Secrets of Polar Travel

by Robert E. Peary

Of course deer hunting is much the same the world over, but the Eskimos have a magic call to these animals which has been taught to the young hunters of every rising generation. It is similar to the hissing of a cat, only more prolonged, and will cause a fleeing buck reindeer to stop instantly in his tracks, giving the desired shot.

To most polar travelers and explorers, and to all readers, the polar bear, sometimes called the “Tiger of the North,” has loomed largest as the “big game” par excellence of the North. I know of nothing that will excite an Eskimo so much as the sight of one of these huge creatures in the distance; but a contest with even three or four bears and a man armed with a Winchester is always one-sided and tame sport in comparison with a lively walrus hunt.

None of my expeditions has had the exciting bear adventures of others. Bears never have attacked us, or come poking into our tents while we were asleep. No member of my party ever had a hair-breadth encounter with one. We hunted them assiduously, partly for the meat, but more for skins to supply us with trousers for the long sledge journeys, and we were able to secure only enough for this purpose.

My visualization of a bear hunt is the constant watching of the ice-floes about the sledge with eyes and field-glasses, the glimpsing of a cream-colored spot slipping behind an ice pinnacle, or of great tracks in the snow. If the bear has heard the dogs, the tracks are a series of huge leaps headed directly away from us; the loosening of two or three of the trained dogs, the rapid overhauling of the bear, a single shot, or at the most two, and then strenuous efforts to keep the crazy dogs away from the carcass while it is skinned, cut up, and loaded on the sledge.

Though classed among the pure carnivora, the Eskimos say that the polar bear of that region when unable to secure seals will take a “hike” across country, and fill up on grass like a reindeer.

I believe this to be true. An enormous male bear which I killed on the Fourth of July in Flagler Bay was big bellied as a cow, and the stomach was distended with grass.

In 1886, at Ravenscraig Harbor, on the south side of Eglinton Fiord, a fleet of four whalers and the Eagle obtained ten bears, two of these being harpooned in the water by the crew of the Eagle. So enraged was one of the animals that the crews of three boats were required to keep the bear from climbing into the Eagle’s boat to wreak vengeance on the occupants. Just north of Cape Hooper we got three more bears in the ice-pack. It is not always possible to bring a bear down with the first shot when he is traveling over rough ice, but there need be no doubt as to whether a shot has reached its mark or not, for a wounded bear will always make savage snaps at the spot stung by a bullet.

In July, 1891, we obtained one bear in the Melville Bay ice-pack, and pursued an old bear with her two cubs for some distance, but they made good their escape. The next spring one of my Eskimo hunters came upon a young bear near Cape Parry, and in the spring of 1894 five were brought in from Kane Basin.

During my 1905–06 expedition one bear was killed near Cape Sabine, another in crossing Kane Basin, and two on the northern shore of Bache Peninsula. Only one was obtained during my last trip, and that in James Ross Bay; but on our way from Cape Columbia to the pole we discovered fresh polar bear tracks over two hundred miles from land, and on our return came across tracks of what we believed to be the same bear.

Actual measurements of the broad plantigrade footprints of a bear on one of my earlier expeditions gave a width of eleven inches, with a length of twenty-two inches; but the dragging toes and hair of the animal’s heels in the soft snow made a much larger trail, closely resembling that of a man on snow-shoes.