Polar-Grizzly hybrid killed with .303 Enfield

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"Monster Quest" did a thing on big bears and they documented the other griz/polar cross shot by an Inuit in Alaska with a .223.
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That one wasn't a griz/polar cross, just a polar bear well south of its normal range.

Just a few years ago, a tourist took a picture of a polar bear on the Kenai peninsula in south central Alaska. They didn't know it was unusual until showing the picture to people back home. It was sent up to AK F&G who confirmed it was an actual polar bear some 500 miles south of its normal range.

Polar bears and grizzlies have always interbred. It's just that until recently, nobody could do DNA testing to prove it.

Interestingly, the brown bears in SE Alaska (900 miles south of the nearest polar bear) are more closely related to polar bears than to other brown/grizzlies. http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF13/1314.html

Figure that one out...
 
That one wasn't a griz/polar cross, just a polar bear well south of its normal range
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Hmm, Discovery Channel busted again. :D

Interestingly, the brown bears in SE Alaska (900 miles south of the nearest polar bear) are more closely related to polar bears than to other brown/grizzlies. http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF13/1314.html
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Just guessing, but the last ice age melt was only about 10K years ago. Might have had the polar bear range a little farther south back then? Hell, we might have had 'em swimming in the gulf. Fortunately, BP wasn't around back then or they'd been turned in to black bears. :D
 
A polar bear was shot in the 1940's here on Kodiak Island. That bear would have had to come about 700 miles south, then swim 60 miles across the Shelikof Straits to get here. Yet, there it was.

I'm sure lots of hybrids have been sighted or killed. It's just that brown/grizzlies have such wide variances in size and color that hybrids have just been overlooked.
 
Kodiakbeer said;
"The best choice of rifle depends as much on where you hunt, as what you hunt. "

Amen to that, and indeed, if I lived in Kodiak, I would most likely have a larger caliber dedicated "Bear gun" in the arsenal.

I live on open Tundra with small stands of trees and low brush willows that I can always get above as they run the creeks. The rest is open, so closing the gap is my hardest hunting problem, but small steps and patients go's along ways.
Im all for open sights because they give me great results, as well as being great for the close up stuff.

In Alaska , its illegal to hunt with full automatics.
"Inuit" are Canadian Eskimo, Northern Alaskan Eskimo are "Inupiat" and my wife is "Inupiaq" and its all dialect, like Austrailian English, California English, Alabama "English....~~LOL!!~~it is, but aint "the same"

I gotta find someone with a TV and see this Monster Quest.
 
My .350 isn't my bear gun, it's my deer gun. I just carry it to keep bears off, and it's fine for deer. I hunt to fill my freezer.
I really have no interest in hunting bears, even though it's just a $25 over-the-counter tag for residents here. Fall bears taste like crap after being on the salmon all summer. The Spring bears taste OK, but it's a miserable hunt with cold rain and wind 9 days out of 10. I don't have a wall big enough to hang a bear rug anyway! :)

The only brown I ever shot was in self defense.
 
I don't have a wall big enough to hang a bear rug anyway!
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Heck, mine wouldn't fit a good sized black bear. LOL I know a guy that shot a 6x6 elk in the San Juans of Colorado.. He has it mounted, on his wall, the base of the mount about 4" off the floor. :D Sort of hilarious, but until he builds a house with cathedral ceilings, I guess it'll have to do.

Yeah, being a Texan, I wouldn't know an Inuit from an outuit. Shoulda just said "native Alaskan"...other than Sarah Palin....or something. Part Cherokee myself.
 
Yeah, being a Texan, I wouldn't know an Inuit from an outuit. Shoulda just said "native Alaskan".
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It's odd, Alaska natives don't usually get offended by incorrect terms. For example, if you call a Canadian Inuit an "Eskimo" they get very offended. Eskimo is actually a Cree word meaning something like "raw meat eater" ie; savage. Alaskan natives aren't usually offended by such terms - they'll just smile and correct you.
Athabascans (interior Alaska) speak a dialect of the same language group as Apaches or Navajo. SE natives like Tlingits speak something else entirely. Elderly Aleuts often speak both Russian and Alutiiq. They're as diverse a group as Europeans - different languages, cultures, etc. I guess they're just used to outsiders not understanding that they're not one group.

About ten years ago I was sitting in a saloon in Nome one winter with a friend from Minnesota who had never been to Alaska - we were there to see the end of Iditarod. Anyway, we were chatting with a guy from one of the villages and my friend asked the native guy what he did for a living, and he replied that he was a hunter. My buddy couldn't seem to grasp that and kept asking about it as if the guy was probably a salesman who did a little duck hunting on the side. And the native dude patiently explained that he hunted whales, walrus, caribou, seals, caught and smoked fish, etc, depending on the time of year. My friend eventually dropped it, but I don't think he ever grasped that he was talking to a professional subsistence hunter; it was just totally outside his experience.

Alaska is an amazing place!
 
Athabascans (interior Alaska) speak a dialect of the same language group as Apaches or Navajo.
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WOW, that's odd. Wonder how THAT happened? You wouldn't think the language would be similar after 15,000 years if it was that they were of the same Siberian immigrants across the bearing land bridge. Might be the case, though.

Studying native American cultures is interesting. There's a guy on the east coast thinks that eastern tribes might be descendants of European ice age immigrants. He uses Clovis/Sulurian tools vs Siberian tools as his evidence. He speculates that boats have been around for well longer than 10,000 years and that it isn't much of a stretch to think that they could have followed seals or such across following the ice cap. Possible, I guess. They've found burials of a culture in South America that date to over 20,000-25,000 years ago. How did THAT happen if they all came across the Bearing land bridge?

Cool stuff, but off topic I guess. Sorry.
 
