Thomas Shea Lamb on a hunting trip in 2019. Shea Lamb shot a polar bear that wandered into Kuujjuaq’s downtown Tuesday evening. (Photo credit of Shanna Gordon)
Kuujjuaq hunter says he wishes he didn’t have to kill invading polar bear
‘It’s not the bear’s fault,’ says Thomas Shea Lamb of creature that wandered into community earlier this week
It was just another Tuesday evening in Kuujjuaq for Thomas Shea Lamb, until he had to shoot a polar bear.
Unwinding after his shift as a heavy equipment operator, Shea Lamb was listening to the local radio station with his granddaughter around 5 p.m.
Local hunter Thomas Shea killed the polar bear seen roaming around Kuujjuaq on Tuesday evening. (Photo credit of Shanna Gordon)
The announcer reported a polar bear had just chased a man into his home downtown and tried to force its way in.
“I was like, is that for real?” Shea Lamb said, recalling the moment Wednesday in an interview.
He recalled saying, “OK kids, I’m getting my gun, getting my bullets, and we’re going polar bear hunting!”
Shea Lamb is active in the community where he is a first responder and a firefighter in addition to his full-time job. He and his son are also well-known hunters.
When he heard the callout on the radio, he immediately took off with his .270 Browning hunting rifle towards downtown, where the bear was.
“Sure enough, I see a crowd of a good 50 to 100 people, everyone looking for this elusive polar bear,” Shea Lamb said.
He said he activated the firefighter lights on his vehicle, alongside the police lights already flashing on the scene, and saw people pointing him towards the bear. The police also had their guns drawn, Shea Lamb said.
“I show up and say, ‘I got a big gun!’ There’s the bear, and bang! I got him,” he said.
“It started coming towards me after I’d shot it and two other police officers had their guns drawn,” Shea Lamb said. “Rapid fire happened right away.”
After multiple shots, the bear was killed at around 5:30 p.m., police estimate.
Shea Lamb said he hoisted the bear onto his snowmobile and went home to butcher it with his son.
“I measured it from nose to tail and it was around 70 inches [178 centimetres], so about six foot,” he said. “I figure it was about two and a half years old.”
Because the bear was so skinny, it took about a half-hour to butcher.
“I did not give any meat out to anybody, there was absolutely no fat or nothing in the belly,” Shea Lamb said, adding he believes the polar bear may have been unhealthy.
“It was either abandoned or not feeding for a very long time. Very young, skinny and hungry. It even chased somebody going into a house.”
A bear in that state can be deadly, Shea Lamb said.
Shea Lamb said he wished he didn’t have to destroy the bear, but it just wasn’t possible.
There were no veterinary services or tranquilizers available in Kuujjuaq that might have allowed the bear to be trapped rather than killed.
It’s the first polar bear to get into Kuujjuaq that Shea Lamb says he knows of, and he suspects the effects of climate change might be the reason it came to town looking for food.
There’s no ice formed yet on Ungava Bay to the north, so bears cannot hunt seals there. Although Kuujjuaq is nearly 60 kilometres from the coast, polar bears now need to move further inland to find food.
“It is not normal to find a polar bear to come this far inland,” Shea Lamb said.
For now, the remains of the bear sit in Shea Lamb’s shack waiting to be sold.
LOLOLOLOL
I now see that the Inuit has been hauled into Climate Change..
So unreal.
Climate Change is a qallunaqs word to raise money for the rich to be richer.
Thanks for your note, Flabber
I was enjoying the story about Mr Shea Lamb, chuckling at his comments and admiring his contribution to society
Then the bomb about climate change. I too was flabbergasted
Hey S,,,, don’t ever take flabbergasted types seriously, it’s not about climate change, it’s about flabbergasting.
Lol. You telling me the airport roads in Umiujaq, Inukjuak, and George River are heaving due to plate tectonics?
Are hunters going through the ice in springtime for giggles?
People saw a black Bear in ivujivik a year or two ago. I’ll n give you a hint, that’s unusual. Go look at ice reports. There’s more open water than ever before.
It appears police said to Shea, you with the rifle stand back. This was said after the bear was shot dead. Looks like could have been a better shot, and police may have put a few final shots in, but polar is hard to kill.
Aim for the shoulder, not the heart.
Flabbergasted, you’re fully of it. Seem like you’re being pulled in also, to something, I won’t say much, cause I don’t want be in there with you.
Everything is climate change .
Climate change is a distant second to Colonialism.
The biggest threat to Inuit , not polar bear, not climate change, but alcohol. Period.
THATS FOR SURE !!!!!
I have a little experience hunting myself. If I harvest sick a animal, I do a little investigating. I open up the stomach and some of the intestines to see what the animal may have ingested. You can find all sorts of things especially in polar bears.
Relax Thomas, you killed a monster and in the process saved lives.
Climate change- FYI the earth has been warming since the last ice age, of course with its weather patterns being affected by it. It is what it is. Leave it to the liberal government to use it as an excuse to rob you.
Amen.
your fools if you’re denying climate change. if you don’t like what you hear from politicians, try the experts or look up the evidence in journals. or are all the scientist of the world wrong and us few locals right. I’ll buy a lotto ticket based on your reasoning so i cant wait to win.
“There’s no ice formed yet on Ungava Bay to the north, so bears cannot hunt seals there.” Bears can hunt anywhere, some are good hunters, some aren’t.
The world was in ice age, the world was pangaea. The world was once jurassic. Now we have four seasons. One point, the world was one single super continent. It was winter all year round and it was hot all year round. Now we have the four seasons. The threat to animals is humans. Inuit today number in 30,000 plus. That’s about 13,000 hunters feeding 30,000 plus hungry people.