This is pretty hardcore. They use an archery set on the bear!
You can’t take polar bear trophies into the United States today. This animal was taken at Norwegian Bay, which is in Nunavut in the far north of Canada.
This animal was taken before the US listed this species as threatened under the ESA, which led to the banning of the importation of polar bear trophies, but its hide may still be in Canada.
I found the hunt itself quite fascinating.
The dogs are very useful in baying up the bear so the hunter can get clean shot.
Some may take issue with me posting this video.
But using dogs to hunt polar bears is one of the oldest traditions in the arctic.
It’s very unlikely that the dogs we call sled dogs today were used primarily in hauling sleds.
Vilhjalmur Stefansson suggest that widespread use of dogs as draft animals in the arctic couldn’t happen until the native peoples procured firearms. Rifles allowed them to kill enough game to feed large numbers of dogs for hauling purposes. Before that, Stefansson believed that the dogs were primarily used for hunting, and most families kept only a pair of dogs for hunting.
I’m probably going to catch some criticism for posting this video.
I don’t hate polar bears. I certainly don’t want them to go extinct.
But I just found the hunt so impressive that I will show you it to you.
You can make up your own mind what you think about it.
But I was glad to have found it.
I didn’t watch the video, not because I disagree with hunting . . . I’ve just not got the stomach for it.
I was of the impression the declaration of Polar Bears as endangered was political and it has since been proven there has been no change in the population since the 60s.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/no-decline-polar-bear-population
I think the only reason why they were placed on that list was because initially people didn’t think they’d handle climate change very well. All the initial DNA studies on polar bears suggested that they were a new species that only could exist with arctic sea ice.
Now, we know that they are a much older species, and they have survived warming periods before.
So it’s likely that their listing is based upon some really dodgy science in the first place.
Science was never dodgy. It was anti-environmentalist extremist religious practitioners that were out there trying to prove it wrong. For example, Canadian PM Harper declared that conservation organization support terrorism.
Polar bears are regarded as one of the 5 arctic mammals that are threatened due to climate change. There is a good book with lots of references that clearly show the plight of polar bears. It is by Kieran Mulvaney -’The Great White Bear.
Besides Global Warming is for real:
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1271777–hot-september-matches-world-record
I do believe in climate change. I accept that. That’s not what I am arguing.
What I find dodgy is the claim that polar bears will go extinct because of climate change.
It’s based upon two faulty assumptions:
1. Polar bears are a recently evolved species from the brown bear, and that is has only ever existed with arctic ice. Genome-wide analyses have found that the polar bear is actually quite old, and it has survived warming periods before. And it usually does so by incorporating brown bear genes into its bloodlines.
2. Polar bears cannot adapt to living anywhere but the arctic. This is simply false. They actually had an extensive range to the south. In the Maritimes, they were found as far south as Nova Scotia and were also seen in Maine. They used to be found all over Newfoundland. Their typical range was at least to the St. Lawrence River. Those places are not in the arctic. They aren’t found there now.
Those two assumptions make the protection that the US has given them really hard to justify.
No problem with that, except man made interference in nature brings simply too rapid a change that does not let wildlife adapt to it. The climate change caused by humans is too fast. Polar ice is melting too fast forcing polar bears into starvation, cannibalization of denning mothers and cubs, and running into humans with tragic results. Polar bears may have adapted to warmer climates and then back to colder climate eons ago, but the present degree of change is too much for any species, save humans, to adapt.
The polar bear has lived through very rapid warming periods before. The warming period that happened at the end of the Pleistocene was quite rapid, and it’s one of the reasons why we had so many mass extinction.
I don’t think these scientists are taking into account how intelligent and adaptable polar bears are. They can learn to exploit new food resources. They’ve done it all over their range. I think we’re making an error by assuming that polar bears must always be associated with arctic sea ice.
Further, their range in historical times was not always in the arctic. They were once very common along the Gulf of St. Lawrence. And there’s a section in Farley Mowat’s Sea of Slaughter in which he quotes a scientific paper of polar bears breeding what is really a subarctic environment, (I think in Manitoba, but don’t quote me.)
I think our English word “polar bear” is actually incorrect. They were always called white bears or water bears in Newfoundland.
