170 SEAL LIFE ON THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS. 



When the boats have taken their position the oarsman just keeps the 

 boat's nose to the wind, and the hunter keeps a lookout for seals. 



A fur seal, when discovered by the hunter in the open ocean, is either 

 sleeping or feeding, and so the only classification by these hunters is 

 "feeders" or " sleepers." It is an absolute impossibility for the hunter 

 to determine the sex or the age of any fur seal when in the water, until 

 it is dragged into the boat. 



In swimming the seal is always submerged several feet below the sur- 

 face. The seal also devours its food beneath the water. It is, however, 

 compelled to come up every three, five, or fifteen minutes to breathe, 

 rising head and shoulders above the water for a second or two. If the 

 seal rises very near the hunter's boat it will dive again too quickly to 

 be shot at, but it it raises 30, 50 or 100 yards from the boat, it will pause 

 a moment long enough for the hunter to shoot at it. 



If the seal is not hit or is wounded it at once dives and can never be 

 secured; if it is killed by the shot it sinks, and unless the boat is moved 

 up in a minute or two to the spot where the animal sank the carcass will 

 be invisible from the surface. If, however, the seal happens to be 

 wounded so as to be stunned or dazed, it will flounder on the surface 

 of the water until secured. Except, therefore, in the last peculiar man- 

 ner of wounding, the seal hunter never knows whether he has missed, 

 wounded, or killed the seal. Provided, however, the boat can be rowed 

 immediately to the spot where the seal was, which depends on the accu- 

 racy of fixing the spot necessarily a most difficult matter the hunter 

 may perceive the sinking body, if the seal was killed, some 4, 6, or 8 

 feet below the surface. In that case he reaches down with his gaff and 

 fastens on to the carcass and drags it up to the boat. Seals wounded 

 either fatally or slightly are never found. They instantly dive and 

 swim away, to perish sooner or later. 



THE WASTE OF LIFE. 



A hunter takes, say, 200 cartridges when he leaves the schooner in 

 the morning, and after perhaps sixteen hours' work returns to the ves- 

 sel with all these expended. If for these he can show 10 or 12 skins it 

 is considered a good day's work. The pelagic hunter certainly kills and 

 fatally wounds a very large number of animals which he never secures 

 the bodies of, the number hit and secured depending very largely upon 

 the retrieving skill of the hunter. From conversations I have had with 

 pelagic hunters, I am of the opinion that a large majority of them do 

 not get one out of every five that they shoot at within and beyond a 

 range of 50 yards. At 30 to 50 yards' distance they are almost sure to 

 hit them if they use buckshot. Xo hunter who uses a gun can tell the 

 exact number he secures, as compared with the number he kills or 

 fatally wounds. He can not possibly tell the truth, even if he wants 

 to do so. He usually blazes away at every seal that rises within range 

 to a hundred yards or even farther. 



The Indian hunters accompanying a sealing schooner generally use a 

 toggle-headed spear, fastened to the canoe by a line which they use. 

 After a storm the seals sleep more than at any other time, and it is 

 then the Indian hunters are let down in their canoes and paddle 

 off to the windward, the hunter standing or squatting in the bow, 

 spear in hand, looking for the protruding nose of a sleeping seal. 

 When a "sleeper" is seen, the canoe is silently paddled as near the 

 animal as possible, the spear is thrown, and if the seal is struck she 

 is dragged into the canoe by the line. An Indian hunter secures 

 nearly every seal he strikes ; but it is also indiscriminate slaughter, as 

 he can not distinguish the age or sex of the "sleeper" before striking it. 



