Then, taking the caribou bones they abandoned at their hunting camps and dwelling sites, he tried to relate their behavior to the information which he recovered from their broken food remains. The Nunamiut depend more heavily on meat than any other living hunter-gatherer group. Binford estimates that each adult eats around a cup and a half of vegetable foods a year, supplemented by the partially digested stomach contents of caribou, also some dried fish and sea mammal meat traded from coastal neighbors. These same neighbors also provide them with much vital fat needed for winter cooking and heating. In an arctic environment that has a growing season of only twenty-two days, the Nunamiut rely on stored food entirely for eight and a half months a year, and partially on it for an additional month and a half.
Fresh meat is freely available for only two months a year, mainly during the caribou migrations.
Every March, the scattered Nunamiut groups gather for the spring caribou hunt, a time when they also trap grizzly bears, and smaller animals. They live in temporary settlements, where they build corrals about 148 by 295 feet across. The hunters drive the caribou into the corrals, where they are snared or shoot. The hunt continues for days on end for several weeks, with as many as 200 to 300 animals being taken on a good day. The women skin the caribou, cutting the meat in springs, drying some of it, pounding the rest up with fat and berries.