Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Commonly hunting rifle and caliber used by Inuit

A question to the experts:
What are the most commonly hunting rifles and calibers uses by the Inuit?

Recently on TV there was picture about the Inuit in Canada. The rifle used for hunting seals looked like a Marlin and the bolt looked just as large as the bolt for a 22 WMR or Hornet.

When I last hunted with the Inuit some20 years ago the .22 mag was their caliber of choice for everything from seals to Polar Bear. Rifles and ammo were fairly cheap and easy to come by in the north.

The ones I have hunted with had a mixed bags of old guns. The guides were seal hunters & one had a rusty .223(bolt action not sure of brand), one had a .303 British, which was even used on Polar Bears, & the cook had a .22 RF. All were old & rusty. The .22 was used on Ptarmigan which they boiled whole unplucked & ungutted. After cooking a bit they plucked the feathers & ate to bone & guts. They also cut strips of fat from the backs of caribou & ate raw. One guide/seal hunter had a father than ran Black Bear hunts & used a 30-06. This fellow thought that was the caliber to own. These guys slept on the sea ice in sleds during the winter while seal hunting. There is tough then there is this kind of tough. I gained real respect for what ancient hunters endured.

the ones i ran in to when i lived in ak used either .223 or 22 lr. i never saw a rifle larger than .223 in the hands of a local villager. i suspect the .223 was popular because the ak national guard was and still is quite popular, and uncle sam has lots of ammo.

I have hunted with Inuits a number of times all across the North. In general they do light lighter calibers, partly because they can carry lots of ammo, and it is cheaper. I have seen a lot of .22 Magnums and .223's, bt occasionally there will be a .243 or .25-06 as well. On a whale hunt in Hudson's Bay the whale shooter (they harpoon the whale, then chase it around until it needs to rise to breathe, then shoot it in the head) used a rusty .303 SMLE, but his usuall rifle was a .223. These whales were belugas, and even a huge one isn't more than 20 feet long.

One older guy I hunted musk ox with carried a .22 Magnum for most hunting, even polar bears. He would sneak up on a bear and shoot it in the heart, whereupon the bear wouuld wander around for 15 minutes or so then topple over. He did this because polar bear hides are very valuable, and a bigger rifle would make too big a hole.

In the Northwest Territories and Nunavut Territories there are also tundra grizzlies. These are about 1/3 the size of polar bears but a lot more aggressive. On a caribou hunt my Inuit guide carried a .338 Winchester Magnum, just because of the angry little tundra grizzlies. He used a .243 to hunt polar bear.

Oddly enough, I have never run into an Inuit with a .22 Hornet, which evidently used to be the standard before the .22 Magnum and .223 came along.

I wish I had taken a pic of the ammo case in the store at Little Diomede when I was there a few years ago. They had 300 and 340 Weatherby, 338 Win and 375 H&H and a bunch of other stuff. ( A young kid had recently stepped out of his house one morning with his 308 to dispatch a white bear which was on the prowl for chained doggy treats.) I will say this for where I'm at, the 243 is highly rated, as is the 7MM Rem Mag, the 30-06 and the 300 Win Mag. The 375 is a popular whale (beluga) hunting round. And the 223, of course, sees a lot of use. Twenty years ago more of the little 55 FMJs were probably fired through Mini-14s than anything else. Nowadays the AR type rifles have become pretty common. Haven't yet run into any Inuit around here though, of course. Alaska has its own Eskimo cultures often generalized into three groups. PC hasn't quite convinced people to use the term sometimes used to generalize Canadian Eskimos. (That would be kind of like calling anyone of European ancestery a German, I think.)

I hunted caribou out of Kotzebue in 2007 and spent a couple of days with some Eskimos who were also hunting 'bou. They were not Inuits, but Inupiaks. They all used small calibers .243, 22-250, etc., and their rifles were well cared for, not rusty at all.

I've got a buddy who has in-laws who are Inuit.

Seems things like the 17HMR are in real demand these days, they like em for seals, and his BIL even took a caribou with this caliber.

His big gun was a 25'06, he gave it away because it was too big and ruined the pelts.

They are living to a totally different standard up there, they value their critters from every aspect, utilize every piece of them too, bones for tools, and fishing gear, hides for clothing or for sale, meat to eat etc. etc. they like small calibers because it does'nt ruin too much of what us white guys would just scrap.

Same as above. One friend bought a "Big Moose Rifle" from a local, It was a Savage 340 in 250 caliber.

The younger guys might use anything lots of Weatherby's, a couple 8RM, some 25-06s along with the more common 22s, 243s, 30-30s, SMLE's & 06s.

I remember hunting with a fellow back in the 1970's he carried a Savage 99 in 250-3000 and that rifle had a lot of miles on it too. This was in Newfoundland, I don't recall what band he belonged to, but he would tell me of shooting seals moose and what have you with that 250, and all his friends thought it was a huge gun. I was shooting a 7mm Remington on that trip. Thou I know some in Western alaska that went to bigger guns for whale and walrus, to cut down on loss game.

