Hunting up in the Arctic Circle has been a historical way of life for the Inuit and snowmobiles are the preferred mode of transportation to get to the animals.
What was once a matter of hooking up a team of dogs to a handcrafted sled to get around now just requires a machine.
Adam Kudlak is an Inuk who has lived up in the North for years and continues the hunting traditions of his ancestors.
He started as a young child and got his first animal—a caribou—when he was five years old. He also began learning how to drive a snowmobile around that age.
Ulukhaktok, formerly known as Holman, is home for Kudlak, his wife and his young son and daughter. Following in his father’s footsteps, his son is currently learning how to drive on the family ride.
The hamlet is in the Northwest Territories on Victoria Island inside the Arctic Circle, where temperatures can dip below -50 C in the dead of winter.
When Kudlak goes hunting, he fires up his fan-cooled 2003 Bombardier 560 snowmobile and heads out on the tundra to look for game such as caribou, muskox, seal, wolf and polar bear.
“One of my favourite things to do is to go out to the ice floes and go seal hunting,” said Kudlak. “That, and muskox hunting.”
Drilling through the ice allows for trout and Arctic char fishing. Kudlak and other locals also hunt whales out on the open water.
Kudlak said Bombardier is his preferred brand because of its long and established presence in the region.
Bombardier models were the first snow machines introduced into the northern market. Kudlak likes the reliability of the Bombardier sleds and the availability of spare parts for them.
With so many miles of open land to traverse, the Inuit have created a homemade towable to haul equipment, supplies and animal carcasses.
Using two long wood beams as rails, smaller cross beams are lashed across them to hold the sled together.