Well the scientific name, I am sure you are aware, is Ursus maritimus, which would make it a sea bear, which is probably equally incorrect.
Have we checked whether that sub-arctic environment itself provided enough ice cover for the white bears to hunt whatever they were hunting? And hunt they must for their biology only allows for meat and fat. They can’t emulate grizzlies and black bears on gastronomy.
Observation around Churchil, Manitoba have suggested that white bears actually lived without food for as long as 6 months before heading out for frozen sea to hunt. So they may be surviving in warmer conditions but only using their stored up reservoir of energy.
But you have mentioned an interesting point. I will email Keiran Mulvaney to seek his opinion. Let us see what he has to say.
I don’t think their biology is that limiting. This is a bear that eats a lot of meat. That’s true.
But I don’t know if you’ve seen what they eat when they come into places like Churchill, Manitoba. They eat everything that is organic in nature, including dogs.
There is also a lot of evidence that certain seal species in the North Atlantic are increasing their populations. They aren’t ice seals, but there is not a reason why the southerly populations of polar bear wouldn’t have hunted them when polar bears were more common in to the South.
I don’t know if anyone can say that they are limited by their diet. Their closest relatives are highly omnivorous, and what’s more, that close relative has exchanged genes with them in the past and is doing so now, which would certainly reduce their reliance upon carnivorous diets– if they are indeed that limited (which I’m quite skeptical.)
I am not skeptical about climate change. I am skeptical about certain claims about polar bears. This is not a stupid animal with an overly specialized diet. It’s not the giant panda.
I’d also caution people from using polar bears as a symbol for climate change, because these bears may be much more resilient than we were initially assuming.
I’m better on the intelligence of the bear.
BTW, if you go through the literature on this, there is a not a consensus. It’s still up for debate.
Frogs make a better case for climate-changes.
Scottie,
Both sides of the picture are equally intriguing. After having read many papers, I for myself have concluded the following:
1. White bears may have survived in the warmer climates in the past due to availability of pray that were sufficient to keep them alive. That pray was wiped out by our early explorers.
2. It is yet to be seen the level of human intervention through settlements in their previous (warmer) territories where they were actually discovered by Greeks and Romans.
3. The pace of climate change (less ice in the arctic and more in the antarctic) is too fast for them to adapt.
I believe it is better for conservationists to brace up for a long drawn battle with anti-climate change folks. That will be a better strategy in a worst case scenario. If polar bears adapt to warmer climate, good. But nature conservation supporters like me should see to it that we don’t get to that point of no return for the bears..
http://www.amnh.org/science/papers/polar_bears.php A paper of interest.
I found the part in Sea of Slaughter that is most relevant to this discussion:
http://books.google.com/books?id=z6jXL-X0KZkC&lpg=PA131&ots=hhoJ9zt0Qn&dq=farley%20mowat%20polar%20bears&pg=PA113#v=onepage&q&f=false
I am reading it now. The book on the whole appears interesting.
Hmm – I’m not a fan of any gratuitous killing for entertainment – especially with archery, which can inflict severe wounds leaving the animal to die in agony over a period of days. Especially in the hands of an enthusiastic amateur.
And I don’t think anyone would hunt polar bears as a food source, although I imagine the Inuit might want to use the fur for clothing and shelter, but that is more of a survival necessity which is a different matter entirely?
Maybe I’m just a bit too hardcore about animal rights…
Keep in mind that I don’t accept the precepts of animal rights.
I accept more like a social contract model for how humans should related to animals, and it’s entirely based upon a utilitarian framework. We should relate to dogs very differently than we should to deer, which will readily overpopulate if not hunted, and we should treat things like wild rats, which carry disease, very differently from lab rats, which help cure disease, and pet rats, which we consider our social partners.
If we try to create an absolute framework for dealing with animals, and say that all animals have the “same rights,” then we’ve conceded both biodiversity and research on disease.
When it comes to polar bears, I’m not concerned about the individual. I’m concerned about whether they can exist in warming world (I accept the science behind climate change, unlike most Americans). In their natural history, polar bears have survived warming periods, so they might very well survive this one. But if they do, they will have to move off the ice and start hunting terrestrial prey. That will instantly put them in conflict with people living in the arctic. Hunting pressure is a very good way to put the “ecology of fear” into an animal. If a polar bear knows that people might kill them, they won’t come to settlements and raid garbage dumps and kill dogs.
