The fox trapping she developed was, in some respects, an application of skills she already had. Trapping requires understanding animal behavior and movement patterns — where the foxes travel, where they can be induced to go, how to set a trap that will work. But it also requires the construction of the traps, the placement of lures, the maintenance of the trap line, and the processing of what the traps catch. Arctic foxes were available on the island in numbers sufficient to provide meaningful nutrition if she could catch them consistently.
She also learned to collect bird eggs from the coastal cliffs when the seabird nesting season made them available. Egg collection from cliff-nesting seabirds requires navigating terrain that is both steep and, in the Arctic, often slippery and unpredictable. It is physically demanding work that Ada performed because the eggs were protein she could not afford to leave uncollected.
The seals in the coastal waters were a more difficult target. Seals are intelligent, fast in the water, and difficult to approach on land without their detecting the hunter’s presence. Ada shot at seals when she could get a clear shot, and the available accounts indicate she successfully killed at least one. The seal meat would have been exactly the kind of fresh protein that a scurvy patient required.
What is notable across all of these skills is not just that she acquired them but how she acquired them: through direct observation, through trial and error, through the application of attention to what worked and what did not. She did not have instruction. She had the equipment, the circumstances, and herself.