Northern Groceries Part I

I've been intending to write about northern groceries for a while now and this post will be the first of (hopefully) many. ManNorth and I aren't vegetarians (although I was once for a few years) and occasionally include meat in our diet usually in the form of chicken or turkey, although we get most of our protein from eggs, legumes and TVP (textured vegetable protein). Northern Town occasionally offers unique opportunities to include other sources of protein in our diet.

Like these loveable animals:

(image blatantly taken from http://mercury.bio.uaf.edu/courses/wlf201/)

In February I was invited to lend a hand with a harvest from a Muskox herd that lives on Banks Island. I'm not sure just how I would have helped but I was certainly willing to volunteer in any capacity that I could in order to see the event. Harvest, in this case of course and as is commonly used in the north, refers generally to the managed killing and use (for meat and/or hides) of local wildlife. Aboriginal peoples have constitutionally guaranteed harvesting rights for certain species in areas to which they have land claim agreements, and this harvest of muskox is part of the management of this particular herd and provides and employment to the local community. I wasn't able to participate after all though, much to my disappointment, because of certain guidelines that dictated that only local people were to be employed for the harvest and I would have had to have been flown in (along with a few other approved participants from Northern Town).

The harvest has long since finished and the meat has been finding its way to other communities, including ours. We were fortunate to recently get about 6lbs of frozen ground meat for free from a friend and will be purchasing more while it is still available in local stores. Efforts are being made by DIAND (Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development) to market the meat and qiviut (muskox wool) in stores to the south. (Here's a suggestion for your local grocer!)

A local grocery store is selling it for $$3.25 per 2 lb bag, which is about one half to one third the price that (frozen) ground beef sells for here, and I believe, is even less than the cost of beef much farther south. The meat is extremely lean and when we fry it up, not a drop of fat needs to be drained from the pan and if anything, we need to watch it closely to ensure it doesn't dry out and over cook. The taste is just slightly gamey but isn't at all disagreeable. We've been told that if we let it thaw and drain in a collander before cooking, that the gamey taste goes away.

Interestingly, various aboriginal people in the area of Northern Town may view muskox meat quite differently than ManNorth and me. Some people (like those that have harvesting rights for the Banks Island herd) may consume muskox and regard the animals as a good source of meat, although caribou is much preferred. Others may regard muskox that they encounter on the mainland as invasive (they aren't) and distain muskox meat, except in emergencies. There is also often a shared concern about effects of competition by muskox on caribou in areas of overlapping range.

Muskox are endemic to this area but because of overhunting in the 1800s, numbers declined dramatically across Canada, causing local extinctions of particular herds by 1900. Declines were so serious that in 1917 the Canadian federal government restricted hunting of muskox, prohibited trading of their hides and put them under complete protection. Slowly, the herds have recovered in number and have again begun to occupy historic parts of their range. With the recovery of the various herds, hunting restrictions have been relaxed and quotas increased.

The population on Banks Island has recovered so well that the population size is approximately 60-70,000 animals. Although an annual quota of 10,000 animals exists, current harvest and subsistence use rates (ranging from only 200-2,000 animals annually) are not nearly high enough to slow the current rate of growth. There are concerns that the population may begin to suffer from effects of overcrowding. In spite of this and the large size of the herd, resource managers have elected not to cull the herd due not only to substantial financial costs and logistical difficulties of such an endeavor but primarily because of an unwillingness to waste the culled animals since processing the meat and hides from the number of animals necessary in this type of cull would be all but impossible.

Although the various populations are described as herds, muskoxen don't form large groups like caribou do and tend to associate in small groups of about 15 animals, led by a dominant bull or cow. Herd size and composition vary with season, range conditions and the number of bulls in the population. When harassed by wolves, the small herd usually runs to higher ground or an area of shallow snow, led by the dominant animal where they will stop and group together behind the dominant bull into a defensive circle formation with the calves protected in the centre and the adults facing out towards the threat. This defensive tactic works well against wolves, but makes herds vulnerable to human hunters with guns and easily herded for harvest elsewhere.

(Image also taken from the internet. I've lost the link to provide appropriate credit)

In the case of the Banks Island harvest, small herds are rounded up by people on snow mobiles and herded into a series of circular corrals, shaped rather like a snowman. New animals are herded into the base of the largest corral and as animals are selected for harvest, based on age and sex, are moved successively through increasingly smaller corrals until individual animals are examined. Wildlife biologists collect needed biological information about each animal as well as ensuring, along with other observers, that only healthy bulls in the age category targeted (2-3 years of age) are killed. Selected animals are dispatched with a single gunshot to the head. The carcasses are immediately processed in a facility on site and the ground meat is frozen and ready for shipping within hours of processing.

This may be distasteful to some of you, but for many local people, a muskox harvest is important to their economic well being, and may be of some benefit to a herd that may suffer from overcrowding... Your thoughts?