Further, the polar bear hunts, which are strictly regulated, do provide income to the people who live up there. The indigenous people of the North American arctic are a colonized people. They are not wealthy, and in a lot of ways, their culture has been destroyed. But polar bear hunting hasn’t been taken away from them, and what’s more, they can make some money doing it. They do use the fur, but so does a trophy. The only difference is the trophy is work of art that will be displayed for decades, and the garments made from polar bears won’t last that long.
Finally, since America has banned the importation of polar bear trophies, the indigenous communities in that part of Canada have used their quotas to sell fur to the Chinese and Russian markets. The problem with this that unlike American hunters, who usually take a great pride in following game laws, the Russian and Chinese fur market is perfectly fine with taking the pelts of poached bears.
So now by placing the polar bear as threatened, we’ve actually made it so that more polar bears will be killed.
When we reduce these arguments to simple black and white exchanges, we lose the nuance. Reality-based solutions require nuance and consideration.
If we want to do what’s best for polar bears is banning polar bear hunting the solution?
I should point out that polar bears, like black bears, generally only attack people when they consider them a prey source. Brown/grizzly bears generally attack people when they consider them a threat. If you put a lot of hunting pressure on brown bears, you could make them more dangerous. But with black bears, it clearly has the effect that they don’t bother people. My guess is the same would work out for polar bears.
Want less bow-hunters? Lift the gun-control laws which make it impractical for some Canadians to own a rifle. Please note the surges of bow-hunters coinciding with the years where gun-regulations became stricter: http://www.ubbc.ca/resources/documents/archive/Bowhunting_An_Effective_but_Overlooked_Tool_for_Wildlife_Management_in_BC.pdf (page 2, Table 1). Not every Canadian want to go through the hassle of registering their rifle with the government.
I’m South African and am not au-fait with Canadian (or US) gun laws. Here in Africa we have “tourism businesses” that punt bow hunting of our wild game to tourists to make a fast buck for a thrill. Needless to say, the animals end up suffering because the bow hunters tend to often be amateurs- and we don’t have to resort to bows, because our gun laws are fairly liberal. It may be bad enough bringing down a polar bear with a bow – try doing that to an African buffalo if you’re not a pro (and I seem to remember sometime ago, people bow hunting elephant??).
There’s rather a lot of pillage and plunder of our wildlife resources these days, in exchange for some nice strong overseas currency – and I’m not sure anyone round this neck of the woods has their conservation hat firmly on their heads. Africa looks for foreign exchange!
Scottie said “When it comes to polar bears, I’m not concerned about the individual.”
This is the very core concept of species conservation. AR folks are usually so wrapped up in the individual animals that they forget to consider that long-term species survival should be the real goal–individuals come and go but if the species survives there’ll continue to be individuals. And what is the best bet for long-term species survival? Habitat preservation. What group is most instrumental in preserving habitat? The hunting lobbies.
Granted they sometimes get wrong-headed as is happening w/ wolves out west, but education and engagement in the process can go a long way towards ameliorating that. Be aware that its their dollars, their votes and their influence that prevents most key habitat from becoming just another McDonaldized, monocultured, ecological desert.
Strapping oneself to a tree or banging pots and pans when one encounters a hunter may make one feel good and provide good fodder for the press, but in the final analysis it won’t stop the destruction of habitat (that process begins in corporate board rooms and political back rooms, not out in the woods.) Hunting dollars and cooperative programs involving both hunters and conservationists does and will continue to preserve habitat.
The AR response is an an emotional and empathetic one (appealing but mostly futile). Habitat and species preservation via alliances of hunters and conservationists is an reasoned response and much more likely to succeed.
And thats the hard truth!
It’s always sad to see such an impressive animal as a polar bear killed; especially for sport. This was not a meat hunt, even if the meat was actually utilized. When it is native people (Eskimos?) using one of their allotted permits to take a polar bear, it’s usually just to guide some American or European hunter to a “trophy”. That sad state of affairs being set aside, I’d like to make two points that have nothing to do with the “right or wrong” of killing a polar bear.
