Elder prefers traditional seal hunt over it all

Sealing hunting is a way of life that was taught to Perry Michelin as a boy and it has stayed with him throughout his 69 years.

Mr. Michelin of the village Butter and Snow, roughly eight kilometres north of North West River, was shown how to hunt seals by his father, and partook in his first hunt when he was just 12 years old. Over the decades Mr. Michelin has seen the hunt evolve, but he still prefers the traditional way.

The process of seal hunting is a complex one, he says, that has been narrowed down to a science by families of Labrador. The Michelin family and many others would take weeklong hunting trips that started out in the early hours of the morning by harnessing the dogs to the komatik and heading out onto the ice. The trip would take them some 20 miles by ice to areas such as Mulligan point and farther.

Under normal circumstances, the hunt was carried out in groups.

Arriving at a location each member in the group would search for breathing holes made by the seals.

"There are two parts to what we called a seal house," Mr. Michelin said. "There's always a bunch of holes together, further down there's another bunch and in the middle there would be breath holes; (so the seal could) just fish around and have a place to come up."

Mr. Michelin said a lot could be determined from examining a breathing hole in the ice.

Fur around a breathing hole meant a "young one" because it was shedding its white coat, Mr. Michelin said. Another sign of a hole in use was the colour of the water. If the water was clean there was little use but if the water was coloured or cloudy, seals frequented it. If the weather was cold holes would freeze over and the ones broken open meant they were in use. After a good location was determined, it was down to patience and silence. "Every man would take a hole if they could find one and if they couldn't they were out of luck," he said.

The ones that found a hole waited for the chance at a seal.

The trip by dog team can make it a little noisy and Mr. Michelin said those who didn't get a hole would take the dog teams away so it would be silent, to keep from alarming the seals.

"You have to stand very still when you were waiting," he said. "Seals can hear underwater when they are close to the hole. If there was any movement they wouldn't come up in the hole and go somewhere else."

Once the seal did come up for air, Mr. Michelin said the traditional method of kill was with a dart, a wooden pole with a detachable metal head. The head has a barb style end on it so when the seal is pierced, it can't come loose. It is also attached to a rope so the seal can be hauled back in.

Mr. Michelin said in most cases the dart will kill the seal immediately, but in some cases the end of the dart had to be used to finish the animal off.

Although Mr. Michelin uses a rifle seal hunting, he still prefers the old method. "It's not like shooting; whoever is doing the shooting would get the seal," he said. "When you were waiting with darts, everybody had a chance."

Once the seals were collected, Mr. Michelin said the seal was utilized for many things. In his early years a harp seal pelt was

Perry Michelin holds onto a dart that was once used in the traditional seal hunt.

salted and sold for $1.50, and the meat was taken as food for themselves and the dogs.

With the hunt taking place in the spring, ice conditions can be hazardous for travelling, but Mr. Michelin said he never felt that his life was in danger.

He said seals are usually in the "rough ice," (thick ice already broken up) but in early spring ice can become a little thin on the return trip.

It wasn't a problem he said because over time and with guidance from the elders you learned where the best places to land were ... along with the worse.

"Father and myself came across the bay one time (heading home,) and we landed where we knew we could get ashore and there was a sign saying bad ice ahead. "We got out on the ice, we got off of our house and there was open water for 100 yards, so we drove the dogs in the water, sat on the komatik and floated to shore." To him dog teams were better than snowmobiles for safety.

"With dog teams when they fell in, they didn't sink. It didn't seem to be all that dangerous, nobody I know of drowned from seal hunting."

He said the weather wasn't cold either, with a southwest wind and the sun shining, Mr. Michelin found it to be quite warm at times.

When hunters would come ashore and light the fire to put on their kettle for supper, he said they would be forced from the tent because "your face would be burning so bad from the sunburn and windburn."

Mr. Michelin's family would also net seals, but he said after they had 200, the net would come up - not by law, but by choice.

"There was no law saying we had to but that was the old folks' tradition," he said. "They wouldn't have anymore," he said. "We couldn't eat 200 seals, so it was put in barrels and salted for the dogs for winter."

At 69 years old Mr. Michelin still partakes in the seal hunt, not for the fact of getting seals but to get out on the bay and continue to do what he has always done.

The hunt may have changed and taken on different forms, but there is one aspect that will stay with Mr. Michelin for the rest of his days.

Mr. Michelin said with the introduction on snowmobiles hunters can access the shores quickly, but when he was a boy they would carry wood on their komatik to have a boil up on the ice.

"I still enjoy going out and boiling the kettle on the bay," he said.

reporter@thelabradorian.ca