But there was the seal hunt. Winter had come to cut off the seal hunt two weeks too soon, and they could scarcely have made a beginning. That was a serious matter. The failure of the fishing season, now coupled with an undoubted failure of the autumn seal hunt, would pinch them harder than they had ever been pinched before. Without the seals they would not be able to keep all of their dogs, and the dogs were a necessity of their life.