Hunting is one of the main traditional Forest NEnets activities. Since long ago, they hunted fur and ungulate animals. Together with reindeer husbandry and fishing, hunting is an important part of their lives as it allows to provide for the family with food and pelts for clothes. Like all other Northern peoples, the Forest NEnets used available natural materials to craft hunting tools. They made bows, arrows and traps of wood. Since the early times, aboriginal Siberian hunters have been brave and lucky providers able to sneak right up to a beast.

After Siberia was annexed by the Russian Empire, another type of guns spread among the NEnets, flintlocks and percussion rifles. They were loaded with buckshot and powder. Items for loading were attached to every hunter’s belt, there was a special bag for buckshot made of rovduga (reindeer suede) or leather and a wooden box for gunpowder. These bags were tied up to a belt with leather straps. A gunpowder box was an oval-shaped wooden vessel like a flask.

The gunpowder box displayed in GUbkinsky Museum of the Development of the North exposition was provided by Konstantin Vello, a resident of Tarko-Sale town in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. This box consists of two symmetrical parts connected with wooden dowels. The junction is covered with a strip of rOvduga, reindeer suede. Rovduga is a waterproof and durable material, so it effectively protects the box from water and prevents the powder from getting soaked when it rains. The edge of the neck has a bottle-like roller with a rovduga strap under it for density. The neck of the box is tightly closed with a wooden cork. This item was made in 1980s and used by its owner for hunting for many years. It can be seen by the darkened color of the box and the chipped neck.