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Updated: May 31, 2025
All the hares and ptarmigans of his new district would behold him coming from afar and keep well out of his way, while he, poor creature, would never be able to spot them at all among the white snow-fields. He would starve for want of prey, at the very time when the white fox, his neighbour, was stealing unperceived with stealthy tread upon the hares and ptarmigans.
There were a great number of ptarmigans, and they were so tame that we had no difficulty in getting many for food. Strange to say, when we fired our guns they made hardly any noise, for the air was so rarefied. We feasted well at our camp, for we also killed a number of white hares.
Not far away was a barren hill whose top was kept clean swept of snow by the winds, and up this hill they climbed, for sometimes ptarmigans are found in places like this, feeding upon the frozen moss berries which cling to the rocks. Bobby was in advance, and from the summit of the hill he scanned the great expanse of snow reaching away over the endless rolling country to the westward.
If they went and failed to find seals and were overtaken by a storm they would perish. This was the condition of affairs when Bobby and Jimmy set out one cold, clear morning to hunt for ptarmigans, the white grouse of the North.
Then, again, as everyone that has had such an experience knows, the pangs of hunger are mitigated after a certain period has been passed. In the afternoon George and I took the pistols and ascended a low ridge in the rear of the camp to look for ptarmigans. Soon George exclaimed under his breath: "There's two! Get down low and don't let 'em see you; the wind blows so they'll be mighty wild.
Herring and caplin had long since drifted away into unknown depths, where the tides flowed endlessly over them and brought never a one ashore. Hares and ptarmigans turned white to hide on the snow, so that wolf and fox would pass close by without seeing them.
Two species of the genus Attagis are in almost every respect ptarmigans in their habits; one lives in Tierra del Fuego, above the limits of the forest land; and the other just beneath the snow-line on the Cordillera of Central Chile. A bird of another closely allied genus, Chionis alba, is an inhabitant of the antarctic regions; it feeds on seaweed and shells on the tidal rocks.
But when he took his gun and shot some ptarmigans one day, they gave him to understand that this was a wasteful use of ammunition, and showed him how they killed the birds with bow and arrow. To shoot the arrows straight, however, was an art that he could not acquire readily, and his efforts afforded Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn much amusement.
The owl was big and beautiful, and I said to myself, "The ermine feeds on the ptarmigans, and the owl on the ermine." I did not like the idea of the harmless ptarmigans being eaten by ermines and owls, so I raised my gun and knocked him over. The foxes, after being hunted for two or three days, became very shy and it was impossible to get near them.
Ptarmigans in the early morning clucked on the river banks like chickens in a barnyard, and we saw some very large flocks of them. Geese and black ducks, making their way to the southward, were met with daily. But we had no arms or ammunition with which to kill them.
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