User talk:Fyslee/Reindeer hunting in Greenland

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[edit] Looking good

Hey, this is looking really good, a lot of work you put into it. It is very interesting at least the part of read so far. I hope to finish reading it soon, been busy! I hope you are doing ok, keep up the good job.--Crohnie 00:16, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Crohnie. I decided to do something else for awhile. This subject has interested me since our time in Greenland, where I shot many reindeer and fished alot. It was the best time of our lives. This is also a learning experience, since it involves going beyond my own experiences, reading other articles, and finding information elsewhere. I'm nearing the limits of what I can do and hope to release it soon. I hope it doesn't get too demolished. -- Fyslee/talk 16:07, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Well your love shows through very clearly to me, the article is wonderful. When you put it out for public reading and editing, I don't think it will change the loving care you put into it. I personally see all the hard work and time you put into this article and I can also understand you being hesitant to let you 'baby' be tampered with. You should be real proud, it is a very easy to understand article to read. --Crohnie 19:14, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Just curious, have you ever eaten Reindeer meat? If so how is it? I can't even picture eating Rudolph! ;-) I think the only different meat from the norm I have had is gator meat. Here in FL there is a lot of them but amazingly it's difficult to get, it gets shipped out. I always want to try venison but never had the chance since I pretty much have stayed in the state other than some vacations, mostly Carribean cruises. --Crohnie 20:49, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
I have shot 16 reindeer and eaten 15 of them. Fantastic, very lean and well-tasting. Because it's so lean, it should be handled carefully to avoid drying. Prepare a steak in a roasting bag with some butter on top, sweet red wine, juniper berries, salt, and pepper. The juices can then be used to make the gravy. Tastes good with cranberry sauce on the side. Reindeer are a species of deer, and thus their meat is also classed as venison. I'm sure you can find venison, you just have to look, and just close your eyes and pay. You only live once! -- Fyslee/talk 21:53, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Curious reindeer

I have written about the curiosity of reindeer. The very first day of my first reindeer hunt, I had shot my first one about 30 min. after leaving the tent. Later I shot another one, and two others (that had been about 200 meters further away) came closer and closer to see what I was doing. I was very far above our camp, which was just a speck in the distance, and I knew that I would have to carry the reindeer all the way down. The two curious animals came closer and closer and I kept glancing up at them while I used my knife and dressed the animal I had just shot. I said to myself that if they came closer than to "that spot", I'll shoot one of them. They did and I shot. That was enough to get the other one to run away. They were about eight meters away, so I could hear them breathing. They were very interested in what I was doing, and it cost one of them its life. They were probably about two years old. So I shot three reindeer my first day, and I had never been big game hunting in my life! That's Greenland for you.

Another time I was accompanied by my wife. We spotted two reindeer about 120 meters away. There was nothing between us and them but some small boulders on top of a large granite surface. She hid behind one and I lay down and crawled directly towards them, from one boulder to another until I couldn't get any closer. By then I was about 100 meters from them. Right before I was ready to shoot, one of them disappeared downhill. I waited a bit to see if it would return, but it didn't, so I shot the remaining deer, only to be startled by the discovery that the other deer was only about six meters to my right, staring down at this creature with a stick that said "bang". (It had apparently circled around and come back up to where I was.) I only had to carefully and slowly point at it and shoot. So we had two animals to carry back to our camp. All in all a good day! Curiosity killed those reindeer.

The next day we shot two more reindeer. One of them was on an open plain, with only small bushes. While my wife hid behind a small mound, I crawled towards the reindeer, in full sight of it. Every time it lifted its head from eating and looked directly at me, I stopped all movement. When it decided I wasn't a threat and resumed grazing, I slowly crawled forward. This was repeated several times, with it looking directly at me each time. Finally my nerves couldn't take anymore. If the wind changed or it could smell me, it would run. I shot it at about 60 yards. Several other animals I have shot at under 50 yards. I figure that there are three things that can spook a reindeer, especially an experienced one: movement (sight), sound, and smell. If two of them occur, you risk it running away. One of them isn't always enough. Their eyesight isn't good, but smell and movement will spook them immediately. Inexperienced and curious reindeer risk never gaining experience. -- Fyslee/talk 10:05, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unfinished jobs

Need to include information on
  • Traditional Inuit hunting and its history.
  • Commercial hunting
  • Winter hunting
  • Trophy hunting
  • Best times of day for hunting
Searching

-- Fyslee/talk 06:46, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] hi,I am watching you build and prune!

