Hey?! What’s Happening!?

August 9, 2012 Shawn West Leave a comment

So, yeah…I know I’ve been delinquent in updating this forum. I have a good excuse, really, but it is still just that: an excuse.

You see we’re packing up and moving…leaving the fertile lands of Ontario’s southwest, and heading north back to my roots in a way, to south-Central Ontario and the town I spent most of my life in. It’s a better family decision for sure, and it may just turn out to be a better hunting decision as well, but we’ll see about that. Throw in long-weekend trips, two rough-housing sons under the age of three requiring attention, and a hectic work schedule, and I’m sure I just sound like a whiner.

Nonetheless, buried under the morass of boxes, bubble wrap, packing tape, paper, and clothes, a close inspection shows the existence of plans and burgeoning excitement for the prospect of another year of hunting kicking off. In just a little over four weeks the goose season is going to open up down here in my neck of the woods (or swamps, or fields, as the case may be) and just like the years before my mind is alive with visions of a September sunrise silhouetting a half dozen Canada Geese as they parachute into the sweet spot in the decoys. I can hear the gravelly moans and the sharp clucks and honks as the birds work the spread, and I can sense in my stomach those butterflies that I get just before I shout those magic words: “Okay, Take ‘em now!”. Just like in real life, I don’t feel the kick of the gun and I barely hear the muzzle barking as I slap the trigger: those have just become blurs in the action. Finally, I can smell the acrid odour of spent gunpowder mixed with the warm, wild aroma of the fields, the feathers, and the blood.

But until then I’ve just been puttering around (frantically!) trying to get my house packed in such a way that when goose season hits, I can just pack up and go. I’ve got a box labeled “Goose Hunting Goodies” that has all the basics I’d need to take: boots, coat, calls, gloves, hat and so on. I may have even snuck a nice bottle of whiskey in there for evening celebrations dedicated to the return of hunting season and all the milestones that 2012 has seen so far…

Anyhow.

I took a weekend to hit the Orangeville edition of HuntFest, and even though I saw way more camo hats congregated in one spot than should be allowed (and far fewer shirtsleeves than I was anticipating) it was a great time, literally for the whole family. My oldest boy spent most of his time gawking in wonder at the taxidermy and climbing all over the ATV displays, but we did wrestle him away long enough for him to watch his dad on stage in the NWTF/Gobblestalker Calls hosted turkey calling contest. It was my first NWTF-organized event, and I managed to scrape together two 3^rd place finishes (in the amateur and senior open divisions respectively) and everyone competing was friendly and good-humoured, which sometimes isn’t the experience I’ve found at other calling contests. Apparently by placing in the senior open division I can no longer compete in the amateur ranks…call it progress I suppose. My youngest, being only twelve weeks old at the time, probably wasn’t sure of where he was for much of the day, but I feel that having him immersed in an environment where everyone is talking about hunting, telling stories, showing their taxidermy, and squawking on game calls can only be beneficial to the development of his brain and the strengthening of his innate love of wilderness and the hunting tradition.

Ahhh, the lies parents tell themselves.

After checking out numerous vendors, and getting some advice on a problematic bolt handle on my .243WIN it was time to go home. But not before we watched a seminar on birds of prey, had a burger, and chatted with even a few more folks. I was even ‘recognized’ by some people after the calling contest, which is a new and sort of unusual experience for me. It was a pretty good time and even though a small-time blogger such as I was not “journalistic” enough to get even a moment of time to interview any celebrities of the hunting world (and there were actually a few there) I promised a few of the nicest I met that I’d give them a shout out here and link to their sites and products. If you dislike such shameless cronyism, you should probably just scroll past the next section.

Gobblestalker Calls (www.gobblestalkercalls.com)

Two days before HuntFest, my clear double-reed turkey call finally gave up the ghost. I knew that a kee-kee run would be on the list of calls to perform, and unfortunately all of my other calls were just too raspy to run a nice, clear kee-kee. So I started talking to Kevin Bartley at the Gobblestalker booth about it and for a price that I frankly thought was too low, I managed to get not only a nice-sounding clear double-reed call, but a quick tutorial on kee-kee runs. Can’t beat that for service. Did I mention that Gobblestalker organized and sponsored all the prizes for the NWTF calling contest? Well they did.

