From: "Robert Morris" <brewerycreek@hotmail.com>
To: baidarka@lists.intelenet.net
Subject: Re: baidarka North Baffin Technique
Date: Fri, 09 Apr 1999 16:08:35 PDT
Vernon
Mea culpa. I do know better. By the way, in
contributions to kayak studies, a Baffin
retrieval kayak is mentioned. There is also a
Cumberland sound retrieval kayak mentioned
in Inuit kayaks in Canada (both books by
Eugene Arima Mercury Press, Canadian
Museum of Civilization and both out of print
by now). A photo of a reproduction of the
Cumberland sound boat is in the October
edition of Sea Kayaker. A beautiful boat.
Robert
----Original Message Follows----
From: vdoucett@uism.bu.edu
Reply-To: baidarka@lists.intelenet.net
To: <baidarka@lists.intelenet.net>
Subject: Re: baidarka North Baffin
Technique
Date: Fri, 09 Apr 1999 14:27:55 -0400
Robert,
I did leave out the description of the first
part of the hunt. In this
instance the seal was harpooned before
being shot.
The impact that the use of firearms had on
kayak design would certainly be
worth exploring. The retrieval kayak being a
case in point. Shooting game from
in the leads that form near the floe edge
required a means recovering the game.
form following function a short, light and
easily transported boat fit the bill.
In Greenland the introduction of skegs
coincides with the use of guns and
shooting screens and I would imagine
[though I don't no for a fact] that hull
shape would have been re-configured to
produce a more stable platform for the
use of a rifle. Anyway, the arrival of firearms
is coincident to the historic
record and there are bound to be clues to
pursue. I suppose a place to start
would be to compare accounts of hunting
techniques both before and after the
introduction of rifles.
Finally there are no Innu in Baffin, unless
they happened to visiting their
neighbors to the far north. The people in
Baffin are Inuit.
Yours, Vernon Doucette
I wrote a "how to" article for Sea Kayaker
magazine last year on
building a version of the North Alaska
retrieval kayak. The
introduction of the firearms changed the use
of the kayak in hunting.
As part of my research, I asked my father
about hunting seal with a
gun. We lived in Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island,
in the mid 1960s and
he spent some time out on the land with Innu
hunters.
He told me the .22 was favoured for several
reasons:
#1 A large round such as a .303 (or 22
mm!)would lower the value of
the harvested seal because of the damage to
the pelt and meat.
#2 a .22 round costs less than a larger round.
#3 A dead seals sink. The .22 would wound
the seal, keeping it closer
to the surface, slowing it down, and making it
easier to then harpoon
and retrieve. (The harpooning activity is
skipped across in the
quoted text, but it was part of the hunting
pattern, in Baffin
anyway.)
I would presume that a large gun's recoil
would restrict the arc of
fire to within a few degrees of the bow. The
.22 would allow wider
angle deflection shots.
Robert
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