HOW WE HUNT POLAR BEARS 283 



— that they live mainly or partly on fish. This belief 

 probably arose from the well-known fact that black bears 

 and grizzlies in forests and mountains frequently eat fish. 

 The belief has been confirmed when people about to write 

 zoological or geographical text-books for schools have 

 visited zoological gardens and have found that polar bears 

 in captivity eat fish. The reason why they are fed fish 

 in captivity is primarily that fish is cheaper than meat. 

 I have killed many dozens of polar bears and have seen 

 hundreds of others, but I have yet to find any evidence 

 that they eat fish or try to catch them. Neither have I 

 met any Eskimo who believes that polar bears ever try 

 to catch fish. 



When I first lived at Tuktuyaktok in 1906, we had bear 

 fat to eat with our fish. Two or three bears had been 

 killed in the early fall before I arrived and their meat had 

 been eaten immediately but some of the fat had been 

 saved against winter. After my arrival no bears were 

 found in that locality and I went home at the end of my 

 first polar expedition without ever having seen a bear. 



My first bear hunt came on my second expedition, the 

 winter of 1909-10. It was not really my bear hunt but 

 that of some Eskimos who weie living on the north coast 

 of Alaska east of Point Barrow. 



The time was mid-winter, and the sun even at noon did 

 not rise above the southern horizon. It was not far 

 below the horizon, though, for the clouds in the south were 

 red and yellow and other sunset colors for several hours 

 around noon each day, and there was light enough for 

 aiming a rifle from nine-thirty in the morning until two- 

 thirty in the afternoon. 



The Eskimos were living in a village of three houses 

 with a total population of about twenty people. Traps 



