The Inuit hunter calmly pulls the trigger and the deafening shot pierces the animal's warm flesh. The massive bear collapses and the Inuit hunter butchers his kill in silence.

Several hundred kilometres later, the tall, slender grandfather sits down to enjoy the meat with his family in Gjoa Haven, Nunavut.

The town is an isolated coastal community of 1,000 mainly Inuit people. Its dirt roads are lined with matchbox houses built on stilts to avoid the permafrost. Front yards are littered with old snowmobiles and animal skins stretched to dry.

Hiqiniq is one of a few remaining subsistence hunters. The seal, geese and caribou he harvests feed his seven children and 12 grandchildren. Once his freezer is full, he shares his meat with elders, family and friends.

"Hunting is important to us Inuit. Food from the south is expensive but country food (wild meat) is free," says Hiqiniq, who also patrols the Northwest Passage on sovereignty missions as a Canadian Ranger.

He taught his own children how to track, shoot and skin a range of animals and sea mammals. Those lessons are supported by a unique school year that ends in May and allows students to participate in spring hunts with their families. But it also means students are back at school in August, a month earlier than most of their southern counterparts.

In Nunavut, students at 39 of 42 schools have already cracked their books. The numbers are similar in the Inuvialuit and Dene communities in the high Arctic of the Northwest Territories.

Arctic winters are dark and harsh. There is the legendary 24-hour darkness in the winter, with -40 C temperatures for weeks on end and snow for up to 10 months of the year.

When the days finally get longer, attendance takes a hit as children make up for lost time by staying out all night and sleeping most of the day - another reason for the May dismissal to the school year.

Like many of his peers in Gjoa Haven, 12-year-old Shane Kammimmalik spent June and July watching his grandparents fillet caribou and hang char to dry. During a recent school fishing camp, he looked like any other Canadian kid with his red sweat pants and black, hooded sweatshirt. But his knowledge of weather and ice conditions makes him a distinctly northern youth.

"I really love being out on the land," Kammimmalik says. "What I'm learning, I'll pass on one day."

Despite its culturally sensitive intentions, the school year has its critics.

Some parents think students should return to their classes after Labour Day so children could join the late-summer hunts when the caribou are fat and the berries are good. And occasionally there's word of teachers resenting having to cut their summer holidays short to return to work.

Nunavut's Education Department is open to change - to a point.

Cathy McGregor, based in the Nunavut capital of Iqaluit, is the director of curriculum.

She says the government's main concern is that students attend classes for the number of days mandated by the Education Act.

But the date that a school year actually begins and ends is at the discretion of each school and the district education association, which is the equivalent of southern school boards. So far, she says, she hasn't heard any complaints.

Elementary school principal Susan Hillier says she wouldn't change the school year in Gjoa Haven for two reasons. The first is that attendance is relatively good in August, but drops to zero in May. The other is that she has seen the benefits of students connecting with their land and their traditional culture.

"It makes their 1/8Inuktitut 3/8 language stronger. I see it in their art and in their writing. They write about their adventures."

Hiqiniq's wife, Rachel, has been teaching kindergarten for 32 years. These days her pint-sized students are the grandchildren of the youngsters she first taught in 1976. She takes pride in sharing her traditional knowledge about the land in her classroom.

She also feels her children are lucky to have a father who is a full-time hunter.