stefansson-wrangel-09-32-006r

THE FIRST WINTER AND SECOND SUMMER 221

like a seal. After dropping your head on the ice, you
should raise it and look around for several seconds
before dropping it on the ice again. It is preferable also
to wriggle around as if you were itching and trying to
scratch yourself on the ice, for seals are infested with a
sort of louse which makes them wriggle and scratch
continually. With care and patience you should be able
to get within fifteen yards of a seal in two hours. An
expert hunter gets at least two out of three, and some-
times three out of four of the seals he goes after.

When within shooting distance you wait till the seal
raises his head and put a bullet through his brain. Then
you drop your rifle and run as fast as you can, for the
seal is lying on an incline of wet, slippery ice. The mere
shock of instant death may start him slipping and it
happens occasionally that the body will slide into the
water and be lost. Sometimes you get there just in time
to manage to grasp a flipper as it is disappearing. This
sliding of the killed animal is the reason why a shot
at a hundred and fifty or two hundred yards is imprac-
ticable even for the best marksman. You may kill your
seal, but you won’t get him. There is enough buoyancy
in the lungs and blubber to make him rise, but the
original dive will send him twenty or thirty feet diago-
nally down and he will come up under the ice where you
cannot reach him.

Although the practice of this sealing method is a little
difficult, the theory of it is so simple that in my expedi-
tions I have several times staked lives on the assumption
that a new man can translate the principle into practice
in time to avert trouble. I did this first with myself.
Having watched the Alaska Eskimos hunting seals by
the crawling method and having then listened to their