Category Archives: hunting

hunting, lists upon lists

Things That You Never Hear…

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Earlier this year I posted about some of the wacky things people have asked me about hunting, and rest assured, many people are still asking me all sort of bizarre and occasionally inane things about it.   But aside from being a good-natured way for me to try to educate some people about the pastime of hunting, it also gets me to thinking about some of the things that I never hear in connection with my hunting experience.  So now, I present to you, a list of phrases that I can safely say have never been uttered during any of my countless hunting trips.  Sure some of them are clichés…who cares?

“You cooked that steak perfectly.”
“Wow, you smell really good.”
“No, I think I’ve had just about enough bacon.”
“I love hunting in the rain.”
“That hair colour really suits your complexion.”
“You did just what I would have done and I don’t have any advice to give you.”
“Don’t bother sweeping the floor.  It will just get dirty again.”
“The government is doing a perfectly good job and they are all competent people with our best interests at heart.”
“You young guys do way too much work around the camp.  Take a rest and have a beer.”
“That toast isn’t burned at all.”
“I don’t think we’ve brought enough beer nuts this year.”
“A wine spritzer does sound refreshing, thanks.”
“I’d love a mock-chicken sandwich.”
“That Stompin’ Tom Connors music is too loud!”
“Cheddar cheese soup?  Delightful!”
“Shawn, that undershirt fits you perfectly.”
“I have no idea what that deer was thinking.”
“I’d much rather use the outhouse than crap in the woods.”
“There’s much less mouse poop in the camp than there was last year.”
“Everybody is talking much too quietly.”
“I think those decoys are arranged perfectly.  We mustn’t fiddle with them.”
“Did you ever notice that clouds sometimes look like things?”
“Chip dip?  Well that’s just unnecessary…”
“That fire is big enough and doesn’t need any more wood added to it.”
“You can’t put gravy on that.”
“You’re right; I have hunted enough and ought to stay inside by the fire during this godforsaken blizzard.”
“Sure, you can use my toothpaste.”
“Sure Dane, you can borrow my hunting pants.” 
“Thanks Luke, I’ll clean and return them immediately after the season.”
“No, you didn’t snore at all last night.”
“That story contained exactly zero bullshit.”
“Shawn…I disagree with your viewpoint and have a well-constructed argument prepared that will refute it.  I am not just going to swear at you.”
“I’m sorry, I did fart.”
“You did dishes last night, I’ve got this round.”
“Shhhh, I’m listening to Beethoven.”
“I missed that goose completely.”
“Shawn, you’re not calling enough.”
“That turkey wasn’t the biggest one I’d ever seen.”
“If you shoot a bear I’ll help you clean it.”
“If you’re going out to grab a beer, I’d like a bottle of mineral water please.”
“That knife is too sharp.”
And probably the least likely thing you’ll ever hear if you go hunting with me and my group of buddies…
“I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
This is just a smattering of phrases that I anticipate never hearing anybody use in my hunting camp.  But who knows, maybe we’ll all become sophisticates and someone will crack out the classical music, replace the chips and venison pepperettes with  baby carrots and cucumber slices, and we’ll talk to each other in a refined civil tone appropriate for churches and meeting royalty.  I guess stranger things have happened, but no matter what, we’ll all still probably brave lousy weather and sometimes long odds at success just to get out and chase after wild game.  Because after all the fun and silliness that we love is set aside, that’s just what we’ve always done.
deer hunting, hunting, hunting gear

A November Gearhead-Gear to Take on a Deer

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So just shy of one week out from the start of the open gun season here in many areas of Ontario, and my inbox is loaded (okay five messages…) with requests from across North America for a Gearhead post.  So here it is.  Same standard Gearhead disclaimer applies, but even more vigorously in this sense, since of all the types of hunter I profess to be, ‘deer hunter’ is the area in which I have had the least (statistical) success.  That is, I guess, if you are one of those people who measures success in body count.

