stefansson-wrangel-09-27-031

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- 10 -

the sky on top of one of the hills. My general rule was well understood, that two
men must never go after the same band of caribou, and I knew that under ordinary
circumstances the boys would obey. But this was no ordinary situation. They
were worried and ill and their lives and mine were at stake. The problem would
present itself to them as "to whether it might not be possible that I had failed
to see these caribou and that I had by now proceeded in my hunt perhaps ten or
fifteen miles beyond them. Had that been so the thing to do would have
been to let Emiu try. He was not a very good hunter, having had little, experience.
I think up to this time he had killed only half a dozen or a dozen caribou in his
life - all of them on our expedition. I feared that the decision might have been
made that he should try the hunt. Even when working with a concerted plan, two
hunters, in my opinion, are not so good as one; when working without plan either
may easily spoil the other's chances. When the fog lifted my mind was at length
freed from this worry, for the caribou were in a position where they could not
be approached except from my direction and a hunter coming up behind me would be
bound to see me as soon as he saw the caribou. That would be his warning to keep
hands off.

As I wanted the whole band, I now used a method of shooting
designed to that end. When described it may seem cruel but it is in reality the
least cruel of all methods, for by it every animal fired at will be dead within
a few minutes, while an indiscriminate blazing away, not uncommon among hunters,
whether native or white, will allow wounded animals to escape to a torture that
will end days later either by death from the wounds directly or from wolves that
will get a crippled animal more easily than those that are unhurt.

A caribou shot through the brain will drop so instantaneously
that it frightens the herd. One shot through the heart will usually sprint at
top speed anything up to a hundred yards, and that frightens the band still more.