First, it’s obvious some of those dogs surrounding the bear have something other than ‘Primitive Arctic Sled Dog’ in them. Some have floppy ears and less-curled tails, indicating a mixing of who knows what other breeds in their genotype. Probably something bred into the modern racing “husky” lines that have little in common with true ancient lines of sled dogs other than they pull a sled.
The second is that when Vilhjalmur Stefansson suggests dogs were probably not used as sled dogs in the Arctic until the people procured firearms, he must have been discounting the fact that these Arctic people must have lived in small villages; perhaps just extended family groups. And if each household kept a “pair” of dogs, when the men of the village got together for a hunt they probably combined all their dogs to haul one sledge. This sledge was probably used primarily to haul their kills back to the village where the women, who did the real “work” in any primitive society while the men did the “fun stuff” like hunting, would butcher it. I doubt that at any time before the advent of their having firearms could a group of primitive hunters taking large, dangerous game such as polar bears have killed enough during any one hunt to need more than one sledge to bring their game home. It’s not like every man in the village jumped on their own sledge pulled by a dozen dogs and went racing off with everyone else for a hunt. Before they had firearms these men were killing polar bears by getting up close and personal and stabbing them with bone-tipped spears as their dogs held them at bay. If you do this once a day you’ve really done a days work; it’s not like standing back and laughing as one of your party shoots a bear with a 7mm Magnum rifle.
But even if the people of the Arctic needed dogs purely for transportation, you do not need a dozen dogs to pull one man and his hunting gear on a lightweight sled. Back when I primarily raised wolf-dogs, I lived a quarter mile from the Otter Creek river that runs north through west-central Vermont and feeds into Lake Champlain. The lake was about five miles from where I lived, and in most places near where the river emptied into it, it was only a mile or so wide, though the lake itself is some 140 miles long, being the border between northern New York State and most of Vermont, and up to ten miles wide in places.
Once the ice on the river and lake was sound enough to hold our weight, and there was plenty of snow in the forest, I would harness three of my wolf-dogs, including Chauka, a 165 pound animal that was about as far from modern racing huskies as any sled dog type dog could be, onto my light-weight sled and they’d haul me down through the woods to the river where we’d head for the lake. Once on the ice of the lake we’d cut north to Split Rock Bay on the New York side and turn up into the forest of the Adirondack Park, a six million acre area of mostly wilderness, though there are pieces of private property and several towns scattered throughout the park. I’d drive the dogs (wolf-dogs) up into the mountains until we found a ravine or bank where the snow had drifted deep, and there I’d set up camp and dig a small snow-cave. When I was ready to settle in for the night I’d crawl into the cave, followed by the dogs, who usually soon got too warm and would go back outside to sleep curled in the snow. I’d stay warm as toast all night , with nothing but a primitive oil lamp burning on a snow shelf I’d fashioned on a “wall” of the small cave, and if I’d been in an area where I had to worry about polar bears (or any kind of bear) investigating my camp at night, the dogs would have given me plenty of advance warning so I would not have been startled out of sleep by a bear sticking its head into my shelter, unlike some poor campers in Yellowstone who have been dragged out of their tents in their sleeping bags in the middle of the night by Grizzlies. So a man really only needed two or three big, powerful sled dogs (malamutes?) pulling a light-weight sled, not a big team hauling a heavy sledge to move about quickly in a snow-covered environment.
Doing fun things like this with my dogs, and hunting with them back when I hunted, demonstrated to me just how important the dog must have been to primitive man. There is no doubt in my mind that any people living in such an inhospitable environment as the Arctic could not have survived without their dogs. And I can only imagine that these dogs would not have been used for just one purpose; they must have served as hunting partners, sledge haulers, baby sitters, hot water bottles and even as an emergency food source. I believe dogs are a big part of what allowed primitive man to become so highly successful.
My understanding was that these arctic dogs were fed primarily on fish too. Along with the offal and some of the muscle meat from seals, whales, etc. (the native folks apparently preferred the blubber), that would certainly make a difference in the equation.
David,
You must write a book and share all your experience with a greater audience. i guarantee your book will be a best seller.
:-)
Wonderful to read! I agree with Suhail – when does it hit the bookshelves? Or does this group get an advance e-book copy? (heh heh!)
