The guide’s review of polar bear season 2015
February 1 2016
When polar bear season wrapped up last November I took some time to look through my photos from the past eleven years. I’ve done fifty-five trips with Classic Canadian Tours, so you can imagine I have many picture of bears. Moms and cubs, bears sparring, bears munching on seaweed, resting on rocks and sniffing at tundra buggies. Also shots of Arctic fox, ptarmigans and snowy owls. These are wildlife trips, so we can’t guarantee seeing a bear, but in fact of each and every one of those fifty-five trips we have seen polar bears. This is not mean feat when you think that the season is so short, for Classic Canadian Tours the window of opportunity is about one month in duration. The ice came into Hudson’s Bay around November 21st, about one week later than 2014 freeze up. For the last three years the ice conditions have been good for the bears of western Hudson’s Bay and perhaps as a result of that we’ve seen more females with cubs than in previous years. Les Stegenga, Classic Canadian Tours Naturalist