Shotgun Training

During the race the team will be self sufficient with exception of two check/cache points where they pick up food.  They will be racing and camping by themselves on routes and at locations they choose themselves.  However, they will cross the Arctic’s most densely populated area for Polar Bears.  In April there are options for where the bears can hunt: on islands next to running water, on the shores where the ice breaks leaves open water, and on the ice fields where the ice cracks or shrinks apart.  At all of these locations there’s the chance of seals (or if you’re a bear - food).  The Polar Challenge start and finish lines are separated by about 350 miles, two islands and two or three sections of frozen sea (ice fields) – no matter what course the teams take they will be in Polar Bear territory.  The race is of course the invader and its entire organisation respects this as do Lost Penguins and competition. 

The likelihood of encountering a bear is high.  Most teams from previous races have seen one.  All teams have seen foot prints.  However, almost all encounters have been either at distance or with a merely curious bear.  But, it is necessary for the team to be prepared in the event of an attack.  They will therefore carry a shot gun with them at all times.  The fending off procedure is simple – make noise, look big, get shot gun and take pictures.  If the bear is more than curious the procedure develops to making more noise and firing a couple of warning shots into the snow or air.  Only when the bear is making an attack would the weapon be used against it, and if that happened the event would be heavily investigated.

So it’s necessary for the team to be proficient with the use of n illegal sawn off, pump action shot gun – Josey Wales eat your heart out!  UK based training (the team will be getting to grip s with their own gun in Canada) started with a few clay pigeons and standard ‘under and over’.  Connie’s impressive one out of one stat was soon a much less impressive two out of ten.  For a while she looked entirely harmless with the gun until nearly killing a Springer Spaniel when one of the clays she missed very nearly took it’s head off.