Bear in the air: Churchill mother and cub moved to shores of Hudson Bay with help of helicopter

It's not every day that you see a polar bear up in the air, but that was the scene over David Daley's Churchill, Man. property last week.

Daley runs a dog-sledding company a few kilometres outside of the northern Manitoba town, and came home last Thursday to find a cooler full of meat for his dogs had been torn into.

"About 80 poundsof meat was missing out of it," Daley said.

He looked around and immediatelyspotted a trail of footprints and the twopolar bears that had left them.

"We just looked around and she was not very far away with her little baby.She was nursing the baby up by the teepee," hesaid.

In his 54 years, Daley has seen his fair share of bearsbut never a mother and cub in his dog yard, he said.

After calling Natural Resources, Daley went outside to gently try to encourage the bears to move along.

"I made a lot of noise, I turned on the truck, I backed the truck up and down, I started the snow machines," he said.

"I didn't want to scare her too badly because her baby looked awful small and I didn't want her to leave her baby behind."

The bears came back

When a conservation team arrived, they were able to encourage the bears into the woods. But the pair didn't go far, Daley said.

By the next morning, the mother and cub back were back in the yard, he said.

Natural Resources showed up again, this time with biologists.

"There was some scientists in town who were working on the denning area so they came over with the helicopter," Daley said.

The team decided thesafest way to remove the bears was to sedate them and transport them to the ice.

"They put the baby in a dog kennel and the baby only weighed 18 pounds, so it was just a tiny little polar bear," Daley said.

Theadult female bear had to be airlifted onto the truck with the help of a net and the helicopter.

Once she was in the truck, Daley saidhe helped remove bear from the net and team transported the pair to shores of Hudson Bay.

"They monitored them until they both woke up safe sound and they sauntered off out onto the ice," he said. "Everything lined up perfectly for her and for us."