
Figure 8.--Skin boat or umiak threading its way through ice floes 
during a walrus hunt near Gambell. (Photo by Thayer) 
often be hauled over fields of floating ice. Meat is unloaded and 
hauled back to the village on sleds while some of the hunters sleep, 
either on the rocks or in the boats. After the shore ice goes out 
the boats land on the rocks in front of the village. 
"Eskimo walrus hunts have been described by numerous writers. 
Those quoted here amply express our own observations. Albert Heinrich 
describes Little Diomede walrus hunting as follows (letter 1946): 
‘When a boat spots a group of walruses on the ice (Nunavuk, plural 
Nunavait), the procedure is simply to go over to the ice pan and when 
you gét to almost point blank range, everybody empties his rifle 
(figure 11)...the boat is pulled up on the ice. Sporadic shooting 
usually goes on at this stage, but there is more or less of a lull, 
giving the men time to reload for the returning walrus. The surviving 
individuals invariably return to make an attack.... Their efforts, 
naturally, are rewarded by a counter attack of bullets. After one, 
two or three sessions of this, comparative quiet reigns, though an 
occasional walrus, often a wounded one, coming up for air, will be 
seen and fired upon.... The resultant gore is indescribable. ' 
"Spencer (1953), writing of a hunt by Barrow Eskimos, states: 
'..."sentinels" bawl out a warning and make for the water. Precisely 
at this moment, the men fire shot after shot into the packed bodies 
and the slaughter begins.... Many of the animals, wounded, make for 
the water and dive. Others, more badly injured, may be unable to sub- 
merge and so can be picked off in the water. Those remaining on the 
ice can be readily dispatched. From a herd of as many as thirty-five 
walrus, five to ten, rarely more, may be taken...butchering begins... 
other men may seek to harpoon the remaining wounded.' " 
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