The Athabascan groups migrated all across the swath of plains from AK down through to what is now Arizona. If you think about the migration patterns of game during the pre-European periods, that much movement isn't surprising.

The coastal groups such as the Tlingit didn't migrate as much, though they were part of coastal trade routes that stretched for thousands of miles.

The Inuit arrived to the territory comparatively recently, and dominated the northern reaches where most other groups were unable to survive. They displaced existing groups and eventually reached a rough border between the various tribes to the south and their own territory. Their technology was in many respects more primitive than the tribes from warmer regions, but it worked in conditions where nothing else would. Even modern European technology was inferior to the Inuit technology in the extreme cold until very, very recently. Arguably it still isn't. But certainly in the early 20th century Amundsen's Inuit-based adaptations were superior to Scott's European-based technology. Heavy canvas and wool is fine for the UK, but not for 70 below.
 
If you go back fifteen thousand years, most northern hemisphere cultures are related. We all came out of central Asia in waves - Indo-Europeans, Celts, etc, to the west, and Amerindians to the east into the Americas. Many of the racial characteristics got swamped in Europe by whatever indigenous people were already there, but the language roots are still to be found. When you delve back into early language, you'll find a lot of common words match - Latin for "fire" is Ignis (as in the English word "ignite"). In at least some Inuit dialects the word is something like "Igniq". Mama is Amaa/amamak, etc. There are a lot of examples like that with common words in all northern languages because they all originated in central Asia.
 
When I was younger I dreamed of moving to Alaska, building a cabin and living off the land. I didn't have the money or the know how so it never happened. I would like to take my youngest son the entire lenght of the Alaskan Highway, but that would involve flying to BC where firearms are prohibited. Maybe I could ship the guns to a dealer in AK and take our chances on the road or does anyone know if the Canadian Customs would all us to have a rifle while driving thru Canada?
 
I would like to take my youngest son the entire lenght of the Alaskan Highway, but that would involve flying to BC where firearms are prohibited.
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Just fly to Anchorage and rent a jeep or better, a camper van. There are some nice things in Canada, but Alaska tops them. Avoid the Kenai because that's where all the tourists go. Drive to McCarthy, Denali, up the haul road, put your car on the ferry to Kodiak. Come in August and fly out to hunt Mulchatna caribou or deer here in Kodiak or black bears around McCarthy. Fishing - anywhere... trout, salmon, grayling, halibut. A month is just enough to get a taste because it's so big and there's so much to do.

You can open carry anywhere, but I'm not sure if the concealed carry law (or lack of...) applies to non-residents.
 
Ah, Alaska's too far away and too cold and winters are forever. Sure a lot of fishing and hunting, though. I'd do well there. But, alas, I'm stuck in the sunny ....and hot, south. Could be way worse. I could be stuck in New Jersey. :D

I don't know, ain't countin' on it, but I could be coming into some money in a few years. If it's enough, I'll just travel. I have looked at land out in West Texas, cheap out there, but the fishing sux. :D
 
Its very easy to take long arms to Alaska via Canada, just declare them and fill out the paper. Then bring it and the rifle for declaration at the AK/Can border, and proceed. :D

Way Kool on the Phonics, Kodiakbeer , its "Ikniq" in Inupiaq.
 
A polar bear was shot in the 1940's here on Kodiak Island. That bear would have had to come about 700 miles south, then swim 60 miles across the Shelikof Straits to get here. Yet, there it was.
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700 miles isn't that far considering home ranges can vary from a small range of about 20,000 square miles to a large range of 135,000 square miles. The following source has a bear tracked that covered 695 miles in one year.
http://www.seaworld.org/animal-info/info-books/polar-bear/pdf/ib-polar-bear.pdf

Why would the bear swim 60 miles across the Shelikof Straits when they are less than 30 miles across at the closer points?
http://www.asgdc.state.ak.us/maps/cplans/kod/kod11n3.pdf

With that said, a 60 mile swim would not be out of the question for a polar bear as various sources place them at being able to swim 50-100 miles.
http://www.bearplanet.org/polarbear.shtml
http://www.nhptv.org/natureworks/polar.htm
http://globalwarmingtrends.blogspot.com/2007/08/polar-bears-can-swim.html
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/mammals/polar_bear/natural_history.html

I could not find the record of this Kokiak polar Bear in Mammals of North America by Hall and Kelson which is a 2 volume set on range distribution records. Even if a polar bear was shot on Kodiak in the 1940s, determining how it actually got there might be another matter all together.
 
You know, I never realized that Alasks had bears as big as that one Mrs. Caribou is sitting by.
I don't think I ever realized there WERE bears that big. <Shudder.>

With them going farther and farther South, how long until they get to the Chicago suburbs? Should I buy my .338 now?

:)

Larry
 
You know, I never realized that Alasks had bears as big as that one Mrs. Caribou is sitting by.
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Mrs. Caribou took that bear running with two neck shots from an iron sighted Mosin Nagant. Mrs. Caribou is a formidable woman...
 
I'm glad to know it will kill just about any game, No Grizzers or Polar bears down here but we have some Gators that will make short work of ya. Just picked up a Enfield #5 jungle carbine.:D
 
I am not surprised he used a .303. Frankly, I am surprised that so many people believe that "elephant gun" is descriptive a specific rifle/caliber combo.
 
How??? A hybrid isn't a game species. Like the guy in Ohio that shot that Lion; it may piss of the Fish and Game people, but the fact of the matter is that they can only enforce the law on named species.
 
Unless you encounter an agressive Bear or whatever, just leave them alone, most have a tough enough time as it is. In some populated areas of Alaska they have problems with them, foraging for food in populated areas and Moose also. How'd you like to hit a Bull Moose with your car. You'd probably be decapitated as the monster rollover the roof of the car.
JT
 
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