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Friend, not Dinner
"As I was walking along,
what I had thought was a patch of snow got up
almost at my feet. I sat down, and there was
a beautiful Arctic hare not a yard from me...
'Hello, hare,' I said. 'What's it like being
a hare up here?... He moved round down-wind of
me, but wasn't in the least alarmed at my smell.
I sat there for a long time, but though twice
more I tried to stroke the hare, he would not
allow me to do so... [B]efore long I had to say
good-bye to my hare and continue my walk... 'Good-bye,
old chap,' I said, 'and good luck. I mustn't
tell [Nukapinguaq] I have met you, because he
is very fond of hare, and I don't know what he
would say if he knew we had parted friends'".
- Haig-Thomas 1939 |
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 Ole Andreason holding a dead Arctic hare at Banks Island, Northwest Territories, during the Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1914.
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Arctic Explorers
and Arctic Hares
The tameness of 'wild'
Arctic hares (Lepus arcticus) has
surprised visitors to the Arctic since the days of the early
explorers. When approached by unconcerned hares in his 1899
expedition to Arctic Canada, Norwegian explorer Otto Sverdrup
was even able to touch one. He was so impressed by this closeness
that he delayed his trip to spend time with the hares, feeling
like "Adam in Paradise before Eve came".
When Captain Parry over-wintered on Melville Island in 1818-1819,
the record of game killed in the 12 months included 68 Arctic
hares, 24 caribou and 3 muskoxen. During the search for Sir
John Franklin, some 30 years later, Captain M'Dougall, who
also wintered at Melville Island, included in his game list
for the year 146 hares, 95 caribou and 114 muskoxen. (Melville
Island is now divided between Northwest Territories and Nunavut).
In 1908, one of Robert Peary's winter hunting parties found
hares in the interior of northern Ellesmere Island "by
the million, so thick you'd fall over them". By the light
of the full moon in late December, five in their party killed
more than 60 hares in one night.
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