Alaska Dispatches
# 19  —  3 May 2001

Seal Hunting

For weeks I have witnessed seal hunting from the sidelines. I gaze forlornly out of my window morning after morning as the snowmachines dip down onto the frozen river and zoom off toward the sea. At sunset I can make out their headlights navigating the route home. In the steam each night I dutifully ask how many seals were taken by whom, inquire about the weather and the condition of the ice, discuss the outlook for the next day. I piece together sketches of the hunts from the English words that constantly pepper the stories in Yup’ik. I have surely worn my desire to go on my sleeve.
But the weather has been strange this spring, making seal hunting trips particularly dangerous. We have had late blizzards as well as early warm days, leaving the timing of breakup a mystery. I have heard it said more than once recently that you risk your life every time you go to the ocean. I have come to appreciate the responsibility assumed by taking someone seal hunting, especially someone as inexperienced as me.
Boys who grow up in the village hear about seal hunting all their lives. Hunting for seals is revered, infused with a highly spiritual dimension, and without question every male’s favorite thing about living here. Boys are constantly told what different types of seals are like and taught how to react to the various situations that arise while hunting them. I have not been privy to this lifelong, ongoing training. So, despite being promised to be taken dozens of times, I was resigned to not getting a chance to experience what everyone loves so much.
And then the phone woke me up this morning at 4:00 AM. My heart quickened. Apart from terrible news from afar a phone call at that hour could mean only one thing: seal hunting. It was indeed my neighbor Peter inviting me to accompany him and his son Jeff. They were ready to go, so Peter would head down to the ocean, and I was to get geared up as quickly as possible to set out with Jeff.
I scurried to not hold up my friends, putting water on for tea, quickly wolfing down some breakfast, assembling all of my layers of clothes. When I made it outside, Jeff gave me a once-over and judged my coat insufficient. He ducked inside his house to grab a more appropriate one for me. I felt the sweat beading on my back, from running around to get ready but mostly from nerves; had I forgotten something? Would I be warm enough? Might we get caught on an ice floe? Was I prepared to kill a seal?
I zipped up the borrowed coat and hopped on the back of Jeff’s snowmachine, and we were off, cruising along at terrifying speeds. Despite my best efforts, we were late. We descended onto the river, following its course for a mile before cresting its bank to crisscross frozen tundra to the coast. I bounced around like crazy, barely holding on to a small piece of railing on the side of my seat with one hand and my thermos with the other.
The Bering Sea is intensely beautiful and wild and sublime. I had never before seen ocean waves crashing against a sandy beach covered with a three-foot shelf of ice. Yet somehow it all felt strangely familiar, perhaps from images lodged deep in my brain by a National Geographic magazine from long ago. Ice floes, ranging from tiny to enormous, float in the water. The crisp air renders the incalculable shades of white, gray and blue striking and vivid. I kicked myself for forgetting my camera, although who knows how long batteries would have held out in the sub-zero temperatures.
During seal hunting season, villagers keep their skiffs on flat wooden sleds on the frozen tundra a few hundred feet from the coast. Everyone’s boat and outboard motor is spray painted white in order to blend with the ice. Jeff and I roped the sled to the back of his snowmachine and towed his father’s boat down to the edge of the ice.
We lifted the 18-foot aluminum skiff off of the sled, stowed our cooler, rifles, shotguns, and other gear on board and slid the camouflaged boat across the ice, putting in at the edge of a channel that leads out to open sea. Because the icy coastline shifts every day, both with tides and spring melt, we moved our snowmachines and sled to high ground before returning to the skiff and pushing off.
Being out on the ocean was frosty, especially whenever we traveled at high speeds through falling snow. Fortunately it only snowed off and on, and most of the day was spent moving slowly, either jogging between ice floes or motoring cautiously through water covered by a thin layer of ice.
When we reached deep water we used my GPS to mark the entrance to the channel. At least my presence wouldn’t be totally superfluous. 
 Jeff and I sat in the middle of the boat while Peter drove from the rear. We all scanned the surface constantly for seals, but didn’t spot a single one. I thought I saw plenty, but my seals all turned out to be birds or pieces of floating ice. It was choppy on the water and so not a great day for seal hunting. Their eyes light up when village men talk of perfect days when the ocean is “glass,” causing a false horizon to appear.
I was feeling both excited about the idea of getting a seal on an imperfect day, and also worried that if the weather turned worse it would be blamed on me. There is a deep tradition of seeing natural events as the result of human actions. Whenever there is an accident or a spell of bad weather, there seems to be a corresponding event in village life. I wondered if a kassaq out hunting seals would be reason enough, in some villagers’ minds, to cause ocean swells.