Firearms & Ammunition
On the Thanksgiving weekend when I was fifteen my Dad took me back up to a hollow behind the farm in Lion’s Head.  In the early fall woods we walked to the forest’s edge with a piece of split firewood about twelve inches long and six inches wide; we sat the would-be target on its narrow end up against the base of a tree.  Then we walked sixty yards or so up the shallow grade of a hill and I sat down on an old tire.  With my legs crooked up and my elbows on my knees  I used my gangly , teenaged arms to line up the peepsight on Dad’s Model 14 .30 Remington pump-action rifle with a knot just right of center on the target.  Dad had put one shell in the gun; I clicked the safety off and tightened my finger around the trigger.  With a POW! the round-nosed bullet split the still fall afternoon and I watched the piece of wood all at once jump, shudder, and slowly fall forward.  With silky smoothness the recoil had already worked the pump action a quarter of the way back and I completed the motion, savouring the smell of burnt powder and the metallic “sna-chink!” of the gun’s action.  We went up and looked at the wood (which was almost split in two) and Dad remarked something pleasant like “If you can hit that from where you were, you ought to be able to hit a deer in the front shoulder.”  Then I got off the tire and Dad put a broken down cardboard box inside it.  He told me to go halfway down the hill, which I did, while Dad carried the tire to the top of the hill.  He arrived at a spot perpendicular to me and well out of my line of fire, at which point he called down for me to put three shells in the gun and that he was going to roll the tire down the hill.  I was to shoot for the piece of cardboard and keep shooting until the gun was empty.  Dad started it rolling with his hands and gave it a kick as it got away from him and at about thirty or forty yards I opened up, working the action smoothly and evenly…but again that action is so worked in that I think it leverages a lot of the recoil to do the lion’s share of the pumping for me.  I think I hit the tire once and the cardboard twice as the target hopped and bounded along unevenly down the hill.  With that Dad and I were satisfied that I could handle the power and kick of the gun.  A few weeks later, on the second hour of my first ever deer hunt, the .30 Remington swatted down a yearling doe and I was officially a deer hunter.
That Model 14 is all mine now, and it has come with me on every deer hunt I’ve made over the last seventeen years.  I have an unhealthy affection for that gun.  Its early 20th century vintage, smooth, glowing lines, and ease of maneuverability in the heavy brush I sometimes find myself in have never failed me.  I may be tempting fate to boast that it has always shot straight (even when I haven’t) and that it has never jammed or acted up on me.  Simply put, I love that gun, and the fact that ammunition for it has been off the market for many a year only means that the hand-loaded, 180-grain rounds I sift through it once in a while are all the more meaningful.  It is a brush-gun and it wields that title proudly and performs-as-billed with some aplomb.
I also have a synthetic camo-stocked, scoped, bolt action Stevens in .243WIN that I won at the Barrie District Anglers & Hunters annual wild game dinner and fundraiser in 2009, and this gun (alongside the .30REM) makes its way up to my second week of hunting in the Spence Township area, where there are a few more open hardwoods and moose meadows to hunt and the luxury of a scope is a welcome advantage.  95-grain Hornady SST Superformance fly out of the muzzle on this lean little number at some pretty high velocity (and it is a nice little crossover varmint rifle) but to date I’ve never had the safety off during deer season, let alone let slide with a shot bearing any kind of deadly intent at a white-tailed deer.  But maybe this year is the year I break that run.
Clothes and Outerwear
My outer layer is a Remington 4-in-1 coat (actually the same type of coat that I take waterfowling, just in the requisite blaze orange) that I picked up in 2008.  It does the trick nicely as it is plenty warm (even when only wearing the outer shell) and has plenty of deep, easy to access pockets.  For the last three deer seasons it has been reasonably dry and surprisingly burr-resistant (which where our group hunts is a nice luxury).
