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One of my favorite hunting trips in
my life was bowhead hunting with my Papa, my grandfather. I was nine years old and it was in the mid-summer. We were in a boat in glassy ocean
water. We were boating for about five
hours before I saw a bowhead whale.
I used cool polarized water
glasses when I saw a big black shape underwater. I saw white on its head when it
came up for air.
Luckily, we had the whale
harpoon and the shoulder gun for killing the whale ready in the boat. First,
I harpooned the whale behind
the blower, it's blowhole. Then my Papa came up with his shoulder gun and shot it twice.
The first time he missed the whale. The
second shot hit the whale right in front of the blowhole and killed it. There was a buoy attached to the rope and
the harpoon so the whale did not sink. I towed the whale to the land.
After we towed the whale
to the edge of the ocean, we used a tractor to pull the whale onto the land. Almost everyone
in town came out to help cut up the whale. The whale was shared
with everyone. There were 300 gallons of blood that we dumped into the ocean.
There was a lot of whale meat. Some of the meat we ate right away.
Sometimes we cook the meat but other times we eat the whale
meat raw.
There is a lot of meat and we can't
eat it all. We store it in a big freezer underground. The underground freezer
is a huge hole that we dig in the ground. It is about fifteen feet deep. There
is a ladder we can use to climb down to the bottom. Going whaling with my papa is amazing.
I cannot wait for next time.
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