IN THE WILDS
Hunting can take a lot out of you. It can also light a fire in you. Not that feeling of being some sort of big man because you killed a wild animal. Or that satisfaction after a feed of fresh meat. More like a nagging sense of ambition to keep body and mind at the ready for the next hunt and the next. In the thick of it, this pursuit can be all things fun and miserable. Eight days uncivilized is how to raise your game.
Rain delayed, yet we setup camp in the sunshine and daylight. I am grateful for bush pilots who sense how bad we want in and out. Trusted, they answer the call from half-feral man-packs ripe with pent up energy to chase game and fish in the middle of nowhere. Such a trip shares in the intimate sounds of a Turbo Otter as it banks hard, circles three times, before dropping into Lost Lake. When it flies off, I pause dumbstruck, quieted by the weight of the luck that finds me here.
THE SIGNS OF GAME
We learn the lay of the land. We memorize trails worn by men who have since moved on. Navigating by cuts in the bark of jack pine, sappy old wounds now with time, grown over. Slick with rain, vast forests of moss give way along Shield slopes, threaten to make things difficult. We find fresh wallows and other good moose sign. Almost becoming giddy.
With four horse kickers, we motor canoes to spots around the lake, hiking back into old timber cuts, beaver ponds and lookouts over flooded ground. My, how we call with birch bark horns, and settle into that pacing, the ebb and flow of anticipation. I have never wanted to sound so inviting. Never expressed such voracious desires from a female perspective. Sequence after sequence of smut muttering, because such is the natural entry point into any language. I think I sound like a real catch. Don’t matter what I think.
CAMP TRADITIONS
Long days in the field are put at ease with traditions like a hot toddy before dinner. Over stories of men known by handles like Flappy, Pecker, Tombstone, and Pickerel Pete, we warm up in the cook tent. Later, fixating on the campfire and long looks upward to what city folk refer to as a “dark sky preserve”. A wolf calls and we tone it down. Again and again it calls and then the pack responds. We are located somewhere in between. Their exchange includes three or four distinct voices chiming in. Makes our conversation seem like small talk.
There are animals among us. A calf moose visited, with the cow likely nearby, and bringing hopes that a bull was in pursuit. From the backside of a meadow, I spot movement and shoulder my gun but it is a black bear who pays me no notice. The flight music of blue-winged teal pierces the morning air, and time passes observing muskrat and beaver thriving in the steady rain. Flushes of spruce grouse and roughies, squalls of nuthatches and blue jays, startle and invade. An afternoon of fishing provides a feed of walleye with plenty of thick northern pike also on the bite.
NOTHING BUT SILENCE
Soak it all in and it may prove overwhelming. When it hits you, like after the hiss from a tent lantern extinguished, and the camp grows dark and dead quiet as a thunderstorm brews. No screens to light up the night, ringtones or vibrations to interrupt. Alone with your thoughts . . . until the snoring begins. Like a chainsaw starting on the tenth pull and almost flooded. Like the outboard motor sputtering to life, both roaring and misfiring. Fear the unknown, but also the cacophony of sleeping humans.
Sliding into the canoe, a heavy fog at dawn, up the creek to the beaver dam. Settled against the tall grass in the shroud of a fallen timber, calling with urgency. Here I sat tight as that bull grunted hard, thrashed and came fast, but held up. So close, so painfully close. The wind could have swirled to create a whiff of five days of man-funk and as quickly that bull was absorbed back into the forest. I had a similar encounter the morning prior.
And so, it ends. No, you can’t serve that to the family for dinner, but you can let it change you for the better. Each day since finds purpose when all trails eventually lead back to moose camp. I steal moments to contemplate approaches and set-ups, midnight calling sequences, new territory to access. Days in between hunts, the going can get tough, but I remember what hunting puts in ya: grit and heart. This is the life.
Guest illustrator Matt Pawlowski is a graduate of Red River College’s Graphic Design program, a freelance artist and illustrator. Please contact Matt at pawlowskiw728@gmail.com