Under that I’ll usually have a hooded sweatshirt or long sleeve shirt, slung over a synthetic sports shirt (either from Under Armour, or a recycled soccer jersey) that wicks moisture nicely.  Unless it is unseasonably mild (as it was in 2008) I’ll also have on some long underwear; I prefer Stanfield’s two piece top & bottom ensemble, although my sister got me one of those thermal unitards (in fire engine red, no less!) with a rear flap for ‘evacuation’ for Christmas in 2008 and I used them the following year after my Stanfields got a bit damp in a rain…I was literally soaked the nuts!…but I digress.  I think she got that unitard for me as a ‘joke gift’…I’m okay with that because they were nicely comfortable, and I liked them so much I’ve continued to include them in the annual packing list.
I usually wear the same camo pants that I multi-purpose with all year long, although I also pack some ratty jeans that I don’t mind getting mud and blood on, and a pair of lined pants in case it gets extra-frosty some morning (and since 2011 boasts the absolute latest date that deer season can start in Ontario, it may actually happen when I’m hunting not far from Orrville on November 19th).
I double up on socks (since I don’t want my toes to freeze while I sit on stand…I do a lot of sitting) with a synthetic thermal sock underneath a wool sock.  I have two pairs of gloves, both in blaze orange; one pair is just light cotton for days when the temperature is nice, the other pair is Thinsulate lined for rain, snow or just a bitter November wind.  I likewise have a blaze orange baseball cap and a blaze orange Thinsulate toque, so that I can wear one or the other (or if the weather is changeable…both!)
The key to all these clothes is flexibility and layering.  But I’m sure your grandmother already told to dress in layers so I won’t belabor that point further.
Footwear
Rubber boots.  (If you’ve been following these ‘gearhead’ posts this should come as little surprise.).  What can I say?  They’re comfortable, cost-effective, insulated, lightweight and they don’t carry much in the way bells and whistles.  My cousins and my brother have adopted the modified hiking boot style of hunting footwear (what with scent control on a molecular level, cutting edge waterproofing, and similar upgrades) and they all rave about it, so one is just as good as the other in my eyes.  I just like spending around $50 on my boots, while some more ‘advanced’ footwear can run to four times that much.
Accessories
Just like it is for my wife when she goes shopping, deer hunting for me is all about accessories (again, no surprise to any loyal follower of this blog).
We party hunt in our camp so it is vital that we all keep in touch.  For that, we carry some short-wave handheld radios to keep in touch.  Mine are from Motorola, and although they came in a pair (I got them in 2001) one of them gave up the ghost last year and is completely non-functional.  Its mate is still going strong though!
I have a bag of sticks and plastic rods from Quaker Boy that I can use if I want to try to rattle up a buck, and I use a Knight and Hale doe bleat can.  This year I received the Quaker Boy Brawler buck grunt call in the mail for re-joining a conservation organization here in Ontario but before that I used the Knight & Hale E-Z Grunter Plus.  My cousin, and other hunting acquaintances have had success with calling deer.  Me, not so much.  But I keep trying though, maybe this will be year that an old bruiser buck comes galloping to the call.  I’m not brand loyal and accumulated these calls in a piecemeal fashion; I can’t pretend to be one of those highfalutin, corporate-sponsored types of writers…although I secretly long to be one.
I use the same combination of Buck 110 Folding lockback (with a clip point) and Gerber Magnum LST folding lockback (avec drop point) knives that I use year round.  Both are wicked sharp, but the classic look, feel, and weight of the Buck has made it my favourite go-to blade.  I almost cut the tip of my left thumb off with it a few seasons back, but that has more to do with operator stupidity than with any flaw in the knife.  The moral…don’t let me sharpen a knife unsupervised.
I have various and sundry other toys on my person during deer season including a compass, toilet paper, matches, a rope, a plastic bag to keep items dry (and to pack out a tasty deer heart if I’m so lucky), a little folding packet for my licenses and tags, another folding pack for extra rifle shells, a water bottle, a candy bar, a Heat-a-Seat, maybe and apple or two…
This year I bought a Rocky backpack for all this, as before I was always forgetting which pocket held certain items, and I tended to rattle a bit when I walked…which is never good for a deer hunter, whose primary aim should be a stealthy silence.
So there you have it…another Gearhead post in the books.  I recommend you try out any of these items that you feel like and if you want to adopt some of the same gear as me, go for it.  If not, that’s fine too.  As long as what you use is comfortable and leads to success (no matter how you define success in the deer woods) than that ought to be good enough.
hunting, hunting safety