Tied to this notion of human action influencing nature is the custom of yak. Those who yak refrain from hunting for a full year after a death in the immediate family. People practice this to varying degrees here. Last week a man whose wife had a late-term miscarriage went seal hunting. The waves were brutal that day, and word around town was that it was because of his being out on the ocean. A friend of mine will not go hunting since his mother died in the fall, so I planned to give him a portion of whatever seal meat I caught.
We pulled alongside a boat containing a seventh grader out with his uncle. Kids often skip school – as do Yup’ik teachers – to go seal hunting in the spring. Although it was before 9:00 AM, they already had 3 seals in their boat. A large female mukluk, or bearded seal, and her pup had been caught by the seventh grader. He is one of his class bullies, normally a cool and somber character, but all traces of machismo and aggression were gone. Grinning from ear to ear, he eagerly described his successful hunt – his first mukluk.
After chatting for a few minutes we headed off on our own and soon got caught in some ice. Peter skillfully worked our way out of the seemingly infinite ice field by banging up into floes and pushing them out of the way, then shifting the outboard into reverse to back up and search for a workable path. When open water appeared in front of us, I was especially glad to be out with an older person who knows what he is doing. Getting trapped in shifting ice, getting caught on an ice floe, puncturing your boat on sharp ice or even capsizing in the near-freezing salt water are all possible and perilous eventualities.
The sky remained gray, making it hard to discern the time of day. Minutes melted into hours and my need to urinate intensified. My companions chugged coffee almost continuously, so I figured that we would be due for a break at any moment. Ultimately I could stand it no longer, and asked how one goes about peeing while hunting seals. Peter asked how badly I had to go. By this point I was in pain.
The mind can be a terrible thing. I learned as a Cub Scout that emptying the bladder warms you up by allowing your body to shift energy away from needlessly keeping your urine warm. Because I know this, whenever I am cold I feel the urge to pee more intensely. I had no idea what was involved in finding me a place to urinate.
We began the search for a suitable ice floe. When we finally found one, Peter aimed the boat directly at it and gunned the outboard. We smashed into the ice, a thirty by thirty foot floating platform. As the force of the motor lifted the front of the boat onto the ice, Peter twisted the throttle again and suddenly we were floating on top of the floe, like a stranded aluminum walrus. In the split second it had taken us to mount the floe, Peter had reached back and yanked the outboard forward, pivoting it in order to raise the rotor and prevent it from striking the ice.  
I stepped out of the skiff and onto the ice. “Don’t go too far,” Jeff joked as I began to unzip and unbutton and take off layers to unzip some more. I don’t recall an equal measure of relief in my past. I apologized for the inconvenience, but my friends assured me that it was no problem. When nature calls, you answer.
Once my bladder was empty, things turned around. I was comfortable, although still cold. Almost immediately we spotted a seal. As soon as we turned the boat toward the animal, a mature ringed seal, sank beneath the surface. Peter taught me that ringed seals usually pop up once and then disappear for a long time, so we didn’t bother to chase it.
Eventually we pulled onto a gigantic frozen sand bar next to another boat and had lunch. It felt good to eat, and even better to be able to contribute some appreciated food - Leisy’s homemade cookies and dried salmon - to our meal. As we ate and talked, other boats pulled alongside and anchored into the ice. Some had caught seals, some had not. Jeff suggested that I try a lighter pair of gloves that actually kept my hands a lot warmer.
We finished quickly and pushed off. A couple of hours passed, and then Peter spotted a seal. It was an issuriq, a spotted seal, lounging on a small ice floe a few hundred yards in front of us. Immediately nervous, I grabbed my rifle, even though I still couldn’t make out the animal against the ice. My friends instructed me to get down and to move to the front of the boat, and we motored slowly toward the seal.
The seal was facing away from us. Jeff whispered for me to aim for the head. When we got within 100 yards or so Peter cut the engine and whistled to get the animal to look our way. It raised its head briefly, but I didn’t fire in time. It finally turned its head once again and I fired, but missed. The seal started to move quickly off of the floe, and my buddies told me to fire again. I did, this time hitting it low on its neck. The wounded seal scattered quickly across the ice and slid into the water.
Normally, mature spotted seals can disappear for up to twenty minutes, long enough to lose their pursuers, especially in choppy water. Since this one was injured, it could stay under for only 5 or 6 minutes at a time before coming up again for air.
Whenever it popped up, I took a shot at it, but I kept missing. With the crack of the rifle the seal dove, and Peter gunned the motor, jerking the boat forward. We raced to the spot from which the seal had disappeared and waited for it to pop up again. We repeated this pattern close to a dozen times as again and again I missed. I was nervous as well as inexperienced, and the 2 to 3-foot waves both rocked our boat and obscured the seal in the water.
Jeff asked to take a shot at the seal, but Peter told him to let me keep trying. They made some suggestions, but nothing helped. A couple of times everything felt right as I pulled the trigger, but the cartridge failed to ignite.
