The Inuit hunted seals and ate them raw
To learn about the traditions of the Inuit living in the Arctic, Bruce traveled to Greenland to spend two weeks in the last remaining tribe that depended on hunting for a living, to observe how they hunted and how their lives changed as the times progressed.
He was received by rethymo, an old hunter of the tribe, who was attracted by his polar bear pants and seal leather boots as soon as they met, which Rethmo had hunted by himself, and in this cold place of minus tens of degrees, it was difficult to survive without the ability to hunt.
The dogs on the side are also very enthusiastic, these are metz's sled brigade, although the car has almost replaced the sled, but the sled dog is still the preferred means of transport in Greenland.
Rethmo promised Bruce that he would take him with him to hunt walruses, but they would first have to go fishing a few miles south of Karnak. Bruce sat on the sleigh, looking at the white landscape around him, and couldn't help but sigh at the wonders of nature.
The dogs are very fast, they can pull a hundred miles a day for a week. Although this ancient partnership between man and dog began to fade away after the arrival of the car, in Resmo's case, the dog was still his must-have.
Soon they reached their destination and immediately began their pre-fishing preparations. First, a new hole must be dug on the ice, and then the mackerel is used as bait and put into the water hole, and these baits will quickly take the fishing line to the ice cave a few hundred meters away along the strong current, and in a few hours, the fish will automatically hook.
It was freezing cold outside, and everyone went back to the warm hut on the side to chat and keep warm. They told Bruce that due to the cold climate, the locals needed to eat constantly to stay warm, so the pleasure of the Inuit was to catch a hearty meal.
Soon it was time to close the line, Bruce shook his hand, and sure enough, he caught a lot of flounders, which made him have to admire the Survival Skills of the Inuit, but what made him admire more was still to come.
Early the next morning, the group set out for hunting.
Hunting has been everything for the Inuit since ancient times, they have no trees to make fires or camps to keep warm, eating on the fat of seals and whales, clothes and sleighs are all from animals, and even transportation is animals. Although it is now a modern society where people can go to the town to buy what they need, for the Resmo group, they are still professional hunters, and they still have to rely on hunting to support their families.
The destination took two days to arrive, with a group of people rushing during the day and spending the night in a makeshift barracks on the side of the road. After a day of starvation, resmo gave the dogs a hearty walrus meat feast and then cut a one-horned whale fin for Bruce, which quickly replenished their energy. I ate another plate of curry rice made from the flounder I caught yesterday, and my body was warm in the ice and snow.
At night, the dogs watched the door outside the barracks in case the polar bears sneaked in at night. Don't worry about them getting cold, the thick fur can be warmer than it looks. Bruce couldn't get out of bed in the middle of the night, but he saw a spectacle: what should have been pitch black snow was illuminated by the sun as if it were daylight, which was midnight at the North Pole.
The next day was another sunny day, and the dogs were still full of energy and headed for the hunting ground. A few hours later, the crowd encountered a frozen fog, and visibility became lower, as if they were shuttling through a thin cloud of flashes. Finally arriving at the edge of the ice, the silent expanse of snow carried a melancholy and suffocating beauty, but there was no sign of a walrus.
Resmo told him that because the ice at sea began to melt, they couldn't go any further and couldn't catch walruses here. So the crowd had to camp in a relatively stable area nearby. At this time, another team of hunters slowly approached. Apparently well prepared, they planned to go hunting by boat tomorrow morning, and they warmly invited Resmo and Bruce to participate in the hunt. The real hunt was just around the corner, and Bruce certainly wouldn't refuse.
Walruses are typical Arctic animals, generally inhabiting the junction of ice and water, and sometimes climbing to the ice to rest and sleep. Adult walruses weigh at least once and are a traditional food of the Inuit. After the departure, everyone was carefully catching the traces of the walrus, but as the tide rose, there was so much ice that there was no way out, and they had not yet found the walrus. There was no way for the crowd to tow the boat over the ice floes before they could find a way out. At this time, the accident suddenly occurred, and the ice suddenly cracked, scaring Bruce into running away.
Fortunately, the crowd finally returned to the camp and worked for a few days without finding anything, and Resmo said that they could catch walruses at this time, and they did not expect that the ice would melt so early this year. Rising temperatures have a huge impact on their lives, and hunting will become more and more difficult in the future. But even then, Rethmo didn't want to give up such a traditional way of life, and it was hard to imagine how boring his life would be if he couldn't hunt anymore.
Walruses can't be caught, catching a few seals should be OK, the crowd decided to rest for one night, tomorrow go to the far north to hunt seals. Because the walrus meat was finished, the dogs had only biscuits for dinner today.
After a brief freshening up the next day, they set off on the road again, scattered across the vast ice in search of seal figures, which for Bruce was like finding a needle in a haystack. But for experienced Inuit hunters, it doesn't seem that difficult. Soon they saw two seals lying in the sun at a distance with their naked eyes, which were real cattle.
Resmo slowly approached with his disguise, then shot the seal with a headshot, and the dogs barked excitedly at the sight of dinner.
This seal is common in the Arctic and is the main prey for polar bears and Inuit. They caught three of them, enough to eat for a while. Bruce didn't expect that they would slaughter them directly on the spot, and even eat liver and fat directly raw.
The Inuit were also called Eskimos, meaning "people who eat raw meat", and in the days before there was no oil fire, in which the Inuit often ate raw meat. Some of the people in the company regarded the seal eyeballs as delicious, and even enthusiastically gave Bruce a taste. Bruce took it in, saying it tasted like a tasteless jelly, but he wouldn't eat it again.
Talking about hunting during the evening breaks in tents, Rethmo felt that rising temperatures were only part of the impact, and the bigger impact was the government's limit on the number of hunts
Temperatures are far less threatening to them than conservationists, which directly affects their traditional way of life, and in the face of changes in the ecological environment and government pressure, how long can the Inuit hunt be maintained? Resmo said this traditional hunting would not disappear as long as innuit existed. This is a tradition passed down from ancestors and should not be abandoned by the times.