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Every once in awhile my dad will slip and say "Let's go to NC Store" and same with some elders.
Kinda of dates him and the elders.

Once in a great while I will call it NC Store.

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Been people attacked by wolves in this area.
More wolves in the area so they are coming into the villages.

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I was sitting here thinking how a polar bear got loose in Wales (UK). Then I read the article. Didn’t know there was a Wales, Alaska.

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Further down on the polar bear link is a story about a guy who let his two dogs out in his fenced backyard, where one was stomped by a moose and died at the vets. Newsgirl says, "moose are aggressive this time of year!" Yea, no shit.

Polar/Grizz/Brown/Black Bears, wolves, moose, mosquitos... I've seen vids of the nail mats and guys throwing their stored up urine high up on the trees around their cabins. Seems like the hyper-vigilance every single time you go out would get kind of tiresome.

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There are people who love their G19 so much that they're offering up 9mims in the bear defense category because, "They're not Abrams tanks."
And, in cases where people peppered bears that decided to call off attacks they were able to continue - to run off and be killed later by Game Wardens, "it worked."
Which means it's a GOOD choice

It's birdshot for HD, or .22lr for carry.
There are better guns for the task.
9mm "is a marginal fight stopper" (for humans), for bears 5x the size, they're a dopey choice.
But people in GD get surprisingly pissy if you tell them 9mm is not a death ray.

The tacticool crowd are the fudds of the outdoors. There I said it.

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Not quite sure there is a reasonable sidearm that would quickly incapacitate a hungry, desperate Polar bear.

LAR grizz in 45 Win Mag?

Heavy 44 mag/454casull/450sw/50sw would get the job done, but not sure a woman would carry one.....

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Wanted to look that one up as I'd never heard of it. I got wary though as I was typing and wasn't too sure what was on the other side when I hit "Enter". Thankfully, it showed me the ammo and not.....something else.

And holy hell. That's a weird-looking slug. But I guess it serves a purpose as there's a picture of a bear on the box.

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I think people sometimes forget that Polar Bears are the only truly carnivorous bear.  Most other bears (including Grizzlies) are omnivores and seem to mostly eat plants (with some estimates as high as 90% of their diet), and only occasionally eat meat.  Polar bears are apparently considered "hyper-carnivorus" and eat almost no plant material at all.  Plus, they actively hunt for most of their food - meaning that hunting/stalking is an ingrained behavior.  For most other bears, hunting is a very occasional thing, with foraging being the main source of food.

I wouldn't want to be chased by ANY large angry bear - but the polar bear definitely seems to be the most potentially dangerous to man.

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I used to fly for a company called Cape Smythe Air Service up there. Lived in Barrow, Deadhorse, Kotz, and Nome. During that time in Nome I'd fly to Wales regularly. 2 memories that stuck with me about Wales...

1. I did my best to not watch a buddy of mine take a shit on the runway at Wales once. He had to go, code 5, touching cotton, full fecal emergency. He decided the approach end of the runway was his most private option because it was on the backside of the plane away from our village agent. That turd of his was frozen on the runway and viewable for weeks after that. Made its own little snowdrift and everything.

2. As a pilot up there you're used to seeing the remains of aircraft wreckages. They're everywhere. One of them was in Wales. It was the remains of a Cape Smythe Piper Pa31-T3-1040, a very rare aircraft. Only 24 ever built. It happened when a pilot of ours was attempting an illegal GPS-BS approach. We did these approaches a lot and we were good at them. We'd typically let down to 50-100' over the water by the radar altimeter and just truck it in the last mile or so until we saw the runway. Well this guy was doing that but visibility was shit. Less than 1/4 mile. He can't see in front of him but he sees the end of the runway passing under him to the left. He's got gear and flaps down and he makes a play for the runway, overshoots it to the left, attempts to correct it back to the right but way over-corrects. Stalls it, digs his right wing tip into the tundra and cart-wheels the aircraft across the runway. He and his passenger were both fine. They walked away from it but the aircraft was a total loss.

I had always seen the fuselage of the aircraft sitting over by the machine shed at the end of the runway in Wales but the pilot had long since departed the company.

Fast forward a few years and one day I'm flying out of Nome goin to Wales. The weather there is down but it's good enough for me to get in with the GPS-BS approach. I'm flying a T3-1040 and I have one passenger onboard (with a bunch of mail and cargo). So I have this guy sitting up front with me so I can pack the cabin and belly pod to the max. I've even got him on headsets so we can chat. Turns out he's an itinerant school teacher.
Then he says, "been quite a while since I've been to Wales. Last time I was here the plane crashed."
I spin my head around "I'm sorry, come again? You survived a plane crash?"
"Yeah, at Wales."
"What company was that?"
"Cape Smythe."
"You mean to tell me you were the passenger on the 1040 that crashed there a few years ago?"
"Yep. I didn't know what it was called but it was just like this plane."
"So the last time you flew to Wales it was with this company, in a plane identical to this, on a day with weather identical to today's... and the plane crashed... yet, here you are doing it again."
"Yeah, I guess so."
"You've got the biggest brass balls of anyone I've ever met."
"Well, you're not planning on crashing, are you?"
"Well, I wasn't, but now I'm not so sure."

I flew that fucking approach tighter than any approach I've flown before or since.

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The Danish Sirius Patrol is issued 10mm Glocks (the only unit in the Danish military to have 10mm sidearms) specifically because they consider 9mm inadequate for polar bear.  Obviously, they'd prefer to use their .30-06 rifles, but for emergency sidearm use, they picked 10mm.