“where the women, who did the real “work” in any primitive society while the men did the “fun stuff” like hunting, would butcher it. ”
I’d like to note that hunting large game or hunting in general with primitive implements is extremely risky, so the men doing the “fun stuff” might get to also die a slow death of starvation in an ice crack or mauled by a bear while the women are largely protected from such messy ends.
Just sayin’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astuvansalmi_rock_paintings
Women hunted too.
Jessica, as I’ve said all along, all my comments are just my points of view. To me (at least when I was younger), taking a large, dangerous ungulate, and maybe even a bear if the meat was needed, with a spear and the aid of a pack of wolf-dogs would be “fun stuff’. I’ve risked my life doing a lot duller things. I’ve always thought it was how you lived, not how long you lived. But that’s just me, I’ve never advocated my life choices for others. :)
Hey, I think hunting and skinning animals is fun, along with crocheting and cleaning my shower, so I guess it’s a matter of perspective.
I think the perception of gender roles in primitive societies is probably less than accurate, but generally from a biological perspective you want to minimize risk to the more expensive gamete.
David said:. When it is native people (Eskimos?) using one of their allotted permits to take a polar bear, it’s usually just to guide some American or European hunter to a “trophy”. That sad state of affairs being set aside
== I think it is pretty arrogant of anyone to decide that “they” have to follow “our” moral codes regarding things that really come down to personal choices. So what if they kill it as a trophy? If the numbers of kills are regulated so that the species in question isn’t endangered and if the method of killing is no worse than the animal would suffer if killed by something OTHER than man, then IMO, there really isn’t any justification in inflicting one’s personal morality or ethics on someone else. Those who are Native Americans, Aborigines, Inuit, etc, have had enough damage to their culture and lives by others that there is no moral ground for inflicting our choices or preferences on them. It would be different if they were exterminating polar bears, since that hurts the species as a whole and deprives others of enjoying the species in the future.
Regarding Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s suggestion that dogs were probably not used as sled dogs in the Arctic until the people procured firearms – sounds like a Coppinger type argument to me. As David points out, most villages pooled their dogs for any teams needed to pull sleds. It’s well documented that hunting occurred long before the invention of the gun, and so was the use of a draft animal. Just to haul a seal or small whale to a village would have been much harder without the use of dogs. The usual method of feeding dogs is to give them what the people don’t eat and to let them find what they can in addition. The use of dogs in the European tundra areas for sled dogs, and herding dogs (as with the Samoyeds) or for sled and hunting are perfectly compatible. It doesn’t take much to figure out a dog can haul far more pound for pound than a person. A team of 5 or 6 dogs would serve many a small village.
I doubt anyone hunted polar bear on any regular basis for food. But they probably were just fine with killing any they came across that were hibernating, any weak or injured animal, and certainly any animal that posed a threat to themselves and their village. The danger posed by a polar bear is probably not quantum levels different than that posed by a walrus or whale, which were often food mainstays. Like most “hunter gatherers” they probably hunted on a basis of opportunity and reasonable expectation of success compared to risk.
As for bow hunting, it might be useful to verify an individual has some skills with their hunting tool of choice before they go off hunting. And maybe those “guiding” a tourist hunter should have some back up in the case of an inept or insufficient shot. However, I suspect that however incompetent, again, the human isn’t really inflicting anything worse than nature provides – is it really worse than if that bear were in a fight and mauled by another bear?
They weren’t hunting polar bears on a regular basis.
But they were hunting seals, muskoxen, and caribou. And from all account, it’s much easier to hunt these animals with dogs than on your own.
But you’re still limited in how much food you can procure through hunting these animals. You aren’t going to be able to keep vast numbers of dogs for hauling purposes, when it’s actually a much more efficient use for them be used as hunting animal.
In the Russian literature that I’ve read, the vast majority of dogs in the Russian arctic were used for hunting or herding purposes. It was only the dogs that were too stupid to be of much use for hunters that got hitched up to sled (which might tell you a lot about Siberian huskies! Just kidding).
Stefansson was making ethnographic comparisons between Inuit groups with rifles and those without. Those without never had more than a pair of dogs on them, and the dogs were used to hunt caribou, seals, and muskoxen.
The idea of having dogs bred solely for sledding purposes is very new.
