Polar Bears of Churchill Intro

November 2018

Young male Polar Bears mock fighting.

On the coast of Hudson Bay, Churchill is the southern-most and most easily accessible tundra in North America.  A summer destination for tundra breeding birds, in November an awesome event takes place like nowhere else on earth – several hundred Polar Bears gather to await freeze up of Hudson Bay!  In most places sighting one of these massive predators is exciting.  Here we see many bears each day up close and personal right outside the windows, but safely below our high perch inside all-terrain tundra buggies.  We will watch young males in mock combat, females with cubs and massive males wandering the tundra at will.

Churchill’s population of Polar Bears is like no other.  Almost all Polar Bears are seal hunters on the permanent pack ice surrounding the North Pole.  Bears at this southern edge of their range have a different strategy.  In June or July, when Hudson Bay’s ice melts completely, they swim ashore. Females head to maternity den sites southeast of Churchill.   Males spend the summer wandering the shoreline and adjacent tundra, searching for scarce food and waiting for the bay to once again be covered in sea ice.

Our “Polar Bears of Churchill” trip offers you the chance to witness this amazing spectacle from the comfort of Arctic Crawlers.  These massive four-wheel-drive vehicles can traverse ponds, rocky shoreline, and tundra.  We watch bears in heated comfort with lunch and snacks available onboard, as well as a bathroom. Or for those hardy souls, a back deck in the open provides unfettered photography of the bears.

Come join us for a one-in-a-lifetime adventure to see, photograph, and video these incredible Ice Bears.

Arctic Crawler for viewing Polar Bears in the wild.

Leader: Rick Bowers