While the “spearing surround” of the Aleutian hunter is orthodoxy, the practice, now universal, of surf-shooting the otter, is heterodoxy, and is so styled among these people, but it has only been in vogue for a short time, and it is primarily due to our traders, who, in their active struggle to incite the natives to a greater showing of skins, have loaned and have given, to the young hunters in especial, the best patterns of rifles. With these firearms the shores of many of the Aleutian channels, Saanak, and the Chernaboors, are patrolled during heavy weather, and whenever a sea-otter’s head is seen in the surf, no matter if a thousand yards out, the expert, patient marksman shoots seldom in vain, and if he does miss the mark, he has a speedy chance to try again, for the great distance, and thunderous roar of the breakers prevent the kahlan from hearing or taking alarm in any way until it is hit by the rifle-bullet: nine times out of ten, when the otter is thus struck, it is in the head, which is all that the creature usually exposes. Of course such a shot is instantly fatal, so that the hunter has reason to sit himself down with a long landing-gaff and wait serenely for the surf to gradually heave the prized carcass within his ready reach.
Last, but most exciting and recklessly venturesome of all human endeavor in the chase of a wild animal is the plan of “clubbing.” You must pause with me for a brief interval on Saanak to understand, even imperfectly, the full hazard of this enterprise. We cannot walk, for the wind blows too hard—note the heavy seas foaming, chasing and swiftly rolling by, one after the other—hear the keen whistle of the gale as it literally tears the crests of the breakers into tatters, and skurries on in sheets of fleecy vapor, whirring and whizzing away into the darkness of that frightful storm which has been raging in this tremendous fashion, coming from the westward, during the last three or four days without a moment’s cessation. Look at those two Aleutes under the shelter of that high bluff by the beach. Do you see them launch a bidarka, seat themselves within and lash their kamlaykas firmly over the rims to the man-holes? And now observe them boldly strike out beyond the protection of that cliff and plunge into the very vortex of the fearful sea, and scudding, like an arrow from the bow, before the wind, they disappear almost like a flash and a dream in our eyes!
ALEUTES CLUBBING SEA OTTERS
During a furious gale on the Chernaboor Rocks
Yes, it looks to you like suicide; but there is this method to their madness. These men have, by some intuition, arrived at an understanding that the storm will not last but a few hours longer at the most, and they know that some ten or twenty or even thirty miles away, directly to the leeward from where they pushed off, lies a series of islets, and rocks awash, out upon which the long-continued fury of this gale has driven a number of sea-otters that have been so sorely annoyed by the battle of the elements as to crawl there above the wash of the surf, and, burying their globose heads in heaps of sea-weed to avoid the pelting of the wind, are sleeping and resting in great physical peace until the weather shall change: then they will at once revive and plunge back into the ocean without the least delay. So our two hunters, perhaps the only two souls among the fifty or sixty now camped on Saanak, who are brave enough, have resolved to scud down on the tail of this howling gale, run in between the breakers to the leeward of this rocky islet ahead of them, and sneak from that direction over the land and across to the windward coast, so as to silently and surely creep up and on to the kelp-bedded victims, when, in the fury of the storm, the fast falling footsteps of the hunter are not heard by the active yet somnolent animal ere a deadly whack of his short club falls upon its unconscious head. The noise of such a tempest is far greater than that made by the stealthy movements of these venturesome natives, who, plying their heavy, wooden bludgeons, despatch the animals one after another without alarming the whole number. In this way, two Aleutian brothers are known to have slain seventy-eight otters in less than one hour!
If these hardy men, when they pushed off from Saanak in that gale, had deviated a paddle’s length from their true course for the islet which they finally struck, after scudding twenty or thirty miles before the fury of wind and water, they would have been swept on and out into a vast marine waste and to certain death from exhaustion. They knew it perfectly when they ventured, yet at no time could they have seen ahead clearly, or behind them, farther than a thousand yards! Still, if they waited for the storm to abate, then the otters would all be back in the water ere they could even reach the scene. By doing what we have just seen them do they fairly challenge our admiration for their exhibit of nerve and adroit calculation, under the most trying of all natural obstruction, for the successful issue of their venture.
In conclusion, the writer calls attention to a strange habit of the Aleutian otter-hunters of Attoo, who live on the extreme westernmost island of the grand Alaskan archipelago. Here the kahlan is captured in small nets,[68] which are spread out over the floating kelp-beds or “otter-rafts,” the natives withdrawing and watching from the bluffs. The otters come out to sleep or rest or sport on these places, get entangled in the meshes, and seem to make little or no effort to escape, being paralyzed, as it were, by fear. Thus they fall an easy prey into the hands of the captors, who say that they have caught as many as six at one time in one of these nets, and that they frequently get three. The natives also watch for surf-holes or caves awash below the bluffs: and, when one is found to which a sea-otter is in the habit of going, they set this net by spreading it over the entrance, and usually capture the creature, sooner or later.
No injury whatever is done to these frail nets by the sea-otters, strong animals as they are; only stray sea-lions and hair-seals destroy them. There is no driving an otter out upon land if it is surprised on the beach by man between itself and the water; it will make for the sea with the utmost fearlessness, with gleaming eyes, bared teeth and bristling hair, not paying the slightest regard to the hunter. The Attoo and Atkah Aleutes have never been known to hunt sea-otters without nets, while the people of Oonalashka, and those eastward of them, have never been known to use such gear. Salt-water and kelp appear to act as disinfectants for the meshes, so that the smell of them does not repel or alarm the shy, suspicious animal.