A Russian would never use one of his fine laika hunting dogs as a sled dog, and I’m sure that the Inuit were the same until they could surplus kill enough caribou or marine mammals to maintain hordes of dogs.
The increased population of this sort of dog is also why the smaller hunting dogs of the Inuit and other northern peoples went extinct, see the Hare Indian dog.
I’ve never seen anyone have a major problem with using say, a Belgian Sheepdog (clearly a herding dog) as a draft animal as well. Or to hunt. (the foundation dog was shot by a game warden. Use of Belgians as “lurchers” was one of the reasons their use as messinger dogs in WWI was tried). I really doubt that the original artic dogs were any less versatile. Samoyeds can certainly do all three. And I doubt keeping 5 or so dogs put that large a strain on a village, given the dogs’ versatile roles (including warning of and possibly warding off polar bears).
I agree breeding dogs soley for sledding purposes is new. I didn’t read the comment to say that, but to assert that the dogs weren’t used for sledding “at all” until modern times. Specialist dogs (ONLY used as hounds, ONLY used as ….) are all fairly recent — you can only afford a true specialist if you have a wealthy enough economy to afford that. Most subsistance folk (including peasants thru the Middle Ages) had dogs that may have been “primarily” used for one or two tasks, but who could be employed effectively in others as well.
Peggy Richter
Seeing huskies and malamutes of today, I haven’t an iota of doubt in that they were at least not used as guard dogs of life and property. Both of them make extremely poor guard dogs. They may have barked their hearts out at at prowling wolves and bears, but they were not guard dogs against theft.
The breeds got ruined by Europeans valuing large-teams which are tethered and based on their performance in the races; not based on practical useages.
Any idea about guarding instinct in Canadian Eskimo Dogs? They are considered to be a primitive breed. I met some breeders last year at dogsled races at Kortright Park near Toronto, but didn’t ask this question. What I found was they are 100% meat eaters. They can’t digest kibbles :-)
Suhail, I agree with you about primitive sled dogs not being watch dogs since in a small, close-nit community like most primitive people lived in, such social betrayals as stealing would not be tolerated, and strangers were few and far between. So “watch dogs” aggressive towards humans would not be needed. But I once had a very human aggressive Alaskan malamute. She was Blanco’s mother as a matter of fact. Her original owner used to take her jogging with her on the streets of Boston, but eventually she became so aggressive that she (the owner) had to get rid of her. That’s how I ended up with her. She’d ride in my truck on the seat beside me, and if anyone approached too close she’d hit the glass of the window with barred teeth, as vicious as any trained guard dog.
So I imagine there were always some sled dogs that had the tendency to be “watch dogs”, and if this was a desired and needed trait it could have been selectively bred for. The first malamutes to be brought down to the lower 48 were probably selected for their good dispositions as well as their conformation; especially the Kotzebues. Maybe that’s why the M’Loots were supposed to be more human aggressive, but they more than likely had some European dog in them. I have a malamute now descended from Cascade Kennels that’s odd in that she’s as loyal and obedient as a good shepherd. Like most malamutes she loves everybody, but scares people because she smiles showing her teeth and goes “Wooo, wooo, wooo”, which sounds kinda like a growl as she trots up to them.
My Irish wolfhounds think any stranger is just a friend they haven’t met yet, but the breed was supposedly once very fierce, and was even used in war (if in fact today’s wolfhound is still the same breed as those ancient dogs). So judging what a “breed’ might have originally been capable of by comparing them to today’s dogs might be difficult.
You can’t compare Russia and Fennoscandinavia to Canada and Alaska. They figured out skiing. They also figured out how to herd reindeer and use them as draft animals.
The closest thing we have to skis are those Alaskan-style snowshoes.
I don’t believe I was suggesting anyone follow my own moral code when I referred to that “sad state of affairs”; I was basically commenting on the destruction of the native people’s culture and the drastic change in the way they live rather than the death of the bear. I may have worded it wrong, and if I came off as arrogant it may be because I make statements based on my own view of things. I personally wouldn’t kill a polar bear for any reason, but I can go down to the grocery store and get all the food I need. If native people sell their sustenance permits to a big game hunter, and get to eat 1000 pounds of corn fed beef rather than 300 pounds of tough polar bear, more power to them; it makes no difference to me, or I assume, to the dead bear. I’ve eaten plenty of black bear meat, and I don’t care much for it.
