The Churchill Wildlife Management area is the gateway to Polar Bear country although as you've already learned they are everywhere around Churchill. The area itself covers 2.1 million acres of frozen tundra. You cannot enter it without a guide. What roads there exist are mainly gravel and often there are no roads, just paths. To get around you need one of these.
The Polar Rover is quite a vehicle. It weighs 24,000 pounds, has six wheel drive, with tires that measure 68"x4 43", carries 40 people, although we only had 16, and costs $450,000. It's heated and quite comfortable for such a beast. There is a viewing platform in the back. We spent eight to nine hours a day crawling around the tundra in these looking for polar bears.
Another way to see the bears is in a Polar Bear Camp. The bears like to hang around these as their sense of smell is so acute, they can smell a seal twenty miles away, and they certainly can smell the food cooking. You stay out in the tundra for three days and eliminate the trips back and forth to town. On the other hand, the rooms are basically a bunk bed and some storage all else is shared, but the bears do come around.
We were lucky to run into these two males alternately sniffing and sparing.
A short distance away, we came upon this female enjoying a rest.
Males are much larger than females weighing on average 1,100 pounds to a females 600. They all have massive paws, necks and hind legs all the better for walking on the snow and being able to pull seals from the water. They usually amble along at 2.5 MPH, but can hit speeds of 30 MPH for short distances. They are excellent swimmers and can easily cover 50 to 60 miles at a time.
Bears are usually solitary animals and we covered great distances to find them. The tundra is a sparse place and I can only imagine what it must be like in the winter.
The reward for all the bouncing a round is finding another polar bear. All else is forgotten as you try to get that definitive shot.
These are amazing animals. They basically only eat when Hudson Bay freezes over and they can go out on the ice and hunt seals. Their stomachs can hold 150 pounds of seal in one eating session. To maintain weight they need to eat at least one seal every five days. When the ice melts they continually loose weight until they can hunt seals again. An arctic fox is hardly an appetizer. While other bears hibernate, these don't. That's one of the reasons at the time of the year we were in Churchill you don't see they moving around too much. They are excellent at conserving energy.
As exciting as it is viewing the bears, the tundra can be beautiful as the sun sets.
As I reflect on this trip, it packed so much into such a short time. We learned a lot, got to be up close to some amazing animals and had a brief glimpse of what daily life is like in Churchill while attending a concert in the Community Center and walking around on our last afternoon. Our guide was excellent and we again met some very interesting people. All in all we were again blessed to be able to have this experience. I hope you also enjoyed this brief exposure to our Polar Bear Experience.
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