During the winter, ptarmigan eat the buds of the Arctic birch, so it is easy to catch them by setting snares near the branches. The loops are about the size of a large man’s fist, with small twigs to hold the loop open. (Illustration by Martti Arkko)
Ptarmigan is not a very big bird, only about the size of a fat male pigeon. But snaring ptarmigan is easy to learn and very productive. In olden times, Arctic people survived on the dark, tasty meat. Today some people hunt ptarmigan to sell to restaurants, but in many families it is used as a staple food. In any case, it is delicious and gourmets love to eat it.
It is important for every survivalist in the Arctic to learn to snare ptarmigan, that’s why we teach it every winter in our Army and Air Force survival training. If you can snare ptarmigans, you can use the same method for grouse and other woodland birds.
Before the introduction of shotguns about 300 years ago, nets were very popular for hunting birds especially along the Finnish sea coast. (If you ask Finnish bird hunters what they think about the southern European method of catching birds, they are all adamantly against it.)
The old hunters used nettle string, human and horse hair and string made of flax fiber for their snares. Today thin brass or steel wire is used. You must check your snares each day or ravens and other predators will do it for you.
Early Finnish hunters could check only four hundred to six hundred snares a day, but modern hunters can cover more ground on snowmobiles. Although the winter daylight is very short in Lapland, a good hunter can make a living with two thousand snares, but most hunters can only handle about one thousand snares a day.
When our ancestors first came to Finland all of their fishing methods were designed for lakes and rivers. But Finland has over 2000 kilometers (1240 miles) of sea coast, so they made some changes in their fishing gear adapting to coastal fishing. An alert ethnographer can still see that the origins of our fishing tackle are from inland waters. And some of the same fishing methods are still used today.
Primitive fishermen eagerly anticipated the tidewater, even though some small low-water ponds gave them small fishes, mussels, crabs and edible algae (in the Baltic Sea areas there is no tide at all). With 9,500 years of experience, fishing is very popular in Finland, both as an occupation and as a national sport that is carried on all year.
The second best time for primitive fishing is spawning time. During spawning, it is easy to catch large amounts of fish. Fish nets are very effective for this work. The oldest fish net was found in Finland in 1914. It is more than 8,000 years old and is made of the inner bark fiber of the willow (Salix caprea). The net was made for catching salmon and other large fish. The cordage was quite thick compared to modern nylon or monofilament line. It is a wonder that this old net could catch fish at all. But the old nets were active nets like seines. The fishermen surrounded the fish and drove them onto the beaches with the nets. Modern net fishing is passive. The nets are invisible so the fish swim straight into them and get stuck by their gills or fins.
I tested one very old, traditional way of fishing with a seine made of leafy twigs during spawning time. To make it, you top two small trees, such as birches, and lay them horizontally level. After that you tie bunches of leafy twigs to the stems to make a wall. With this you can surround fish and force them to the beach, or catch them safely with a leister.
During spawning, all species of salmon move from the sea into the rivers to find their original spawning ground. During this time it is possible to use a landing net to catch salmon and whitefish as they swim up-river. The rapids are the best places to do this, and fishermen who use a long-handled landing net try to find rapids where there are some submerged rocks on the river bottom. Behind these stones is turbulence where fish can rest during their journey. Knowing these places makes fishing with a landing net easy.
Old landing nets were built from thin sticks, birch roots and eventually, nettle fibers. The handle is about 5-6 meters long. If you like to catch whitefish, you should use a net bag with a diameter of about 50 centimeters, for salmon 80 centimeters. When the net bag is dry it will only weigh about 1 kilogram, but when wet it is so heavy you can scarcely maneuver it.
Smelts are also a good species of fish to catch with a landing net. Fishing for smelt in this manner is very popular near my home in Pori, Finland, with hundreds of fishermen coming every April. And if you visit Stockholm, Sweden in April you can see people fishing for smelt with landing nets while they are standing on the bridge right in the middle of the city.
Another effective method of obtaining fish is to knock them out through the ice. In the early winter when the ice is just starting to form, it is clear and transparent for a few days, yet thick enough to walk on. During that time we use a big, heavy axe or wooden hammer to knock fish unconscious through the ice. Our ancestors used stone clubs to hit fish under the ice. No one really knows why the fish rise to the top of the ice, perhaps they are just curious or maybe it is the light or oxygenation that draws them. Burbots (Lota Iota, a member of the cod family) are easiest to knock out and sometimes you can get pikes and ides (Idus idus), too. It takes about two or three minutes for the fish to recover after a strong hit to the head, so you must hurry and break the ice and grab the fish before it wakes up. You can sometimes catch a lot of fish this way, but the time during which the ice is clear is very short and it doesn’t happen every year because occasionally it snows at the time when the lakes are freezing.
Fishermen once used a trotline for winter fishing under the ice. The lines were not very long, ranging from ten to twenty-five meters, depending on how deep the water was. The basic line was made of pine root or birch bark rope; hemp or flax was used during the Bronze Age (-1500-500 B.C.). The short lines that are connected to the basic line with slip knots were made of nettle or willow fiber. Horse hair was used after domestic animals were brought to Finland during the Bronze Age. Roaches or small fish such as perch were used as bait and gorges inserted inside. The gorge is the predecessor of all fish hooks and fishermen once made them from wood, bone, antler and stone. We use birch or wood from the bird cherry tree. It would be advisable for all fishing enthusiasts and scientists to try using gorges so they will understand the ancient fishing methods better. Metal hooks are very new to fishing—the first metal hooks were made from copper or tin, which was easy to shape.
In the winter, ice was a problem for primitive people fishing with a trotline. How do you get the line to sink? You need a special tool to make holes in the ice. A very effective tool is made from the shinbone of elk or wild reindeer. We just tested this primitive tool in our Army survival camp for instructors. It took about twenty minutes of hard work to go through 40 centimeters of thick ice, and this tool sharpens itself while you are working with it. Just make a tool like a short-handled spear with a bone point.
Finnish fishermen once used a trotline for winter fishing under the ice. The lines were not very long, ranging from about ten to twenty-five meters, depending on how deep the water was. (Illustration by Martti Arkko)