Posted on 08/28/2023 6:19:35 AM PDT by marktwain
Polar bears are very large, dangerous adversaries. Surviving for six years after a shipwreck in the Arctic, four Russian hunters killed ten of them with two homemade spears. The story is told in the modern book Four Against the Arctic by David Roberts, published in 2003.
Roberts spent two weeks at the location most likely to have been where the Russian sailors/hunters had survived, on Halfmoon Island, across a narrow channel from Edgeøya. In those two weeks, his party of four saw nine polar bears, three of which had to be chased away with flare guns, and two of the bears chased away from the hut Robert’s party was occupying. Roberts spends many more pages in detailing his travails in researching documents and information about the story than in the story itself.
Their ship was captured in the pack ice, about two miles from the shore of an island. The pilot, Aleksei Inkov, recognized the place from stories and remembered a tale of an early version of a prefabricated hut being built on the island many years earlier. He, his godson, and two other hunters volunteered to see if this was the place and if the hut was there. They had to traverse two miles of treacherous ice-pack. They took very little in equipment or supplies, as listed:
The pack ice constantly threatened to crush their ship. If they could find the hut, there was hope of survival.
(Excerpt) Read more at ammoland.com ...
Cool story!
Did the eleventh polar bear get ‘em tho? The book being produced post-mortem from the contents of a gore-splattered journal?
Yeah—didnt click through...😉
The polar bear pelts helped pay for their trip back to Russia.
Some Polar Expeditions were wiped out by Polar Bear meat.
Bear mean almost always carries trichinosis. In polar regions when it is not sufficiently cooked, bear meat will kill you.
In the USA, 90% of trichinosis comes from improperly cooked black bear meat.
Trichinella and polar bears: a limited risk for humans
Abstract
In this review, we identified 63 cases reported since World War II of human trichinellosis linked to the consumption of parasitized polar bear (Ursus maritimus) meat. This low number contrasts to the numerous cases of human trichinellosis related to consumption of the meat of black (U. americanus) or brown bears (U. arctos). The prevalence of Trichinella infection is high in bears, but larval muscular burden is usually lower in polar bears compared to other bear species. Polar bears, therefore, seem to play a limited role in the transmission of trichinellosis to humans, as native residents living in the Arctic traditionally consume well-cooked bear meat, and travellers and foreign hunters have only limited access to this protected species due to the declining polar bear population.
The greater danger seems to be from eating polar bear liver, which contains poisonous levels of vitamin A.
That is hard core. 😖
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