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Th ey eat seals, don’t they?
James Swan: Otter and seal hunting on Willapa Bay
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James Gilcrest Swan, one of Willapa Bay’s
earliest pioneers, chroniclers, and anthropolo-
gists, describes seal and otter hunting in his early
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A treasure trove of information, to say the
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ever written about this time and place we are
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In the coming months, we will investigate more
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camera and with two of man’s best friends, in this
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be percise, momma otter and papa otter and their
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better word, for these furry creatures appear to be
the most playful and curious mammals in all the
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bling and winding Willapa Hills tributary on the
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I arrived early, and could tell from the lack of
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downstream from a well-worn slide, two mature
otters greeted me like an old friend, their mouths
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Coastal Life
Story by DAVID CAMPICHE
4 | March 31, 2016 | coastweekend.com
Photo by Dwight Caswell
A river otter
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Which brings us back to Black Lake and later,
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traversed several miles of inconsistent shallow
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portage for the Chinook between the Columbia
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Swan describes hunting for otters in Willapa
Bay, hunting off a prominent rock appendage
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Bend, the town that claims itself to be the oys-
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Like gourmands who devour succulent oys-
ters from our Shoalwater Bay — the
older nom de guerre — otters adore mol-
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otter, Enhydra lutris, and river otter, Lon-
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Chinese who coveted the plew (mountain man
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large sea otter swimming off the
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wonderful to welcome them back?
Seals were hunted and eaten
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On Willapa Bay in the 19th
century, they were also eaten by some of the
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At the same time, the otters were soon gone
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pray and work for a better world for our children,
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swim underwater to the front of the island, all the
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(no pun intended), he would corner the prey and
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the dead seal was plugged by thick grasses or a
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until the fur on its sleek body was singed off by
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when fresh (says Swan), the seal fat was rendered
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claimed that the liver of a young seal was a par-
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Otters, apparently, were hunted simply for
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hairs per square inch, the densest fur of all mam-
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ter swapping trading goods for the thick furs with
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after his sailing ship, the Columbia
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Gray obviously fared better
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suggest that Gray’s crew infected
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coveted all the land, timber and salmon that had
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While I write, river otters frolic happily, their
keen dark eyes and whiskered cute faces darting
and quivering like munchkins on a holiday eating
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sea mammal to use tools, small rocks in this case,
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These playful
creatures
enrich our
lives.
On the hunt
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Swan describes how the elder would pass
downwind from one of the numerous sand spits
that dominate the month of the Willapa, anchor
his cedar canoe out of sight, disrobe, and then