Growing up I supplied better than half the meat eaten in our house by hunting. So I have killed and eaten my share of game in my life, and have even hunted fox and raccoon for their fur, so moralizing what is right or wrong in how or why an animal dies is not something I feel justified in doing. But personally I feel it’s “sad” to see a polar bear die in any way, be it a natural death, such as a young bear being killed by an older boar, or one shot by a New York stock broker or struck by lightning.
In the opening comments of my post I was just trying to get past the killing of the bear, a subject I suspected many other readers would jump on with vigor, and on to the discussion of the use of dogs by primitive people; the area of most interest to me.
Don’t take the criticism here too harshly David, we all take our lumps at one time or another. But it is thru these vigorous exchanges and critiques that we arrive at the best and most likely resolution of issues that are of primary concern to most, if not all, of the regular subscribers to Scottie’s Blog.
I would hope that the ideas born from these spirited exchanges will help inform and guide future conservation decisions and policies; not to mention initiatives in improving domestic dog breeding; animal welfare and our understanding of evolutionary processes.
BTW: I too believe that your critter tales would make excellent fodder for a book or two.
Thanks, massugu, but I’m pretty thick skinned. I just want to make sure people understand what I’m actually saying. And who knows, maybe those books about all my animal adventures will be written someday. These polar bear conversations are pretty interesting, but my main interest is in dogs and their social/economic interactions with humans, both archaic and modern. So I suppose you’ll find me posting in whenever a topic along those lines come up.
As for global warming effecting the polar bears, I imagine we’ll find they’re much more resilient than we suspect. The main problem with their moving onto the mainland may be their interbreeding with grizzly/brown bears. After enough generations of crossbreeding the true polar bear may become extinct, though much like the Neanderthal, whose genes live on in many of us, their genes will live on in the brown/polar hybrids that (might) take their place.
And when the climate does turn colder (which it undoubtedly will), those genes will be ready and waiting for expression.
Native Americans on the Great Plains used dogs to pull travois before they had horses. I don’t know how frequently they used them for that purpose, but I don’t see a whole lot of difference in pulling a travois & pulling a sled. I think it may be likely that Northern hunters only used dogs occasionally for pulling, such as when they had a large quantity of meat or large, heavy skins to haul back from a hunt. I doubt they routinely used them for transportation; as Scottie has pointed out, that would be an inefficient use of a valuable resource (hunting dogs).
I think that in times past, especially among native people who had to live off the land, most dogs were multipurpose animals: hunting, guarding, possibly hauling, and even as a food source themselves, if other food became scarce. And of course, as pets too. Most people who live close to the land in the way of native people just don’t have the resources to keep lots of different kinds of highly specialized animals.
“I was basically commenting on the destruction of the native people’s culture and the drastic change in the way they live rather than the death of the bear.”
Just as a side comment my husband is Metis and we have done extensive research into his heritage (and mine as well). He was raised a hunter with great influence from his grandfather, who was himself born on a trap line. We live on the same land his grandfather trapped on starting 90 years ago.
While the native people’s culture has been eroded, and there are many elements of that to mourn over, keep in mind there are areas where modern culture has made vast improvements. There are only rare ancestors behind my husband that lived past 40. Many women died in their early twenties, and many of his male ancestos outlived four or five wives. My husband’s grandfather lost two wives before he was 24, his first when she was 19 and had already born three children. HE had a grandfather that lost 5 wives and, when asked, could not remember the names of all the children that he had lost, and was sad over that.
Some changes in the way they live have been welcomed.
Suhail, Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I don’t believe all who read my comments feel the same way. As a matter of fact I have written a book, but it’s a horror story called CHIMERA that is available on Amazon Kindle (I hope this isn’t considered a plug). But quite a few friends have suggested I also write about my experiences with all my various animals.
