Doug Ashbury
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jan 11/99) - Members of the Ekaluktutiak Hunters and Trappers Association carried out the region's first-ever federally-approved muskox hunt last month, according to Ikey Evalik, the organization's manager.

Thirty-one people participated in the hunt. Some 165 animals were harvested.

To meet federal inspection rules, an abattoir was set up at the Ikaluk River.

The hunt took about two weeks.

"We were hoping for more (muskox)," Evalik said. But lack of daylight and poor weather hampered the hunt, he added.

The HTA was aiming for about 250 muskoxen.

The meat is currently being processed at the NWT Development Corporation's Kitikmeot Foods plant in Cambridge Bay. The development corporation bought all the meat as well as some of the hides from the HTA.

December's hunt followed an earlier hunt in March when 217 muskoxen were harvested. The April hunt was not a federal hunt. The effort yielded 18,000 kilograms of meat, or an average of about 83 kilograms (182 pounds) per animal.

Evalik said the most recent hunt has illustrated what is needed for the HTA to complete a successful, federally-approved hunt.

Evalik said they will now look to planning the next muskox hunt in March.

The December 1998 hunt was originally planned for November.

A federally-approved hunt means setting up an abattoir on-site. The Kitikmeot Foods plant is federally approved.

If the product is to be sold outside the NWT, then it must be federally approved.

And with Nunavut approaching, there is a need to meet all requirements if the product is to be sold across the new Nunavut-western NWT border which becomes official April 1, 1999.

Because the hunt met federal rules it means the meat can not only be sold across the Nunavut-western NWT border, it can be sold across provincial and international borders.

In Sachs Harbour, planning is under way for a commercial muskox harvest.

Patrick Schmidt, general manager of the numbered company associated with the muskox project, said there had been plans to harvest as many as 2,000 animals on Banks Island last November but the weather was unco-operative. Directors of the number company are largely members of the community of Sachs Harbour.

Late in 1997, some 1,250 muskoxen were harvested from Banks Island. That effort met federal rules as an abattoir was set up.

"We broke even from the product side (on the 1997 hunt)," he said. Schmidt described the 1997 effort as successful. Historically, muskox harvests have been risky ventures. Shipping costs are huge. The product must be flown via DC-3 aircraft from Sachs Harbour to Inuvik then trucked out.

Meat from that effort was pre-sold. That two-month effort yielded about 80,000 kilograms of meat and employed about 45 people.

Schmidt is aiming at mid-February for the muskox harvest project to get under way.

"Weather has been a detriment" and caused the delay, he said. Storms during the harvest as well as above- normal temperatures were both big factors.

As well as the meat, the hunt also generates hides which have commercial potential.

Hides are made into leather. Among the leather products made from the muskox -- key fobs, briefcases, wallets, passport holders and business card holders. The development corporation buys the hides and sells the leather products at its Arctic Trading Company stores south of 60.

The business card holder was featured in a Toronto magazine as its gift of the month.

As well as the meat and hides, the soft fur under the muskox's long hair -- known as quviut -- is another product sold commercially.

Schmidt said the quviut is sheared in Sachs Harbour then sold to a company in Banff. The Banff firm then has the product processed in Peru. The final product is yarn and sweaters sold in Banff.

Developing the products is a "slow climb" but the people associated with the harvests are committed to its success, Schmidt said.

At the development corporation, president and CEO Glenn Soloy is extremely optimistic about the future of many of the products. He specifically pointed to the jerky which is made not only at Kitikmeot Foods but also at Keewatin Meat and Fish plant in Rankin Inlet. The Rankin plant, destroyed by fire in 1997, was back on line in 1998.

"We are now dealing with a federally-approved product. We can enter markets we were restricted from before," he said.

"We have an edge because this is a specialty product."

On the recent muskox harvest in Cambridge Bay, Soloy said, "We know the demand is there and I'm looking to see sales do well."

He also said there was an economic need to do federally-approved hunts. It is a matter of generating products that can be sold in markets beyond the NWT. This is necessary to sustain the processing plants, he said.

"We have to broaden our consumer base."

John Colford, with the GNWT's wildlife and fisheries division, sums it up best when he says the federally-inspected hunts are part of the evolution of the North's country foods sector.

The people involved at the community level have taken on the challenge and charted the course, he said.