Polar Bear Hunts

Vetted Outfitters

We’ve been on these polar bear hunts ourselves and they have our stamp of approval. Outdoors International can help you stack the odds in your favor for a more successful Arctic adventure.

The hunt you book needs to be in an area and/or with an outfitter that would satisfy your trophy quality expectations, while also fitting your physical condition level and your budget. That's what our service is all about. Let us know if you'd like to schedule a polar bear hunting consultation.

Conservation

As it is with many other animals around the world, polar bears might have faced extinction had it not been for the efforts of conservationists. Sportsmen hunting polar bears have helped by giving them value. Polar bears are a conservation success story.

In the 70’s, there were so few polar bears left that Inuits would get excited if they came across their tracks. Hunting polar bears was shut down, and the Inuits were given a quota of how many they could harvest each year. Sportsman currently harvest 60 polar bears a year with each hide hide leaving the Arctic being tracked.

One of the coolest things about hunting polar bears for sportsmen is the extreme location. Nunavut is  the northernmost territory in all of Canada,  and was part of the Northwest Territories until 1999, when it was officially separated via the Nunavut Act. Nunavut is the largest territory with 680,000 square miles and only 36,000 residents. It also has the lowest average temperature of any Canadian Province.

Ask Us About Our Polar Bear Hunts

"As a consultant, I spend considerable time vetting and learning about hunts and doing them myself when possible.

I wouldn’t recommend a hunt I would not do myself. We are hunters working for hunters and want nothing more than to send you on the trip of a lifetime like I experienced. Given our services cost you nothing, there is no reason to ever book without using our services.

Gary Colbath / OI Hunting Consultant

The Inuit Experience while Hunting Polar Bears

What makes our polar bear hunt hunt especially attractive is that it allows the hunter to take part in the Inuit experience. For over 4,000 years the Inuits have been hunting the Arctic, slowly moving Westward. The Inuits are one of the oldest hunting cultures on Earth. However, in 1952 the Canadian government took steps to limit the nomadic lifestyle that was a part of their culture. Since then Inuit life has changed drastically. 

Inuits are some of the toughest people on Earth as this story attests: A small group of Inuits were starving and actually survived by taking caribou dung and wrapping it in sealskin before dipping it in hot water and eating it like a horrible spring roll. Only encountering a small herd of caribou allowed them to survive the winter. Another story told of an Inuit who scraped the hair from his caribou jacket and ate the hide to survive.

Fossilized polar bear bones date between 110,000 and 130,000 years old.

About 10,000 or 20,000 years ago, the polar bears’ molars started to change dramatically.  Adapting to life in the Arctic, they developed large, furry feet and short, heavy, sharp claws to give them better traction to on ice.

There is also some DNA evidence suggesting that polar bears and brown bears could have diverged as much as 400,000 years ago. They were identified as a distinct species in 1774 by Constantine John Phipps.

Polar bears are a unique and amazing animal.

• Adult polar bears can weigh over 1,500 pounds and can reach almost 10 feet in length.
• The largest polar bear ever recorded weighed over 2,200 pounds, and when mounted, stood 11 feet 1 inch tall.
• The oldest wild polar bear on record died at the age of 32.
• They can swim under water for up to three minutes.
• Nanook also swim extreme distances, the longest known being 220 miles.