U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)-– Detailed, official information has surfaced about the defensive use of a pistol failure involving a .22 pistol and a polar bear in the Svalbard archipelago of Norway.
One of the three documented cases where a pistol was fired to defend from a bear and failed was the sad tale of crew passengers from the tour/expedition ship Origo in the summer of 1995. The event, as related in a travel guide, was documented on AmmoLand. There were several other sources that corroborated the event; the details were from the travel guide.
As part of ongoing research to discover documented cases where pistols were fired in defense against bears, AmmoLand filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for polar bear incidents for this correspondent.
The released data contained a redacted, English translation of the narrative of the official Svalbard report on the Origo incident.
The official version is far more detailed and considerably more believable than the skeleton version in the travel guide book. They overlap closely; the details in the official version explain a great deal which seemed almost farcical in the travel guide version.
Travel Guide version Kiepertoyo Hinlopen Strait, August 1995
Another five people of the crew set out separately with only a .22 pistol and a flare gun. After an hour’s march, the second party were met by a bear, 75m away and openly aggressive. The bear was distracted neither by warning shot nor flare and attacked one of the party. As he did so, he was shot, from a range of only 15m and turned against the man who had fired at him. This man tossed the
