I took the shutters off my house windows. Storms smash windows and houses have been known to explode here. Nothing to report on that scale this winter although a section of roof plywood did cart-wheel and sliced it’s way through one house.

Summer warmth never arrives despite 70 days of perpetual daylight and because I don’t want burnt retinas or snow-blindness sunglasses I wear CEBE sunglasses.

Ringed seals keep their breathing holes open all year and come May they roll out and sun themselves, reluctant to return to the water because they’re shedding fur. It’s a good time to hunt seals. On spotting a seal I stop my dogs within 300 metres and walk. The idea is to watch the seal. When it raises its head I stop. I walk on when it lowers its head. Within range means to stalk within 150 metres of the seal. They must be perfect headshots, else one roll and the seal is back in the sea. I mount a 6.5 x 55 rifle with a Zeiss scope.

On the 15th the first of five polar bears was shot here in a week.

If you’re one of those with a teddy bear attitude towards polar bears, wake up.  Just look at these pictures. The kids were outside playing when this white terror was running into town. Obviously it didn't make it. Most years there’s a town quota of 30 bears for hunters to feed their families. This quota is reached usually by June by which time walrus and narwhals are eaten. Seals are eaten year-round.

Polar bear fur is so efficient the animal cannot be picked up with infra-red devices. My dogs’ reaction to bears is always the same, they point like arrows in the same direction sounding off with “gruff”….. “gruff”…..”gruff”. Good bear dogs will tackle a bear without getting hurt. Most of the time bears that know they’re being hunted make for thin ice, open water or climb icebergs.

I don’t know about west Greenland but here on the east coast polar bear kills are shared between many households according to well-established rules. If a hunter kills a polar bear they have limited rights to the ownership of the quarry. Sometimes a hunter will begin skinning the bear alone before handing his knife to those standing around him. The first symbolic cuts from those people will entitle them to a share. A dead bear belongs to whoever saw it first, irrespective of whether they killed it or not. The fur, head, back, breast, heart and guts are theirs. Hind legs are shared between two people. Both forelegs, the shoulder and rib cage is divided between two people and the hindquarters make up another single divide. That amounts to sharing the spoils between the first five people to have shot at or touched the bear. If more people are present the bear owner will share their own divide of the meat. If a bear is shot and taken home single-handedly a hunter has total rights over the entire animal and can do as he pleases with it.

With all this talk about killing it’s so easy for the rest of the world to point fingers. Go to a supermarket and freezers are full of meat that’s sold to eat by people who don’t give a care in the world about how it got there.

We on the other hand have no roads leading to us. No railways. No fields. No cows. No sheep. A scene most people cannot relate to. We are on the edge of the Greenland Ice Cap that’s made up of 3 km thick ice. Yearly two ships come here to re-supply us. We get a helicopter land here once sometimes twice a week with a box or two of vegetables flown in from Iceland. We make do. Hunting is a part of everyday life here. There is blood, guts and awful smells.  I won’t go on.

Before imposing bans on aspects of life they know nothing about I suggest a ban on people banning things and I say to them just be thankful someone else deals with all the blood, entrails and stench from the meat you eat before you pick it wrapped in plastic.