The silver messenger. (Challis, Idaho) 1890-1912, 1899-08-22
THE KILLING OF SEALS.
Wonderful Vitality and Desperate
Courage Shown by the Old
Dog Hood

Now, I had great opportunities Of
watching the young seals. Balls of snow
white fluff, these innocent-looking ba-
bies lie basking in their icy cradles,
equally happy in sunshine or falling
snow, sometimes for hours on their
backs, tapping their fiippers impotent-
~ like fans, unable from sheer fat
TO get over again. In the coolest, storm
lest season they grow fastest and fat
test, so marvelously does nature pro-
vide for their necessities. Nor does
she do less for the old seals. So thin that
they sink al once if shot in the water
in summer, as winter approaches they
fatten and fatten up, till now they en-
Joy this terribly cold weather as we
would bath in summer. They dive in
off the ice, paddle to and fro in the
water, throw themselves on their backs
and float, putting out their chests and
throwing showers of water over their
upturned noses with forehippers. Side
stroke and break stroke, diving and
sounding, they sport about, till one al
most feels tempted TO follow and share
their rapturcus pleasures.
The killing of the young seals has
been frequently described as brutal
and brutalizing, and the seal hunters
/ depicted as sayages. But, to my mind,
/ the work is not nearly so brutalizing
as the ordinary killing of sheep, pigs
Or oxen.
Here the animal is too young to feel
/ fear, and evinces no sign of it; no an
imal is wounded and left to die in vain.
The ''crying" of young seals is not from
fear, but hunger. One often hears
them cry al night for their dams,
while they never give tongue al mans
approach.
1t is only in killing the old dog hood
seals that one feels the savagery of
killing anything. for the hoods marvel
Gus vitality is only equaled by his
pluck. l watched four men fight an
old dog hood one day on a small pan.
Reared up on his launches, with his
hood blown up, he awaited the attack.
The first blow, struck at his hood.
might as well have struck a stone wall.
while catching the second gaff-end clev-
erly in his teeth, he shook its long
handle to such. good purpose that he
cleared the pan of his enemies in an in
slant. Though he could at any moment
have slipped off into the water, he
would not do SO, and soon a lucky blow
under the jaw stretched him out. \
perfect shower of blows on the head
seemed to finish him of. and, heavy
strap being placed around him, he was
hauled to the bulwarks by the steam
winch.
just as he got there his immens.
weight broke it down, and he disap
peared, we thought for good. But il
a minute or so he suddenly appeares
again, and, refreshed by the cold wa
ter, he climbed out on the very sam
pan, where the hunters were ungallan
enough TO return and dispatch hin
with their long knives. Nor does tn
hunter by any means have it all hi
own way SO agile and powerful ar
these beasts that they viii jump clea
out of the water into a pan six to te,
feet high without touching the edge
when in no other way they could elm
onto it, and many man las been bad
" mauied and bitten and dragged int
the water in endeavoring 10 capture tn
valiant old fellows.-Pittsburgh Dis
! match