Searchers find missing Nunavut hunters

A Hercules aircraft and Canadian Coast Guard ship are on their way to a SPOT activated location where two hunters from Pangnirtung, above, have gone missing. (WIKIMEDIA COMMONS PHOTO)

(Updated July 8, 3:10 p.m.)

Two missing hunters from Pangnirtung have been found near Cumberland Sound.

Zachary Alivaktuk and Jimmy Kullualik were found safe, and they’re on land inside a nearby cabin said Pangnirtung’s senior administrative officer, Shawn Trepanier.

“They have been found, I believe by the Hercules, and they are on land at one of the cabins,” Trepanier said.

Trepanier received word from search and rescue that the two were spotted at about 1 p.m. July 8.

The search has now been called off.

The search got underway early July 8 after the two Pangnirtung hunters activated an emergency satellite personal tracker device.

A SPOT emergency beacon signal came into the emergency management office in Iqaluit at 3:00 a.m. and again at 3:50 a.m., Trepanier said earlier on July 8.

The two hunters were travelling by boat, fishing and hunting for “a few days” before they engaged their emergency SPOT devices, Trepanier said.

Trepanier said the two were roughly 80 to 100 kilometres away from town.

A military Hercules aircraft had been dispatched, as well as a Coast Guard icebreaker, Trepanier said.

According to Environment Canada’s records, wind gusts reached a maximum of 81 km per hour early that morning at 5 a.m. in Pangnirtung.

Both hunters were experienced, Trepanier said — and they were in an area that’s close to cabins, according to the co-ordinates sent by their SPOT device.

“It automatically sends a signal, and it automatically gives us the coordinates. So we know a very good area, like within a half of kilometre, down to a kilometre, where they pressed the button,” Trepanier said.