Polar bears live on the ice floes and feed on seals. They can be shot with­out much trou­ble but it takes a bul­let in the heart or brain to kill them. Polar bear liver is poi­so­nous and should not be eaten.

Seals are hard to approach but every effort should be made to get them for they pro­vide the best meat. In spring seals come up to bask on the ice beside their breath­ing holes. They sleep rest­lessly, rais­ing their heads about every 30 sec­onds to look around for their enemy, the polar bear. In approach­ing the seal, the Eskimo hunter crawls for­ward cau­tiously while the seal is sleep­ing, being care­ful to keep down­wind of it. When the seal moves the hunter stops and imi­tates its move­ments, lying flat on the ice, rais­ing his head up and down and wrig­gling his body slightly. In order to look as much like a seal as pos­si­ble the hunter approaches the seal side­ways instead of head on and keeps his arms close to his body. Since the seal is lying on smooth ice and usu­ally at an incline near the edge of the breath­ing hole, it must be killed instantly by a shot through the brain, for with the least move­ment of its body it will slide into the water. There­fore, it should be shot through the head at close range, 25 to 50 yards, so that the hunter can dash up and seize it before it reaches the water and sinks.

Seals can also be shot in open water, and in win­ter they will usu­ally float, but the prob­lem is to retrieve them. To accom­plish this the Eski­mos use a seal hook, a short wooden club or ball about the size of a grape­fruit, with four sharp upcurved iron hooks at the cen­ter. This is attached to a long line and is thrown over the seal which is hooked and pulled in. The wooden grap­ple described in the sec­tion on mak­ing your own fish­ing kit (p. 11) would serve this pur­pose if it were heavy enough and the barbs sharp and strong enough to pen­e­trate the seal’s hide.

Wal­ruses are found on mov­ing ice floes or at leads not far from shore where they can feed on clams. They should be shot through the neck, just below the head.

- from Sur­vival on Land and Sea, Office of Naval Intel­li­gence, The United States Navy, 1943