“I personally like to see bears in the wild. Though I have no compunction against shooting one to death if need be”
Good for you!
I live in the land of brown/black bears and grizzlies...just a few months ago a sow and two cubs were checking out my driveway and one of the cubs tried to climb into my truck bed (overnight camera footage).
I do NOT ever want to see a polar bear or Kodiak in person after being WAAAAAAY too close to two Alaska brown bears one summer outside of S. Naknek at around 11:00 PM... BIG bad a$$ mo-fos them!
I knew a guy that worked in a dump in Alaska. He was new, and one day they sent him out to “shoo away the polar bears.” How, he asked, does one do that? They put him in the bulldozer, and told him to lift the bucket up off the ground and just advance slowly toward the bear. Well...easy enough. When he got close, the bear stood up, made eye contact, and dropped its front feet down, hard, on the bucket. Here endeth the lesson.