One of my key moments in the field was when I was able to photograph arctic foxes bringing food back to their den. One morning I saw two foxes coming toward a den with 13 pups. The mother was wild eyed. She had a big, fat snow goose hanging from her mouth. I kept shooting with my camera as she ran over to her pups, who were popping out of their den like rockets. All of them were grabbing bits of the goose and pulling it into the willows to eat it. I shot about half a roll of film on them, hoping the whole time that something would turn out. Well, something did and it ended up in the magazine on pages 82-3.
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My wife and I were cooking dinner in a cabin at a research station when a strong wind blew through. It must have carried the smell of our food because a polar bear who had been about a mile (two kilometers) away came running over and charged the fence that surrounded the station where we were staying. He wouldn't give up, and we got pretty scared. I've been around polar bears several times and had never seen anything like this.
I tried everything I could think of to get rid of him: I banged pot lids together. I yelled. I threw rocks. I even grabbed a shotgun, but he didn't care. He only got more aggressive. Eventually I had to call the manager, who was in Winnipeg. He advised me to use pepper spray. It worked, but the bear made it too dangerous for us to go outside the compound. So a helicopter came to pick us up, and we left. Later I found out from our pilot that the bear hung around the research station for a couple more days after we left.
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Arctic foxes are difficult to photograph because they're extremely shy, especially when they have pups. So I had to find a way to get close to them without actually causing a disturbance. I ended up renting a huge bus in Churchill and parking very close to the den with the 13 pups. My wife and I slept in there for five days, living off soup and sandwiches and hardly ever leaving except when the pups were asleep and their parents were hunting.
Our days began at 5 a.m. and didn't end until about 10 p.m. or so, which is when the sun sets in Canada during the summer. We couldn't even read a book to pass the time because we had to vigilantly watch the den for photo opportunities. We never knew when the pups or their parents were going to appear. We always had to be ready, from early morning light to late evening. By the time we finally left the bus, we actually felt physically weaker because we'd had so little exercise.
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