From what little I have seen first hand the Inuit hunters were serious and deadly efficient hunters. On Norton sound two guys would shoot about 25 Caribou a day until the sledges were full. The numbers were determined by how many could be processed and how many the village needed not how many they could shoot, they rarely missed. Wasting bullets or shooting for pleasure was unheard of unless it was after some kind of festivity.
Sledges are full at 5 or 6 animals. BTDT. Everything else in excess was speculative as to whether the weather would turn, the snow-go's would run, if there was a drunk coming on.... and other factors. In the mid- 70's, out of Pt Hope, In May, for two years running, I could have shown you about a thousand abandoned carcasses due to this practice, within a 30 mile range, and 45 degree landward arc....
On my first date with my eventual (32 years ago) to-be wife, we shot 8 caribou.-- between daylight, weather, and dunking the machine in over-flow, it was a month before I got the last 3 home from about 25 miles out... mind you this was before GPS- but I grew up on NoDak prairie....
The Western Arctic Herd (roams south to KOTZ) went from 240,000 to 55,000 in those two years, recruitment went from 20-25/ 100 cows to 3-5/100 cows.
From my observations, I concluded this was due not only to the wanton waste, but also to the intensive and extensive running of the cows by snow-machine "hunters" from various villages - causing the cows to abort. Officially, it is a "mysterious decline" in the annals of ADF&G.
Klik's observation as to adolescents (up to mid 20's or so ) is spot on. They are, in any culture, a PITA. (They were warned by the village's older hunters, but with no consequences attached... this isn't the way Inupiat culture works)
(Mine own kids weren't particularly PITAs as adolescents , but that's only because my wife is not one to be crossed lightly!)
Any group of people is only as good as their education and enforcement of values..
