User:Pwyatt1

I have gray hair now, but I spent much of my teen years growing up above the tree line on Baffin Island, in Frobisher bay, NWT, now Iqualuit, Nunavut. From 1956 until 1960 I hunted and fished with my Inuit friends. During this time and learned much from the elder hunters about fauna, wildlife, weather patterns, clouds and how to read spoor, the sea, the snow, and the tides (3rd highest in the world). I traveled by dog team to Cape Dorset and Lake Harbor, and even to the shores opposite Pangnirtung. I learned passable Inuktituk. I raised my own dog team and would go hunting caribou and seal (baby seal in March) in the Winter, and sometimes for polar bear. In the summer with our outboard motors on the backs of canoes, we would hunt the harp seal, bearded seal, walrus, all kinds of sea fowl, and fish in idyllic rivers for the tasty arctic char. The variety of firearms was amazing - all the way from old British Enfield .303's left over from World War I to modern Winchester .22s, .222 varmit rifles, .270s and 30-06's. For an inquisitive teenager it was heaven. Freedom unbound!

Times change. People change, and attitudes change. I still love the Arctic for its haunting spare beauty, but since that time I have never picked up a gun. At that time we killed for food. Now I see no reason to hunt; I go to the local grocery store.

I am adding to this section of Wikipedia as a small way of giving back and passing on my knowledge that others taught me. It is a great tradition of the human race.