear spotting started out a bit slow, yielding a couple of sightings but the bears were quite far away and not very active. Just before lunch though, we were able park and watch a bear walk along side of the buggy on his slow meander across the tundra. It didn’t seem to care much if we were there or not…I guess as the apex predator, they have little to fear.

After lunch things started to heat up – at least for bear sightings! We saw another eight or so individuals, doing bear things like digging in the snow, walking on the tundra or taking a bear-nap on a rock. One of the scientists accompanying us from the Assiniboine Park Conservancy pulled out a thermal camera and aimed it at one bear who was napping on a rock. We expected to see lots of colour showing the heat coming off of the bear. Surprisingly though, we saw next to nothing on the image. The bears are so well adapted to living on the ice and their fur insulates them so well that they lose very little body heat to the environment. Mother nature truly is amazing!

Our day went almost perfectly. We had one minor glitch when we lost steering on our tundra buggy. Apparently bears have been known to snack on some of the hoses and lines on the under side of the buggies and it seems ours had been recently targeted! Fortunately the company mechanic was not far away to he and his companion buggied over to us and had it fixed in no time. In the meantime, we were entertained by a bear in the distance and the armed guard who was watching it to make sure it didn’t approach the buggy while the mechanic was doing his thing.

At sundown, we headed back to the airport for our flight to Winnipeg. It was a bit of a whirlwind trip but seeing the bears in their natural environment was amazing and so worth it!