Hi Fylee, I have you on my watch list so that I can see an article start from almost the beginning to frutation. It looks good and it looks like a lot of work too! ;) I hope you are well. We had a car accident so a bit sore still but no one hurt thank goodness, just bumps and muscle soreness. Oh just so you know, hubby bought us a four day trip to the Bahamas so will be gone Friday through Monday night. --Crohnie 12:36, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Have a good trip. I've never been there, but I had a patient from the Bahamas once. This article is growing, partially because of input from biologists who live, or have lived, in Greenland. One is a neighbor. There are some controversial angles which I only touch on, but which may well end up being edited quite a bit. -- Fyslee/talk 19:43, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Consequences of reindeer herding

A hunter
A hunter

I suspect this hunter (read his cap) understands what's written below. Large-scale pastoralism would destroy Greenland coastal lands (and those are the only kinds!), while controlled hunting ensures that the nature is preserved and the animals keep their habitat.

This article is about hunting, not pastoral Reindeer herding (which would make for an interesting article), but in the process of doing research for this article, I have naturally found lots of stuff about herding. Here is something that raises a red flag, at least as far as Greenland is concerned. I doubt the Greenland flora and landscape could support widespread herding. The habitable nature there is far too limited and vulnerable.



Timescapes of Community Resilience and Vulnerability in the Circumpolar North By Martin Robards and Lilian Alessa

Pastoralism

Two prominent changes in Arctic resource provisioning can be described in relation to Rangifer tarandus (caribou or reindeer), which for millennia has been the most important terrestrial resource for Arctic peoples (Klein, 1996;Freese, 2000). In the 6th century AD on Russia's Yamal Peninsula, R. tarandus were domesticated for transport, facilitating substantial increases in a community's effective hunting range and resource options (CAFF, 2001) while reducing vulnerability to the vagaries of spatial or temporal migration patterns. Another revolution developed over the last 1000 years, as animal husbandry and oversight of greater numbers of R. tarandus marked the transition from a mode of subsistence based on hunting and gathering to a mixed economy based on hunting and gathering plus intensive, highly specialized, livestock pastoralism (Krupnik, 1993; Freese, 2000). Between 1700 and 1900, the domestic reindeer population rapidly increased across the Eurasian Arctic, and by the end of the19th century, wild reindeer hunting by many indigenous Eurasian cultures had virtually disappeared (Krupnik,1993). Pastoral lifestyles may increase resilience of ecological systems through pulsed disturbances as herders move their animals to new pastures. However, several episodes of rapid decline of R. tarandus in areas of pastoralism across the Arctic have been attributed to changing biophysical conditions, irrespective of anthropogenic factors (Krupnik, 1993). The most dramatic repercussion of a pastoral lifestyle may be the three- to fourfold increase in ecological carrying capacity for humans that results from the transition between hunter/gather and pastoral lifestyles (Freese, 2000; CAFF, 2001). Furthermore, top-down government intervention in and control of reindeer pastoralism, via subsidies and other incentives, in Fennoscandia and Russia over the last century have led to pernicious socioeconomic and ecological effects (Paine,1994). These effects have further stressed the environmental carrying capacity by delaying social ramifications, while allowing for continued aggravation of the underlying shortfalls of the biophysical environment to support community needs. In these cases, the lag effects of human population growth are out of synchrony with the regeneration of reindeer and their habitat, management responses, the balances between domesticated and wild R. tarandus, and social-ecological resilience (Fig. 1). Increases in human populations as a result of pastoral lifestyles represent lifestyle dependence. Ecological deterioration as a result of elevated R. tarandus densities, mechanization, and social reorganization could preclude a return to a pure hunter/gatherer lifestyle during periods of changing pastoral fortunes, because of exceeding ecological carrying capacity thresholds and barriers to social adaptability.

