Secrets of Polar Travel

by Robert E. Peary

With the musk-ox, as with the walrus, in my later expeditions I hunted them on a large scale and in a systematic way, with careful attention to details to secure the largest amount of meat and not waste an ounce. All hunting parties had detailed orders.

Musk-oxen were to be shot back of the fore shoulder or in the neck, at the base of the skull. These are the instantly fatal spots. Frontal or head shots are a waste of ammunition. Skins were removed with feet and legs attached, rolled up in bundles to fit the sledges, and taken back to the ship to be thawed out and carefully prepared by the Eskimo women at their leisure during the winter. Hearts, livers, and kidneys were removed, laid out to freeze solid, then stored under rocks away from dogs, wolves, and foxes until sledged back to the ship. The remainder of the viscera was fed to the dogs on the spot. The heavy backbone, pelvis, and leg bones were cut out, the marrow bones cracked, and their contents eaten at the hunting-camp. The others were thrown to the dogs to gnaw clean. The great brick-red hams, fore shoulders, and balls of meat from the neck and ribs, all frozen like granite, were then piled in a big stack, to be sledged to the ship from time to time during the winter. In this way nothing was wasted; the bones and viscera were utilized on the spot, and only the clear solid meat had to be hauled over the arduous trails.

There is constant excitement in traversing musk-ox country. One can never tell when the opening up of a valley or a turn around a cliff may bring one or a herd of the shaggy animals into view.

On two occasions the discovery of musk-oxen saved my sledge-party from starvation, and the discovery was not due to happy chance or accident, but was the result of careful, intelligent search in suitable localities, examining every slope and valley and rock within range of field-glasses, carried for that special purpose, and as much a part of the hunting equipment as the rifle.

When I stretch myself or drop my hand on the thick, black felt of the musk-ox robes in my study, the touch of them conjures up many a vivid picture, and I have a more than friendly feeling for those strange, black denizens of the highest North.

The favorite haunts of the reindeer are the rolling, grassy slopes about the landlocked lakes of the North, where the pasturage is abundant, and they are sheltered from the cold sea-fogs and the sharp winds from the ice-cap. These animals, or traces of them, have been found by various explorers in Rawlings Bay, the region about Fort Conger in Grinnell Land, and at Alexandra Haven in Ellesmere Land, and they have been reported in considerable numbers on the western side of this land. In 1901 one of my men found an antler as far south as Erik Harbor.

In the region about our winter quarters in McCormick and Bowdoin Bays in 1891–93 and 1893–95 deer were most plentiful. During the autumn of 1891 one was killed on the plateau just back of Red Cliff House; two boat-trips to the head of McCormick Bay resulted in fourteen being obtained, and soon after ten were found on the northeast side of the bay in Five Glacier Valley. The following spring eleven were added to our larder, two from Five Glacier Valley, one from Cape Cleveland, the rest from Bowdoin Bay. In 1893 I visited the southern slopes of the northern side of Olriks Bay, a favorite resort of the deer. Five hours’ work added seventeen deer to our meat supply, and thirty-three were killed later in the same place; seven were seen in the neighborhood of Cape Athol, but only one was bagged. In January, 1894, hunting parties sent out to the deer pastures of Kangerdlooksoah were very successful, bringing back fifty-four animals.

In 1905–06 we got eleven deer on the northern coast of Grant Land; a party sent out to Porter Bay returned with the meat and skins of seven; and seven more were obtained from a herd of eleven discovered on Fielden Peninsula. These reindeer were the first of their kind ever found, magnificent animals, almost pure white in color, designated by naturalists as a new species. Later these were found to be numerous in the region between Lake Hazen and Cape Hecla and along the coast of northern Grant Land to the westward, fifty-odd being killed.

On my last expedition a Porter Bay party brought in fourteen of the animals; three were picked up not far from the ship, and a stray one in James Ross Bay.

A deer means a week’s rations added to the meat supply of the party, and the realization of this when bringing one down is far from being an unpleasant sensation.