Hunting and Fishing 149 



animals to the inlet, hemming them in and compelling them, with the aid of 

 their dogs, to take to the water. As soon as this takes place, the rest of the 

 party, who are lying in wait in their kayaks, paddle towards the herd and spear 

 as many of them as they can.''^ Lines of stones, with here and there a stick to 

 which a coat or a flat resonant board is attached, are run down each side of 

 the valley from the deer to the lake, where the hunters lie concealed in their 

 kayaks.^ The women and children behind the deer howl like wolves /im-w-m-m 

 hu-u-u-^, and the startled deer move down between the lines until they reach 

 the water. There they stop irresolute, afraid to dash off to a flank on account 

 of the barricade of stones and streamers. The "wolves" draw nearer and 

 nearer until the frightened deer one after the other rush into the water and try 

 to swim across the lake. Then the kayakers dash out, each man armed with a 

 short knife lashed on the end of a pole. One after another the helpless caribou 

 are stabbed in the nape of the neck, nooses are thrown over their horns and 

 their carcasses dragged to the shore. 



Scores of caribou are killed in this way every summer on the mainland 

 south of Coronation gulf. Farther east, round Bathurst inlet, the slaughter 

 is greater still. In November, 1917; a Royal North West Mounted Pohce 

 patrol visited the mouth of a small river that flows into Gordon bay, and found 

 deer carcasses strewn all along its banks under the snow. Evidently the natives 

 had speared them that summer and taken only the skins, leaving the meat to be 

 devoured by the wolves and ravens.' 



In Victoria island kayaks are rarely used. Instead, the natives make 

 shallow pits, tallut, across the neck of the barricades and shoot the deer as they, 

 are driven up. These drives call for a considerable amount of strategy and the 

 careful utilization of topographical features. The caribou may be grazing at 

 the end of a plain a quarter of a mile wide, bounded by a low ridge on one side 

 and a lake on the other. Then the hunters will set up their turf-capped stones 

 at intervals of thirty or forty yards along the top of the ridge, and probably 

 swing the line round across the plain to within a hundred yards of the water's 

 edge. Where the ground is low and stones would not show up with sufiicient 

 clearness walking-sticks are driven into the soil, and coats, or laths of wood 

 shaped like a bull-roarer, only broader, are fastened to their ends. The flut- 

 tering of the coats in the wind deters the caribou from breaking through the' 

 line ; in the case of the laths a child is stationed near by to hammer them with a 

 stick. 



Between the end of the barricade and the lake each hunter digs a shallow 

 pit, using for his adze a sharpened antler. He stabs this into the turf, pulls the 

 clod up with his hands and lays it round the edge. In a few minutes he has 

 made a saucer-shaped depression faced with turf and stones or snow to make it 

 as inconspicuous as possible. Here he lies, face downwards, with his bow 

 and arrows by his side, waiting for the deer to be driven within range. The 

 women and children, in the meantime, have gone to windward, and the deer 

 either catch their scent and move off down the wind, or are set in motion by 

 wolf-howls. If the women are not in sight the caribou usually reach the hunters 

 walking or slowly trotting, at intervals one behind the other, so that often the 

 first is shot before the rest are yet in sight. Sometimes, as they dash back after 

 the first animal is shot, an Eskimo will utter a sudden loud shout, when often 

 they will stop amazed for a moment and allow him to launch another shaft, 



'Richardson, p. 188; cf. Dease and Simpson, .Journ. R'lyal Geogr. See, Vol. 8, p. 218; Russell, p. 227; 

 Stefansson, Anthrop. Papers, A,M.N.H., Vol. XIV, pt. I, p. 385, etc. 



^Douglas, p. 131, mentions barricades of trees thrown across a river near Great Bear lake, apparently 

 for a deer-drive. ' 



2Rep?rt of the Bathurst Inlet Patrol, Ottawa, 1917, p. 40. 