Safety First…

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While driving into my real job yesterday, I was listening to the radio (as I am wont to do) and a filler section devoted to listener e-mails came on.  Now normally I tune this out and go about my merry task of driving, but yesterday an e-mail from a hunter was read on air, and it both caught my attention and prompted me to write this post.

The particular e-mailing listener was, as I said, a hunter and they just wanted the station to air a public service announcement from them (or PSA as those slick radio-types call it), presumably on behalf of hunters everywhere.  The gist of the message was that hikers, dog walkers, equestrian enthusiasts, cyclists, and all other members of the non-hunting public should exercise caution this autumn while enjoying recreational activities in the public and privately owned forests of Ontario, since it is hunting season for wild turkeys and deer respectively across a number of WMUs in this province.  It also bemoaned the fact that although deer hunters (specifically those with firearms) are required to wear the aptly named hunter (or, blaze) orange clothing, members of the public (whose safety, based on the message delivered jointly by this e-mail and the radio DJ, is somehow compromised by a hunting season) were not required to wear blaze orange.
Now this is not an attack post, and I am not trolling on the individual (whose name I can’t even recall) or the radio station (whose name I won’t mention).  But I do take issue with the way this was presented, and yes, I am aware that a full tutorial on hunting safety would not hope to fit within the tight, 90 second timeline of this piece of metaphorical radio flotsam (or the confines of this blog post), and yes I do agree in spirit with the aim of the hunter in question…after all public knowledge is better than public ignorance.  However, a rude consequence of this very simplistic, diluted, line of thought as it was presented is this: it basically served to notify a non-hunting public in Ontario (and I use that term with some accuracy since the majority of the population does not hunt) that some hunter believes that there is a very real chance that hunters may potentially shoot recreational users of forests if the public does not take precautions, which is a patently absurd conclusion.
Again since I agree with the spirit of the dialogue, but disagree with the scope of the presentation of it,  I’d like to add the following logical addendum and anecdotes to hopefully clarify some myths about hunter safety for anyone in the public who may stumble across happy little piece of cyberspace.  I know in the Mission Statement I alluded to the point that I wouldn’t be preachy and didactic in this blog, but I do feel (almost obsessively) fierce about safe hunting and gun safety collectively so my apologies in advance if I get to a bit of sermonizing.   It is in my upbringing as a hunter to be radically safe; my father as well as my uncles, all who served as my mentors in hunting were also safety fanatics.  For years my brother, my cousins, and myself were all rebuffed for getting too excited as tag-along youngsters and straying too close for comfort to the man with the gun.  It seems almost as if I spent my first half-decade of hunting with my dad trailing five feet behind him, as he would not tolerate horsing around or running ahead when a gun was involved.  I vividly remember, and have no shame in relating to you dear reader, one such episode when my brother and I followed along with my Dad on a varmint-control mission shooting groundhogs (or more accurately woodchucks) on some land that an adjacent farmer had.  Groundhogs, as you know, can wreak havoc on farmland, pockmarking it with their burrows and inflicting damage on machinery and livestock alike.  After shooting each groundhog, we would march out to ensure that it was in fact dead, and if it was we’d turn it over on its back so that the vultures would come and do the cleanup.  The farmers were grateful for the help in controlling nature’s little miner, and more often than not Dad connected with the high velocity shells fired from his Remington .222.  I recall marching up to one deceased groundhog that had been head shot; it happens and it’s not pretty, but it is one of the organic realities of hunting.  I may have been ten or eleven years old, and all Dad said was (and I’m roughly quoting) “That’s what happens when something gets shot and that’s why you want to be careful around guns and never point one at anything that you don’t intend to kill.”  I was not traumatized or mentally damaged by this; likewise I didn’t have nightmares or think it was cool to see an living thing’s head exploded.  But it did teach a valuable lesson that (obviously) holds true to this day, and that was that a gun is designed to kill, and it does that very well.  So respect them, be extremely careful with them, and don’t play around with them.  We also learned that guns are not for making you feel tough or important, they weren’t toys, and they were for hunting or target use only.
But enough sermonizing (see, I’m sorry) and back to the point of all this.
The first thing that the e-mail and the radio station DJ failed to acknowledge is perhaps the most important point of all.  While it is imminently true that the public should be aware when there are men and women with guns, crossbows, and arrows in the forest, it is the sole and final responsibility of the operator of that firearm to not shoot at anything that they are not 100% sure (literally) is the game animal they wish to harvest.  To paraphrase a current hunting companion, you can’t reel in a bullet…or to put it another way, if you pull the trigger what happens next is all on you.  There should be no logical reason at all for any debate whatsoever on this point.  I contend that without question no hikers, cyclists, etc would ever be shot by any hunter who abides fully by this ethos.  The “adrenalin sometimes gets the best of us” argument is totally invalid, as is the overall premise of mistaken identity.  I suppose if you wanted to reduce this statement to its most absurd common denominator one could argue that a non-hunter clothed entirely like a deer or bear or turkey or whatever else could be hunted may stand a chance of getting shot and the hunter may in this respect be blameless, but only in that ridiculous and highly unlikely case would I be apt to agree with you.  And this is not a case of pride going before a fall, because even hilariously unskilled hunters such as I ought to be able to tell the difference between a deer and a jogger.  Be aware of the target, what’s beyond it, and make sure that you don’t squeeze the trigger if there’s one iota of doubt about what you are shooting at.  Period, full stop.
Secondly, and in the same vein of the above point, I fear some hunters do not truly respect the capabilities of their firearms.  Sure, I’m pretty certain that we all know that guns can kill, after all that’s kind of the point of using one while hunting.  But I think a lot of hunters fall into both relying on their mechanical safety too much and not practicing good muzzle control.  Now this is where I hear all sorts of excuses that I patiently nod in agreement with, but really there’s no excuse.  I turkey hunted a couple of years ago with a guy who, while handing me his weapon over a fence line that we were crossing, actually pointed the business end of his shotgun squarely at my chest from point blank range; when I said something along the lines of “point your barrel to the side or straight up” he snorted and simply replied “It’s not loaded”.  These, by the way, are rumoured to be Terry Kath’s last words.  Coincidentally, I no longer turkey hunt with that individual.  I guess if they read this they’ll know why.  The old refrain of my two most important gun safety commandments, ‘treat every gun as though it were loaded’ and ‘only point a gun at what you intend to shoot’ seem to get constantly trampled under people rushing, being over confident, forgetful, overly excitable, or downright arrogant in the belief that certain guidelines of safety and common sense do not apply to them.  I’ve heard other stories of (and been present for one) terrifying near-misses that while somewhat benign in an “all’s well that ends well” or “no harm, no foul” kind of sense could easily have bypassed that step and taken the fast lane straight to tragic if not for the grace of a few inches.  The point I’m making here is that the concept of a “hunting accident” is at best a palliative euphemism for an injury or death caused by ignorance of rules and the absence of basic common sense.  At worst it is an outright myth.
There are reams of reference material outlining the core values of gun and hunter safety, as well as too many cautionary tales outlining the ways that people meet their untimely end while hunting, but overall hunting is a safe pastime (maybe too safe…if someone died every weekend while hunting, people might take hunting and firearm safety a bit more seriously…but now I’m just being ridiculously cynical).  Complacency, a belief that the individual knows better than the rules, and sometimes just plain old boneheadedness (not a word, I know…but apt) sometimes win the day and these become the stereotypes that we as a group, the overwhelmingly vast majority of whom are safe handlers of weapons, have to battle.
So as we head towards the peak of hunting activity here in Ontario (and by logical extension, the rest of North America) let us all as hunters be safe.  If you’re already a safety fanatic, try to educate those around you about it.  Set a good example and lead by it so that the public learns and sees that hunting is a safe thing to do for every person who could be involved.  Remember, no animal is worth your life or the life of another person, civilian or hunter.  If you’re safe there will always be other days to get out afield.  If you aren’t safe, well, then you can’t be too sure, can you?
hunting, lists upon lists