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In the 30s Alaska Commercial Co sold a bunch of rifles up North in 222 Remington so that is what the Eskimos used, for everything. They hunted polar bears with dog teams, releasing the dogs once they got close who would run in circles around the bear while the hunter walked up to about 20 yds and spine shot the bear. I have seen this on film. Creepy walking up to the paralyzed bear with those beady black eyes watching him.

With this update, there are 123 documented cases where pistols were fired in defense against bears, without assistance from other lethal means. Three of those cases were failures. The success rate is 98%

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The question I had was why was he so angry with the Welsh?

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There is a real story of a Canadian trapper, female, who took down a grizzly with a single shot .22lr.  

The bear charged her and she waited till it was close enough to fire her shot, right in the eye.  Dropped the son of bitch, too.  

Most people would shit themselves in that situation.  Self included.

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Who isn't angry with the Welsh?

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That is terrible.

I will say however if I lived ANYWHERE in Alaska other than in the city portions of Anchorage or Juneau I would always have a large caliber handgun on me-period.  Hell I have land in country in the Ozarks where the bears are puppies compared to a polar bear and I carry a 44 mag on my hip all the time.

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Bucket list tour for me, someday.  Torpor is weird.  

Beautiful animals, that would kill you in an eyeblink given the chance.

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I remember the story of Fred Bear, and that he wanted to kill a polar bear with his longbow.

He had no problem getting the arrow into the bear... but the problem was that every time he did that, the bear would immediately attack and try to eat him. His armed escort would have to put the bear down to save his life, so those ones couldn't be considered an archery kill.

Finally he was able to get a shot at one from atop a sheer ice cliff, and the bear was unable to climb it and expired at the bottom.

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I was sitting here thinking how a polar bear got loose in Wales (UK). Then I read the article. Didn’t know there was a Wales, Alaska.

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Damn thats a shit way to go.  Getting eaten by something isnt a problem most modern humans ever have to worry about.

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The actual data seems to suggest even 9mm works. Usually what happens is the bear runs away when shot. But the sound doesn't scare them.

A charging bear would be hard to stop even with a .44 mag or .454 if it is intent on charging even if hit. But the data shows they usually decide to leave the area even if shot with something like a 9.

It seems to me the ability to score hits is much more important than having a powerful gun. Also in many attacks you have little time to respond, the bears are fast and sneaky. A long arm that might be slower to deploy might not be better then a handgun ready to go on a holster.

I carried a .44 mag last time I was in Griz country, but think a 10 mm Glock is a better choice and would opt for a 9 over nothing (or just spray).

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How common is it that they venture that close to a town ? Once there is it illegal to shoot it after it has chased several people ?

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I graduated 06 or so in Anchorage. The very first gun I bought at 18 was an 870 tactical model, loaded it with 3" Black Magic Magnums...bears are terrifying.

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I used to fly for a company called Cape Smythe Air Service up there. Lived in Barrow, Deadhorse, Kotz, and Nome. During that time in Nome I'd fly to Wales regularly. 2 memories that stuck with me about Wales...

1. I did my best to not watch a buddy of mine take a shit on the runway at Wales once. He had to go, code 5, touching cotton, full fecal emergency. He decided the approach end of the runway was his most private option because it was on the backside of the plane away from our village agent. That turd of his was frozen on the runway and viewable for weeks after that. Made its own little snowdrift and everything.

2. As a pilot up there you're used to seeing the remains of aircraft wreckages. They're everywhere. One of them was in Wales. It was the remains of a Cape Smythe Piper Pa31-T3-1040, a very rare aircraft. Only 24 ever built. It happened when a pilot of ours was attempting an illegal GPS-BS approach. We did these approaches a lot and we were good at them. We'd typically let down to 50-100' over the water by the radar altimeter and just truck it in the last mile or so until we saw the runway. Well this guy was doing that but visibility was shit. Less than 1/4 mile. He can't see in front of him but he sees the end of the runway passing under him to the left. He's got gear and flaps down and he makes a play for the runway, overshoots it to the left, attempts to correct it back to the right but way over-corrects. Stalls it, digs his right wing tip into the tundra and cart-wheels the aircraft across the runway. He and his passenger were both fine. They walked away from it but the aircraft was a total loss.

I had always seen the fuselage of the aircraft sitting over by the machine shed at the end of the runway in Wales but the pilot had long since departed the company.

Fast forward a few years and one day I'm flying out of Nome goin to Wales. The weather there is down but it's good enough for me to get in with the GPS-BS approach. I'm flying a T3-1040 and I have one passenger onboard (with a bunch of mail and cargo). So I have this guy sitting up front with me so I can pack the cabin and belly pod to the max. I've even got him on headsets so we can chat. Turns out he's an itinerant school teacher.
Then he says, "been quite a while since I've been to Wales. Last time I was here the plane crashed."
I spin my head around "I'm sorry, come again? You survived a plane crash?"
"Yeah, at Wales."
"What company was that?"
"Cape Smythe."
"You mean to tell me you were the passenger on the 1040 that crashed there a few years ago?"
"Yep. I didn't know what it was called but it was just like this plane."
"So the last time you flew to Wales it was with this company, in a plane identical to this, on a day with weather identical to today's... and the plane crashed... yet, here you are doing it again."
"Yeah, I guess so."
"You've got the biggest brass balls of anyone I've ever met."
"Well, you're not planning on crashing, are you?"
"Well, I wasn't, but now I'm not so sure."

I flew that fucking approach tighter than any approach I've flown before or since.