Maggie's Farm

One of the few large Ice Age Pleistocene mammmals surviving in North America, and still in some parts of northern Europe, is the Musk Ox. I am always surprised to remember that there are Musk Oxen in Canada - they are rarely a subject of cocktail party conversation - unless you have the bad luck to be chatting with the dull and pedantic Bird Dog.

They are the Bison of the Tundra - but they are not bovines, despite their appearance and name. They are closer to goats.

Remarkably, there is a group in Alaska which is breeding them for domestication, which does seem 6000 years too late. A bit about these remarkable critters here.

Can they be hunted? Once you get up there, it's too much like shooting a cow in a pasture. The Eskimos kill them, though, but they kill anything, including seagulls.