Source: Arctic: Vol. 57, no. 4 (December 2004) p. 415-427

[edit] Nearly ready

Update: I'm getting near the limits of how much I want to do alone. So far I've tried to cover the subject from a number of different angles, tried to keep it interesting by using widely varying styles and formats (facts, research, history, images & galleries, prose, lead & summary, wikilinks, references, etc.), and generally tried to present the subject so people will understand some of the subject's many facets and to also get a feel for what it's like. I may need to upload some of my own images. There just aren't enough good images in Wikimedia Commons. Unfortunately I don't have many hunting images of my own since I didn't take many pictures on hunts. I simply didn't dare take my good camera along, and this was before small digital cameras (and I didn't own a cheap analog one). Greenland is not only very green, it's also very wet, and camera electronics and moisture are a bad blend. I ruined my first good SLR when our canoe hit an underwater rock and tipped over on the Colorado River. Maybe I can convince some people to allow me to use their Greenland images. There are plenty of them out there. -- Fyslee/talk 12:56, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

This is a really good article! The images are awesome and the perspective is certainly unique. I think we could call it a work of art. -- Dēmatt (chat) 03:00, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the compliment. The subject matter is nice to work with for me, since it brings back lots of good memories and beautiful scenery. My wife was fortunate enough to experience two hunts, one with me, and we worked fine as a team. One cannot truly understand Inuit mentality without having experienced how they get food and survive. They live in a land where one is "on the edge" all the time in many ways, and they have lived for thousands of years doing the best they could, with starvation as a constantly recurring problem. They never developed large settlements, only living in small groups, and those groups often disappeared because they all starved or died of disease. Their original diet was mostly meat, fat, and viscera, with berries and angelica as a supplement. Fortunately the climate means that anyone living there has a very high metabolic rate and can utilize such a diet, which is deadly in warmer climates. The calories which the body eagerly burns to survive in the far north, become a burdensome surplus in warmer climes. We ate huge quantities of meat while living there, but upon returning to Denmark we had to radically change our diet, simply because it was impossible to eat that way. -- Fyslee/talk 07:24, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "No natural predators"

Reindeer have no natural enemies - what about wolves? If there were more wolves, would there be less reindeer? Should we say something along these lines. The irony is that man didn't mind killing the wolves, but doesn't want to kill the overpopulating reindeer? -- Dēmatt (chat) 03:26, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Later on I mention "although wolves present no threat in Greenland". Wolverines can cross the ice from Ellesmere Island, but it's rare, and neither wolves nor Polar bears are naturally occurring in southwestern Greenland (I have now modified the text), where the reindeer are located. Those are the only "natural" – though not "naturally occurring" - potential predators. In Canada the wolves hunt reindeer all the time, and here is a film from YouTube. Wolves begin eating their prey without consideration for whether the prey is alive or not. "Natural" is also cruel. I wouldn't put it past a sea eagle to take a reindeer calf once in awhile, but I've never heard of it. They do take lamb occasionally. They are huge birds and I've seen them many times, often when they are getting dive bombed by smaller birds who drive them from the area. There is limited reindeer herding in small areas in Greenland, but that's another subject. Greenland doesn't have the large tundra (and no forests) areas needed to sustain large herds. -- Fyslee/talk 06:23, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Going public with article

I think the time has come to go public with this.:

-- Fyslee/talk 07:31, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree, the article is great. You should be very proud of all your hard work. We are leaving today for the Bahamas so I'll check in around Tuesday or so. I'm very happy to have been able to watch this grow from infancy to a full article, thanks. I learned a lot watching you build something so magnificant. I'll talk to you soon. --Crohnie 08:55, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Have a good trip. -- Fyslee/talk 09:02, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
I love your article. I've been fascinated with reindeer-caribou since I was a child. Cheers! em zilch (talk) 16:25, 9 June 2008 (UTC)