In the video, troublesome polar bears are trapped, sedated, and then flown by helicopter to a location away from the town of Churchill. This reminds me of a story I heard in A & P school at West Seattle Community College in 1976-77 when I was learning to be an aircraft mechanic.
Our teacher was a big bear of man. He looked a bit like Santa Claus and had the great smile and kind disposition. He was about 6’6″ tall with a white beard and a wide girth. His face was scarred from a battery exploding in his face years ago.
Our teacher owned a Cessna Skymaster airplane. His hobby was to be a Union General in Civil War re-enactments. I asked him, “Why be a general?” He replied, “Why not?”
The teacher told us stories of general aviation that he’d heard over the years. We learned more from his stories than in the textbooks.
One evening, we were all in night school five nights a week for five hours a night, he told us this story:
A pilot in Canada had been hired by Fish & Game to transport a Grizzly Bear from a populated area into the wilderness. The pilot had a tiny Piper Cub. The Piper Cub is a two-seater tandem aircraft with a steel tube frame and fabric fuselage and wings.
The grizzly bear was sedated and jammed into the back of the Piper Cub after the rear seat was removed. It barely fit in the plane, and the plane was nearly at its maximum gross weight for flight.
It was winter, so the Cub was on skis. The plane took off okay and headed off into the wilderness, where the pilot was told to land on a frozen lake and drop off the grizzly into the wild.
About halfway to his destination, the pilot heard grunting noises behind him. The bear had woken up and wasn’t very happy about the situation.
The pilot was terrified. He put the plane into a climb to send the bear backward towards the tail and then would dive to try and find a place to land. This up-and-down see-saw action continued for miles. The pilot radioed for help and said he was looking for a frozen lake to make an emergency landing.
The bear was now fully awake. The pilot spotted a frozen lake. He made a crazy see-saw landing and jumped out of the plane. He ran to the nearby woods and hid behind a log.
The bear tore the aircraft apart. The grizzly tore all the fabric of the plane, roared in anger, and then ambled off into the woods on the other side of the lake.
An hour or so later, a rescue plane arrived to pick up the pilot. The Piper Cub was left behind. It’s probably at the bottom of the lake.
A sedated grizzly behind your head in a small aircraft is a risky business.
TJM
Timmy Tae's Thoughts 