Polar bear encounters...

2008-03-27 3

While on the Henrik Krøyer Holme islands, we did see polar bears on 10 occasions, over a period of 5 days. We saw 4 on one single occasion. Two bears came VERY close (12 meters!) to our camp (curious, attracted by the smell of "saucisson", or hungry from limited seal supply on the sea ice, we will never know). What we know is that they became quite threatening and we had to use our flares and guns to scare them away (we would of course shoot to kill only as a last resort, and not as a macho show of shooting talent. So that's a total of 13 individual bears (we saw one twice, for sure -- we know that from a scar on its right side).
All information and observations on bears (date/location seen, photos, videos, etc.) will be sent to Denmark for determination of sex, size, etc. All information is of interest, for example the fact that we did not see females with cubs. Copyright B. Sabard/GREA