Ready For An Ice Age Adventure?
Greenland Eider Hunting Awaits

Chris Dorsey – Contributor – Forbes.com

Somewhere between Iceland and the fictitious kingdom of Westeros sits the land that time forgot. On a map it’s called Greenland (aka the world’s largest island), model habitat for the Game of Thrones’ White Walkers. Arrive here in early March and green is the last color that comes to mind, however, for the landscape palette is decidedly white, save for a few gray rocks that nose their way out of the ermine blanket of snow. It’s a land where ancient muskox still roam as they have for 60,000 years, undoubtedly waiting for the next great extinction to see what new cast of characters will emerge.

The question is, why would anyone visit this polar bear playground when temperatures seldom climb above single digits? For people who roam the planet with shotguns looking to hunt the world’s most captivating waterfowl, Greenland is one of the few places where you’ll find the most coveted sea duck on Earth—the king eider. It’s the size of a small goose with a distinctive orange knob above its bill. A slate blue cap, turquoise cheeks, and patches of white with black eyeliner give it an airbrushed paint job that looks a bit overdone. It is, nonetheless, striking if you have an affinity for gaudy.

While Saint Paul Island in Alaska’s Bering Sea has long been the lone sure bet to find kings, Greenland has emerged as another destination where vagabond hunters can consistently find the grand birds. When a Ducks Unlimited friend turned me on to the destination a couple of years ago, a journey here had the dual attraction of hunting a bird I’ve long coveted in a place I had never been.

It wasn’t hard to talk a few friends into sharing the adventure. Terry Graunke, a successful venture capitalist and conservation philanthropist; Charlie Potter, a wildlife foundation chief; and Steve Farris, a recovering rock guitarist combined to form our band of eider hunters—all drawn by the allure of the amazing kings and the savage place they call home.

I left spring in South Carolina, flew to late winter in Chicago where we rendezvoused and then landed in the dead of winter in Nuuk, Greenland, population 20,000. The community is home to roughly a third of the nation’s entire head count. It’s a last outpost before heading into a rocky, frozen wilderness that has changed little since woolly mammoths roamed the island.

The trip was organized by Dan Bolek, a man who has long pioneered some of the world’s great waterfowling venues and who spends the off-season bringing his clients’ harvested birds back to life as a taxidermist. It’s always easier to trust an outfitter-taxidermist who has a vested interest in your success.

Any journey here for kings begins at the Nuuk harbor where Erik Palo and his ABC Charter service is waiting with a 40-foot craft that features a glass-lined, heated cabin. When you’re floating in a landscape-sized chilled martini for eight hours a day, the heated compartment is more necessity than luxury. Palo grew up in Greenland where the first humans arrived about 5,000 years ago, fellow Inuit who came across a frozen sea from Canada. Today, nearly 90 percent of the country’s residents are of Inuit descent, the remainder are mostly mixed with Danish heritage, which is no surprise given that Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark. If that point isn’t clear before you arrive, a Danish navy ship sits in the Nuuk harbor as a reminder.

As we leave port and strike off into one of the countless fjords near Nuuk, we quickly leave any semblance of civilization behind. We push past countless inlets and bays that are framed by snow-capped hills and mountains, carefully navigating the rocks and icebergs that give the place an especially raw and dramatic feel. We are, to be sure, a long way from home—and a long way from help should something go wrong. As astronauts sometime say, no one hears you scream in space. It’s life on the edge and that’s part of the allure of chasing eiders, for they don’t live where existence is easy and the timid need not apply.

Palo has plied these waters for years and knows the hidden coves frequented by the mixture of king and common eiders. The technique is to slowly cruise the fjords using binoculars to spot the birds far in the distance. Once discovered, Palo circles upwind of the birds, letting the boat drift into the flocks. Many of the eiders spook early, vacating long before hunters at the bow of the boat might have a shot. After several failed attempts, it becomes clear that the birds can distinguish between an iceberg and what they must think is a white pirate ship. Perhaps one out of ten approaches work, however, with the birds hesitating just long enough to allow gunners realistic shots.

As game birds go, eiders with their Kevlar of heavy feathers and thick down are among the toughest to subdue, for the five- pound birds are to ducks what Joe Frazier was to boxers. When approaching a flock of them, there is always a moment of delicious anticipation that the birds might let you approach within 50 or 60 yards, the effective range of the Winchester 12- gauge loads of non-toxic Bismuth shot we are employing.

When a sea duck decides to leave it does so in a hurry, sprinting across the water and into the wind for lift-off, as if it’s late for an appointment. Once airborne, they gain speed in a hurry, requiring a shotgunner to swing smoothly and stretch his lead—sometimes six to ten feet ahead of the duck depending on how far away it is. To be sure, this isn’t remedial shooting.

After our day shift on the water, we returned to the Hans Egede, a very comfortable hotel in Nuuk brimming with pleasant and helpful staff, including a chef who prepared eider five ways for us with each recipe seemingly better than the next—smoked being my personal favorite. In a land where protein doesn’t go to waste, eiders have sustained people here since the first bipeds arrived, and with the global population of the birds exceeding 2 million, they continue to thrive—mostly far away from human interference.

While the king eiders were our reason for traveling to the top of the world, simply being in this environment that seems more alien than foreign was reason enough to make the journey. Watching an eagle play cat and mouse with the eiders and seeing an arctic fox enjoying a lunch of ptarmigan as we drifted back in time was the real prize here.

If you’re craving a getaway to a lonely piece of the planet, it would be hard to surpass Greenland. The destination still feels undiscovered, but it’s hard to imagine that will last for long as ever more travelers explore the remote corners of our world.

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