During the chase, which lasted over an hour, I spotted a couple of other seals. At one point I thought that we had abandoned the wounded seal and were on to another, but we were after the original issuriq the whole time. Eventually Jeff handed me a 12-gauge pump action shotgun. When the seal popped up, I aimed quickly, pulled the trigger and hit it squarely in the head. It dove, but not for long. When the seal popped up in the same spot, I blasted it again, and this time it flopped around in the water gasping for life.
We drove alongside the seal and Jeff quickly harpooned it. The harpoons used for seal hunting are combinations of the traditional and the modern. The end of a long wooden pole, perhaps ordered from Home Depot in Anchorage, is fitted with a cap carved from walrus tusk or whale bone. The harpoon’s tip, a sharp arrowhead crafted out of metal by an elder, and usually passed from grandfather to grandson, is fitted into a hole in the cap and tied to the pole with a small rope. Jeff thrust the tip of our harpoon into the side of the seal, and we pulled it alongside the boat. Peter finished it off with my .22. Although it was a young spotted seal, it was a large animal, and it took both Peter and Jeff to pull it into the boat.
I was trembling, both exhilarated and physically exhausted. I gazed at the seal laying still in the back of the boat. Mixed with my intense happiness and sense of accomplishment was a nagging anxiety over what I had done.
With myriad thoughts swirling through my head we continued to search for seals, but Peter soon decided that it was getting too wavy and so we started for home. We had actually been heading towards home for some time. But in the light fog I had no idea where we were or which way was home all day.
Suddenly I spotted a seal close to the boat and we glided towards it. I gestured for Jeff to move up front, but he nodded for me to, so I grabbed the shotgun. When the seal popped up, I hit it with my first shot. It went under, but only for a short time. When it surfaced I fired again, and it lay still. It was another issuriq, but a baby, still furry and white. Peter lifted the small seal up over the end of the boat and brained it with an ordinary hammer.
As we continued toward home I spotted a few other seals. I hoped that Peter and Jeff would hunt one, but they were not interested. They had gotten 4 the day before, and only want to hunt mukluks any more this year. I certainly felt that two was enough for me. 
We powered up my GPS to locate the entrance to the channel. Peter maneuvered the skiff back to the icy shore. It felt good to be back on solid ice. I considered how fucked I would have been if anything had gone awry out on the ocean.
Peter and I unloaded the boat while Jeff hiked up for the sled. I understand that men customarily gut their seals at the shore, but we left mine intact; Peter wanted Leisy to have the complete experience. It is the women’s job to deal with the catch. When I had spotted those seals after taking my two Peter had said: “You need to make sure that Leisy saves some energy for you.”
I had an enjoyable ride home on the back of Peter’s snowmachine with the seals in tow in his sled. Throughout the day, particularly during the long periods of looking for but not spotting seals, my mind had meandered toward the warmth of home.
Jeff and I carried both seals into our kitchen. I wanted to do the proper thing with the animals, and Leisy and I both asked several people what that was, but we always got the typical response: “Whatever you think, whatever you want to do.” I decided to give the entire baby seal to my friend whose mother had died.
Jeff’s girlfriend came over to help Leisy gut, clean and deal with the remaining seal. First they opened up the seal and cut the head off. Next they separated the meat from the thick layer of blubber, and then the blubber from the skin. The meat was then cut up and separated into Ziploc bags for us to freeze or give away. The blubber was cubed and stuffed into plastic gallon-sized orange juice containers, where it will render into seal oil, the universal condiment and cure-all. The laborious, physically demanding process took the two women working together close to three hours.
I walked down to the river with the seal’s head, and as I threw it in I recited Cali Taikina (come again), a small Yup’ik prayer.
In the steam tonight I was referred to as the white hunter, and Peter told the story of my hunt in Yup’ik to the crowd to much laughter. I am thoroughly drained. A friend here told me that seal hunting is the apex of all hunting. Taking a seal is incredibly challenging because of the conditions and the animals. You must shoot from a moving platform at a small, moving and smart target.
And I wonder: have I done something wrong? For some the answer is clear, whether that answer is yes or no. For villagers, I participated in an essential ritual and rite of passage, another milestone in my attempt to live the Yup’ik way. The seal gave itself to me, and I dutifully took it. To not do so would have been a grave offense. For liberals back home, I ruthlessly slaughtered a helpless sentient being. 
I find myself somewhere in the murky middle. I feel honored to have been included in what is seen as the apex of life here. I love seal meat, and so does Jules, and our giving much of it to elders will be another sign of our appreciation for being allowed to live here. At the same time I support conservation efforts. I am ignorant of the law dealing with marine mammals, but I imagine that I have broken one or two. While I have come to terms with our place in the food chain, I can also empathize with those who see things differently.
All in all, I am glad to have had the experience, and also glad that I am not going out and trying to kill seals every day.

©2001, Michael Thornton Wyman