It's not really a joke in my part of the country in Canada. I'm Indigenous Canadian and my dad was born in the wilderness and followed a traditional lifestyle. He was a traditional hunter and trapper.
In the 1950s and 1960s he trapped a lot of beaver to sell the pelts and make a living. This was all before the animal fur market collapsed in the 70s. I wasn't born at the time but I remember him telling me that they ate a lot of the beaver he trapped. He trapped so much that he had a surplus of beaver meat all the time. However, he also kept a team of sled dogs which he fed a steady diet of beaver boiled with oats to give them a very nutritious food. We have one or two surviving photos of his dogs and they were huge. They weren't classic Malamutes or Huskies .. they were just random mutts that looked like a cross between a German Shepherd and Husky ... but they were huge powerful dogs.