Underrated

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I got into a heated debate the other day with someone about the concept of “underrated “.

We were discussing underrated drummers and the person in question asserted that Neil Peart was the most underrated drummer of all time.  Now this is patently ridiculous, since Neil Peart is underrated only in comparison say, John Bonham or Keith Moon, insofar as drummers go.  Some drummers who are actually underrated, I argued, were Stewart Copeland or John Densmore, or other guys you’ve never heard of who are absolutely sick, tehcnically gifted drummers who just toil away behind the kit and don’t get tricky nicknames.

But as usual, a conversation not related to hunting is being applied to hunting.

Maybe it is the dirty, windy, rainy, cold weather in this part of Ontario that’s got me itching to chase some ducks, or the fact that deer season is rapidly approaching, or that my family and friends are moose hunting and I’m secretly envious of them all.  Whatever it is, I’ve been thinking about the underrated aspects of hunting and how great they are.  Some of them are becoming casualties of the modern approach to hunting, others (like moustaches) are experiencing a renaissance that is both interesting and disconcerting.  So here’s a list of some of the things that don’t get the respect or attention they deserve.

Pass-Shooting Waterfowl

Perhaps it is the focus on all the paraphenalia that must be sold to waterfowl hunters these days, or maybe it is a symptom of our sedentary, “everything should be easy” approach to modern life, but nobody gives pass-shooting any respect.  I don’t want to get more angry emails from waterfowlers so I will admit that ultra-realistic decoys, layout blinds, and breakthroughs in camouflage have made waterfowling more accesible, successful, and has arguably, with severely reduced ranges becoming the norm (don’t believe me?  Find one outfitter that doesn’t boast shooting inside of 20 yards) cut down on crippled and lost birds.  But reduced ranges and super-fast shotgun loads has also basically killed the arts of wingshooting, especially pass shooting.  There used to be a mathematical precision, a feel, a sweet spot to shotgunning ducks and geese.  Now, you almost don’t even have to bother with leading the birds…this has been a boon to myself and others who are terrible wingshooters, but its still kind of sad.  I also contend, with no evidence other than empirical observation, that the decline in shooting ability has actually increased sky-busting.  Shooter confidence is sky-high, and it leads to shooting at birds that are exactly that.  The older generation can just plain old shoot, and I attribute that to pass-shooting practice.