Arlene, I’m sure there is a great deal for native peoples to be thankful for with modern society, but again I must state that everything I say is just my opinion of how I see things. I am 1/8 Native American, the rest being Scottish, Irish, Norwegian and French (Canadian). My French Canadian grandfather claimed he was half “Indian”, but preferred to pass as white, and warned my mother and her siblings to keep the family secret. I don’t think my mother thought much about being ¼ Indian at all, and I’ve always been proud of the native blood I carry. I suppose we could nitpick all day about what lifestyle is better, the Native Americans’ before the white man (or even the Irish before the English) or now with modern technology and proper medications, but it would all just be someone’s opinion. I have long thought I would have done better in a more primitive society, but I’ve had heart surgery so would have been dead at an earlier age if I lived in an earlier time. I guess I’m just a romantic, and see the beauty of primitive cultures where others see no TV, but I’m not blind to the fact that the reality of a (more) primitive lifestyle was a harsh existence, and quite often an early death.
Yep, and Native Americans weren’t the only ones to die young and/or in childbirth. My 3x g-granddad, the Rev. John Straight/Strait, outlived all 3 of his wives and some of his 18 children.
Life was rough, government wasn’t expected to protect us from the exigencies of daily life or our own stupidity, and the medical establishment wasn’t organized to find the solution for specific diseases–of which there were many.
As with almost everything, the situation of N. Americans (native and non-) wasn’t (and isn’t) binary–better in some respects and worse in others. However, the overall situation for 17th to mid-19th century European immigrants was almost always better in the New World, where land to grow food and husband stock (in very short supply in an overcrowded agrarian Europe) was almost always available if one were willing to take risks. I would posit the same applies to S. Africa, Oz, and New Zealand.
I think the function of “guard dog” is based on need. You may need a “bark if the polar bear is coming” but also need a dog that can be used by any hunter in the village in the community dog sled team (to bring in say, the walrus they just killed). That’s a very different kind of dog from the one that you need to “keep my sheep from being liberated by the hungry Napoleonic soldier” and also to “help me bring the milk from the cows to the market”. Both dogs may be used to “find the hiding prey” or “flush out the prey so I can kill it”, or even “chase it this way so I can catch it”. That is why, IMO, the nature of a Samoyed is different than that of a Belgian and why the Malamute and other NA sled dogs are different. What you see now is the result of a lot of various dogs (and breeds) being brought in during the gold rush and later. There was a lot of different selection going on as well as “swamping” by non native dogs. I just can’t buy off on a culture that lived in a very demanding environment having a “one trick pony” such as a “only does hunting” dog which is how I read the comment by Stefansson.
Most cultures have things about them that are admirable and things that we find objectionable. Modern technology is a blessing in some ways and not so much in others.
He never said the Qimmiq was solely a hunting dog. Try reading the excerpt again. The Inuits used a single dog to pull the seal to the village. You don’t need a team of dog to haul meat to the village, especially if the surface is on ice. Moreso, it was and still is common practice to field-dress a carcass to lighten the load for the hunter and dog. One only really need one dog for the purpose.
“Team of dogs”, sorry.
I would imagine the dogs of any primitive society had to serve many purposes. This was even a common practice when I was growing up here in Vermont. The local farm dogs were expected to do multiple tasks beyond simply being a “cow dog”. When I was young my dog, Lobo, who I have mentioned before in my posts, was such a dog. He not only herded cattle on the farm, but helped round up escaped pigs, hunted raccoon with me at night, and squirrels and muskrats during the day (he’d tree the squirrels and catch the ones I shot as they fell so I never lost a wounded one), and retrieved the muskrats after I had shot them in the water just like the Lab in the ‘Beaver Retriever’ video). He’d pull my little sister up and down our long driveway on her Flexible Flyer sled, and guarded our various livestock after we’d all gone to bed. He hunted rats around the barns, killed woodchucks that riddled the pastures with holes, and kept stray dogs and other predators off our property. More importantly, he was my constant companion and protector if needed in my (somewhat) rambling years after high school, and was at my side practically 24 hours a day until he died at over 14 years old. That dog was such an intricate part of who I was and what I could do physically that I would never think of not having a similarly handy dog at my side for the rest of my life.
Sharing my life with Lobo, his son, Blanco and many other good dogs has given me a in-depth look at just how intricately a person’s life can become intertwined with a dog’s, and just how useful a dog can be: far beyond simply being the friend who plays fetch with you or sleeps next to you as you sit on the couch in the evening.