HOW I LEARNED TO HUNT SEALS 271 



time to seize a hind flipper as he was gliding into the 

 water. On other occasions I have had to slide for a dead 

 seal as a runner in baseball slides for a base. Some- 

 times I have just caught the seal and sometimes I have 

 just missed him. In a few cases he has slid so rapidly 

 that I was no more than halfway from the shooting place 

 to his hole when he disappeared. 



Three seals out of four have buoyancy enough to float, 

 but if they slide into the water the momentum gathered by 

 slipping off the ledge of ice is enough to send them 

 diagonally down into the water fifteen or twenty feet. 

 They come up diagonally under the ice. The ice may 

 be as much as seven feet thick and you do not know 

 exactly where they are. We, therefore, consider that a 

 seal is lost if he once slips into his hole, and we do not 

 even try to search. 



In about one case in a hundred the dead seal may rise in 

 the hole. It is, therefore, worth while to stand by for two 

 or three minutes on a chance that he has sunk vertically 

 and that he will come back up vertically. 



It would be easy to shoot a seal at a distance greater 

 than fifty yards, but experience shows that this is waste- 

 ful. If you have a hundred yards to run the seal's dead 

 body has at least an even chance of sliding in before 

 you get there. It takes so much cautious effort to get 

 within a hundred yards of a seal that you had better not 

 spoil it all by shooting until you are nearer. Further- 

 more, nothing will do but a brain shot or one through the 

 spine at the base of the brain. If there is the least life 

 in the animal, a wiggle will send him into his hole. 



I have spoken of the seal's hole without describing it 

 for that is more easily done in connection with an account 

 of our second method of hunting. The way already 



