Devon Manik

I’ve grown up hunting and living out on the land; my mother and grandma taught me how to hunt. I remember going out with my grandmother and mom to get my first polar bear, when I was only 13. I have been dog teaming since I was 16.

In the past 5 years, I’ve become a full time hunter and expedition guide. When COVID hit, I took the opportunity to start hunting and living off of what I could harvest with the help of the dogs. I had all this free time and many mouths to feed. I now own and use 13 Canadian Inuit sled dogs. Eventually, I was finally able to start taking people out as an expedition guide, first with 1 or 2 people for short overnight excursions to a cabin or tent. My first real expedition guiding trip was with Mark Wood and his team to the Beachey island graves off the coast of Devon Island, and from then on it has only grown.

I remember when I was 16 years old and just starting out, my mother got us a pet Alaskan malamute and a kicksled with a harness. I used to go out of town while walking the dog, and once I was far enough I would tell him to run home and he’d pull me for a little while. Eventually, I’d have to push the rest of the way home, but I fell in love with the idea of dogsledding as my ancestors did before me, when my Grandfather lived in igloos and stone houses at my age.

I took it upon myself to learn how to dogsled, I remember watching Greenland hunters around the Northwest part of Greenland, seeing them hunt and live how they always have with dogsleds and Kayak. I would watch how many steps they’d take, so I could get the length of the tow rope that attaches to the dogs and to get the length of the sleds and whips. I got Canadian Inuit dogs from Jovan Simic and grew my team from there. 

My next challenge was to hunt with the dogs. I would strap a kayak to the side of my dogsled and head out to the floe edge, where the ocean meets the stable ice sheets, and would hunt seals. My greatest hunt was when I hunted a polar bear with my dogs for the first time! I was 18 at the time and had 12 dogs. I’ve made 3 pairs of trousers and mitts out of the bears I’ve hunted.

Now I would really hope to inspire other people to follow their dreams. I have a saying “Go where the journey takes you” because you don’t know what life is gonna give you so you just gotta take the opportunities when they arise.