Walking In

A sound that I have almost become deaf to (because it has become so prevalent) is the distant hum of an ATV.  Once again, I’m not some reactionary traditionalist.  ATVs are great when you’ve got a moose, bear, or deer down in some godforsaken swamp or cedar thicket that is as impenetrable as a Vietnam jungle.  But for many they have become the default means of getting into their spots, which is too bad.  There’s so much that goes unappreciated when tearing through the bush on four wheels; things that the hunter who hikes in gets to see and hear.  I like an extra couple minutes of sleep as much as the next hunter but a still, early morning walk into a dimly lit forest is an experience worth getting up for.  Hearing the metallic ‘snick-snick’ of rifle cartridges sliding into place, stopping to listen for a deer with your breath hanging heavy around your head on a crisply frosted morning, and exposing the forest around you to the narrow-eyed peregrinations of a hunter stalking their prey all speed past in a blur on an ATV.  Not to mention the damage to fresh sign and the pastoral tranquility of the hunt that the ATV wreaks.  So this season, put some miles on…your boots.

Eating over a Fire

There was a time, so the deer camp elders say, when the hunting stock from which I am derived would have an outdoor fire on almost every suitable day of deer season (and even on a few unsuitable days) and toast some bread and meat on a split stick in the middle of the day before retiring for a brief nap under a tree.  I get the impression that my great-uncles, grandfather, and other deer hunters that preceded me hunted all day long and only returned to camp for dinner and sleep.  Keep in mind that these are deer camp recollections so their veracity is debatable at best, but it seems to me that lunch starts earlier and earlier every year we go deer hunting, and although we’ve done it once or twice in my deer-hunting career, we don’t often pack in a lunch and have an impromptu early November cookout.  The times we’ve done it have been exceptional; building the fire up, whittling down a long, forked twig, using an old stump as a cutting board/prep table, squatting next to a fire with a sandwich balanced in the ‘hot-zone’ over some glowing coals, leaning against a tree, fallen log, or maybe the above-mentioned stump and savoring a toasty treat.  All memories to cherish.  I vote we do it more often.

Orienteering

I covet my cousin’s GPS.  There’s one on my Christmas list this year.  But I also get a smug sense of satisfaction from navigating my way through the woods with a compass.  Sure it isn’t orienteering by the sun (I’m just simply not that hardcore) but picking out a landmark, navigating to it, and then picking out another landmark and doing it again as a means of getting to a destination has me at least under some semi-delusions that I have some skills as a woodsman.  And I like that feeling.  Still a new Garmin would be pretty kick-ass.

Gas Lanterns

It is nice to have a deer camp that is fully wired and generator compatible.  We can play CDs, charge batteries for digital cameras, power a water heater, and run a ceiling fan that keeps the heat from the woodstoves (and the reek of a dozen unwashed men) circulating through the camp.  But late in the evening, when hunters tired out from bushwhacking start to slip off to bed and the generator is switched off, some of us stay up, sip brews, and tell lies to each other.  Our constant companion is the hiss of a Coleman lantern.  My dad brings one of the old “pump” models and the sadly departed Frank Sweet had an even older one that was pitted, rusty, and absolutely effective at casting light and a modicum of close-quarters heat.  I think old Franko’s lantern had also seen a few hairy trips by sailboat around Georgian Bay and the Great Lakes, and with those gas lights hissing away the log walls breathed ambience.  Many a laugh and a story has floated over the tops of those old Colemans.  They are also the sole source of light in the early deer camp mornings (since we all see little point in running the generator for that short a time) or when the generator breaks down, which has in reality only happened once.  There’s a new, battery operated Coleman in camp, which is fine because it acheives the same functional purpose as its fuel-driven predecessor, but it is found to be sorely lacking in what it adds to that nebulous and ill-defined concept of “camp-feel”.

There’s so much more about hunting that is underrated.  Living alone in the forest.  Turning a tree into firewood.  Getting soaked to the bone and suffering martyr-like for the opportunity to take a turkey, duck, or deer.  I’m sure I’ll find the time to write more about it soon.