Enjoyed reading this! A few comments about the Inuits choice of firearms based on four bow hunts with them from 2018 to 2021:

For his own polar bear (and seal) hunts, my assistant polar bear guide out of Resolute Bay, Nunavut used a Remington 700 .222 with 50 gr softpoints. Said he bought it 15 years earlier when he was in high school. He'd typically order in 500 rounds of ammo every year for it, but was contemplating starting to reload based on uncertain availability of ammo (this was in February 2018).

I asked him about his shot placement and hunting techniques of polar bears...."stay about 70 yards away, take a perfectly frontal shot into the soft spot of the chest". And he said he'd typically shoot them 2 or 3 times "to put them to sleep".

As a sidelight, he was my backup when I arrowed my bear. We got in to 30 yards broadside while the 9 sled/bear dogs held the the bear at bay. The big boar let out a ferocious roar when the arrow hit, then lunged forward one step before melting down into the snow. He was carrying an ancient .303 British Lee Enfield with 180 gr Winchester Silvertips. I was happy I made a perfect shot putting the bear was down in a few seconds as the backup rifle had been showered with sea water a few days earlier when he fired a shot straight down at a seal in a breathing hole through the ice and missed. He'd scraped the frozen sea water off the the action and out of the end of the barrel with a seal gaff hook (think hay hook) so he could eject the empty case. The rifle stayed outside the tent the entire hunt so wouldn't get condensation and freeze up in the -30* to -40* conditions.

Down around Baker Lake, Nunavut, 100 miles inland from the west side of Hudson Bay my archery caribou guide used carried a left hand Ruger M77 chambered in .204 Ruger using 34 gr hollow points. This was his wolf and caribou rifle...and also his grizzly gun.

The week before I got there in late October 2018 he'd shot a barren ground grizzly. I asked him how it had gone down: "first shot the bear was moving away at 70 yds. He got pretty excited when I hit in the butt. It took a couple more shots to calm him down". The hide was draped over the deck railing at his house...I'd guess it was a 5.5' or 6' bear as the barren ground bears are relatively small.

The guide also had a Ruger M77 in .308 Winchester that he he was carrying in 2019, not the .204. Says that the outfitter he worked for had encouraged him to use it versus his .204 when he was backing up muskox and caribou hunters, with the potential of a grizzly or polar bear run-in, depending on how far out from Hudson Bay he was hunting.