I didn't get too far north, but when I lived in Fairbanks, the largest round I ever saw in the hands of a native was a 308 win, and his brother kept on him about carrying a cannon...

Klik,

I should have said I've hunted with Inuits (or people that call themselves that) all across Canada, from northern Quebec to the islands above Canada. Apparently, at least from what I have seen, it is a lot harder to get ammo, rifles, scopes, etc. up there than in Alaska.

In Arviat (formerly Eskimo Point) on Hudson's Bay, for instance, a really high-class scope was a Tasco 3-9x, and they went for over $200 (American) in 2002. The only ammo available in the local store was rimfire, .223 and .243. This was where I went along on the whale hunt, and the ammo was kinds greenish .303 military hardball from around WWII. And that is one of the better-supplied villages in Nunavut Territory. Try going up to one of the villages on the islands in the Arctic Ocean (where a ship comes in once a year) and things are even skimpier.

The various Inuit groups do have their own prejudices even in Canada. When we we cutting up a whale and I was trying to eat various parts, they told me that "On Baffin Island, they eat walrus. Yuk!"

With some exceptions, you are dreaming for Alaska's Inupiat, in my experience. YMMV with Canadian Inuit.

The .223 and .22-250 were the favorite Inupiat calibers in the 4 years I lived in Pt. Hope, 30 years ago. Probably the same now, but can't say- I've been gone awhile.

They shoot flat, and accurate- good for whacking seals in the heads out in the ice-leads, or hauled out on the floes, pan-ice or shore-bound ice. Unless cleanly head-shot, the bastid will dive back down their ice-holes and be lost. (These folks are still culturally seal/whale oriented- tho most of their meat now days comes from caribou or whales) The .22 CF are not so good for caribou at longer ranges- I and hunting partners (white and Inupiat both) shot a number of caribou that had been wounded numerous times beforehand with these inadequate for the range/purpose guns.

They regularly take polar bears with them, at short ranges, and no one's been eaten in years.... It's all about range, bullet placement, and bullet performance... Luck doesn't hurt any either.

My .25-06 did indeed leave some impressive exit wounds on those 20 plus 'bou I shot with it up there- but then, I only used the skins for freeze-dried winter-camping sleeping pads... wasn't an issue - it did produce impressive bang-flops to beyond 500 yards. A .22 CF just doesn't do that.

It was illegal for me to shoot seals with it, me being a white-eyes...... so I of course technically don't know how it stacked up against a .22-250 for that purpose. (It shot MOA, 5 shot groups, factory standard rifle). But my Inupiat hunting partner (read Arctic Mentor- he was 20 years older than me) was impressed. On caribou, at least. Given a seal's head size, it just don't make that much difference.

I've never learned so much from anyone else in such a short space of time as i did from Henry... .

I like to think I taught him one or two things in return. He died of cancer some years ago, but he once shot (before I met him) a large polar bear at 6 feet, from the hip, with a .243, at the end of an ice ridge where they met as Henry was racing to cut off the bear after having spotted him from some distance off.. He'd slightly miscalculated the bear's travel rate.... Luckily for Henry, it was a bang-flop.

Henry also appeared in a National Geographic photo, dragging a seal across the ice. NG needed a good photo, so Henry went out on his lunch hour from his Job at Tikigaq (Pt. Hope) School to accommodate the photographer....

I really miss Henry....

I shot this Caribou in Alaska on a DIY hunt in 1998.
I was hunting the Mulchatna herd near New Stoyhok on the Nushagak river.



After photos, I began skinning and boning only to find a half dozen .22 rimfire slugs in his hindquarters.
Yes, I'd say the .22 rimfire seems to be as popular with the Inuit as it is with the Mexicans here in California.

I think one would more likely hit close to the mark in speculating that it was "young bucks" who probably did that then to generalize that an "Inuit" (Yup'ik) had anything to do with it. I don't base much of anything about a culture or group of people by what their adolescents do. It would please me to be granted the same deference. As for who did it, no local hunter worth their salt would ordinarily have shot that animal with any rifle except as a youngster. It's rather unusual, in my experience, for the good local hunters to be shooting "nice" bulls. A nice fat cow is generally going to be in better condition and taste better than the bulls will.

You have a point.

Friend of mine hunts in the hills above a big vinyard here in California.

About half of the bucks they take have .22 rimfire slugs in them.

Mexicans here are notorious for poaching deer with the well wishes of the vinyard owners.

"In the Northwest Territories and Nunavut Territories there are also tundra grizzlies. These are about 1/3 the size of polar bears but a lot more aggressive. On a caribou hunt my Inuit guide carried a .338 Winchester Magnum, just because of the angry little tundra grizzlies. He used a .243 to hunt polar bear."

MuleDeer quote.

Ditto on that. I knew an old Inuit hunter who swore by the .243 for Polar bear. He said that they NEVER charge - when shot.

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.

I always thought the bow and arrow was the most popular!! LOL

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..