Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/58
in autumn on new ice. Hare or bear skin is fastened to the soles of the hunter's feet. Every time the seal snorts at a breathing hole (mostly about eight times at each appearance), the hunter takes a step towards the hole, for when it snorts the seal cannot hear the step; when the seal has finished the hunter stands quite still. In this manner he gradually gets to the hole and can harpoon the seal.
Hunting young seals is carried on in spring. The dogs scent out the feeding holes in the ice where the still woolly coated seals lie. By stamping on the ice one can hear where the cavity is; a hole is then hewn in the ice with the ice-pick and the young seal is hauled out with the seal hook. This hunting, however, is not of much importance.
At current openings, where there is open water all through the winter, the following method of seal hunting is pursued: The hunter stands at the end of the hole towards which the current runs. The seal is carried with the current towards him; when it raises its head above the water it is shot and, when the current then brings it towards the edge of the ice, it is harpooned.
From the ice edge, at cracks and holes, the method sinâsiorneq is practised in winter, and especially in spring; the hunter stands ready at the ice edge or at the hole and harpoons the seal when it appears. The ice-hunting harpoon must then be thrown, in which case the line is led through the loop on the shaft in order to hold the shaft when the head breaks off; when the harpoon is thrust into the seal it is, of course, retained in the hand and this measure is not necessary. At Button Point four men caught 30 seals in this manner in the course of an afternoon in June.
More important, however, is ũtoq hunting (ũtorniarneq): hunting seals that are basking in the sun; from the middle of May until the ice breaks up this method gives a rich yield; it is as a rule from this hunting that the Eskimos obtain their winter supplies of blubber. Nowadays guns are always used, with the result that large numbers of seals are lost, as the creeping hunter does not kill them outright and they have strength enough to let themselves glide into the hole. The old fashioned method of crawling up to the seal, imitating a seal's movements on the way, and then harpooning it at short range, is still known by older men but is not used much as it is very slow; an old man at Ponds Inlet, however, caught two seals in this manner in the summer of 1923; it is illustrated by Parry.[1] Rae[2] mentions that the women at Repulse Bay were skilful at crawling up to seals and killing them with a small club.