Polar Bear prep...! (Do not run!!!)

There will be a very high chance that we will see polar bears out there.  Whilst polar bears are photographically pleasing and great as stuffed toys, in reality they are meat eat, human slicing machines.  They are the worlds most dangerous animals known to humans...  So what have we as a team done and going to do to prepare for this?

When I got to our training outpost a few months ago, I didn't know what to expect and when it came to the polar defence training section, I was not prepared for what we were about to be taught.  Firstly the stories they had of the past and the gruesome pictures and news posts they had up on the walls didn't help one bit... nervous about this, a little...but also excited if I could see one from afar and have a telephoto lens...

We were trained in rifles and the upkeep of rifles.  The most ironic thing about this whole this is I knew exactly what the weapon was when they brought it out... a Kar98, my most favourite weapon  when playing my all time favourite game: Call of Duty (the first few series on PC about 10 years ago...).  I was always the assigned rifler for my clan and our matches were always accompanied by my trusty K98 is we played Axis, if we were British then the Enfield was my choice and American, well they didn't have nice rifles to use, so I settled always for the Garand (perCHING!!)... I was so excited at actually have one of these in my hand, it's definietly a lot heavier than I imagined... actually I lie, I never imagined I would ever hold one of these babies in my hands and there I was with one!!

The Karabiner 98 Kurz (often abbreviated Kar98k, K98, or K98k) was a bolt action rifle chambered for the 8x57 IS cartridge that was adopted as the standard service rifle in 1935 by the German Wehrmacht.^[2] It was one of the final developments in the long line of Mauser military rifles. Although supplemented by semi- and fully automatic rifles during World War II, it remained the German service rifle until the end of World War II in 1945.

Excitement over, back to polar bears!
We're meant to try not get the polar bears attention (so no putting on shows for it or entertaining it...), but if it shows sign of interest in use we all have to as a team create as much noise as we can to try and scare it off (there's a vdeio of one fo the past teams, bagging all sorts of pots and pans together and shouting as load as they can for what seemed like 30mins + ... yes interesting video...), whilst the two riflers are prepared...  if it still shows sign of coming to us, then we have bare flares which we are also trained in using.  We will each have two bear flares with us in our pockets and our camp will also be set with bear flare traps... 

It is against the law to shoot or harm a Polar bear in the Arctic... unless they are within 25metres of you... so I've been keeping an eye on how far that is by looking at the length of my swimming pool at the gym... it's not that far and if they can run well it won't take bit a few seconds to get to us...! It's in all's best interest not to shoot a polar bear and I hope I'd never have to do it... not only mentally it will probably scar me for life, but also the strict laws out there... if we are in the middle of no where we'd have to wait for the authorities to get to us, which could take days,,, we're also not allowed to move from where we shot or move the polar bear so the authorities can start their investigation and paper work, it will seriously hamper our objectives out there.

As much as a polar would be great to see and photograph, I'm mixed in my feelings about seeing one... I want to keep the rose tinted glasses view of them in my head...