Elwood Epps (www.elwoodepps.com)

As I mentioned above, I have a pesky problem with the bolt handle on my .243WIN. It rusts. Not the bolt itself and not any other part of the whole damn gun, just the bolt handle. I slather the Hoppes gun oil to it until it is downright slippery and glistening, and the next time I pull it out of the gun cabinet, it has rust on it. Frustrating and a bit disconcerting to say the least. I hunt deer with a casual, semi-retired employee of Elwood Epps, so I tracked down their resident gunsmith and we talked for 15 minutes about the whole thing. They weren’t going to get a sale, they didn’t even have the gun in question to inspect, but still we chatted comfortably for a quarter of an hour. I find that most vendors won’t do this, but these guys just genuinely liked talking about guns and gun maintenance. In the end, I got about four different plans of attack, with the last one being “call the manufacturer”. We’ll see if it comes to that, hopefully I won’t have to try all of the first three remedies. Great guys, and pretty much everyone in my family has frequented their store at least once and left happy.

Canadian Waterfowlers Pro Shop (www.canadianwaterfowlersproshop.com)

Now let’s be frank for a minute. It is a given that everyone who gets a booth at any tradeshow, hunting or otherwise, is ultimately there to make sales. Hunting is big business, and there are a lot of guys and gals out there trying to get a piece of the action. What I liked about this company was that it was run by a friendly guy who just wanted to talk about waterfowling and gear. No heavy sales approach, no pressure, and no attitude. Just a good dude. We talked for a while about the gear I’ve got now, new trends in equipment, and what I could implement if I was so inclined to make changes. On the capitalism side of things, the prices they have are pretty darn good, and I’ve got a real good idea of how this company is going to end up with some of my money…one of my hunting buddies just has to pull the trigger on something. But that’s okay, because I don’t mind giving my cash to people who run a good business, and it seems like these guys genuinely understand both waterfowling at large and how they fit into the business side of things. Check them out.

GK Calls (www.gkcalls.com)

So I’ve spent many, many posts here raving about Tim Grounds Championship Calls, and I’m sure I’ll spend many more posts on the same topic. That said, the guys at GK Calls were something of a surprise to me, and here’s why. I’m used to the hard sell…call it a consequence of working a career in the business consulting world. When I ask people in my real job how their product differs from the competition, I usually get stock answer with a heavy slant towards discrediting their competitors. I was shocked when I heard none of this type of nonsense anywhere at HuntFest, but none moreso than at the GK Calls booth. They asked me what I was using now, and when I told them it was a Tim Grounds Super Mag, the answer was “that’s a really good call”. I was amazed. Here was a vendor, with four dozen of their finest goose and duck calls all shined and on display for sale touting the great things that one of their competitors does. We talked about what I loved about my Super Mag, and how various GK Calls compared in terms of low-end rasp, reed responsiveness, control, and price. I declined to try out the calls, but only because with me, if I try, I buy. And I just didn’t have a couple hundred bucks to drop on calls that sounded great. It is obvious that these guys know their stuff, and equally obvious that they don’t really consider other call makers as their ‘competition’, more like ‘contemporaries’. My only knock on them is that they are all exceptional goose and duck callers; which, while fun to listen to, is a bit intimidating to guys like me who consider themselves semi-proficient. The pros for GK, just listening to them on the calls proves that they are the real deal and I’m just a pretender.

The NWTF (www.nwtf.org)

What can you say about the NWTF? A great organization with a good history of conservation and hunter advocacy, and they put on a calling contest to boot. Again super nice guys that were just as keen to talk about your latest hunt as they were to sell you a membership, a contest spot, or a bunch of DVDs. I had a long talk (and got a calling lesson) from Dale Scott who is the Regional Director for Ontario about turkey hunting in general and the results of the spring banquets circuit, both of which were positive conversations. After the event, I had to thank them in person for putting on the contest, and even though they didn’t have enough competitors to qualify anyone for entry into the Grand Nationals in Tennessee, it was still a good time and a well-organized event. They’re hoping for even more callers competing next year, and I’ll be back for certain.

Advanced Taxidermy & Wildlife Design (www.advancedtaxidermy.com)

“Wow” is pretty much all you can say when you see the work this company is doing. They are obviously skilled, but what got me was how they knew the stories behind every mount, and how they wanted to hear your stories about animals you’d gotten or ones you missed that would have made great trophies. They are always trying out new techniques for poses and mount configurations and they are genuinely excited about the prospect of doing their job; something millions of us simply cannot say. If you are in Ontario and you want to really do justice to that once-in-a-lifetime fish, bird, or big-game animal, check them out. They are in Caledon and their work is exceptional. Pictures alone don’t do it justice.

There were numerous more who I spoke with that didn’t give me business cards, those like DU Canada, the OFAH, and the big optics manufacturers that were just way too busy to chat, or many others whom I’ve invariably forgotten because that’s how my brain works. If you happen to read this blog and we met at HuntFest, drop me a line. Unbelievably, one person I met actually said that they read this blog…although they may have just been being polite. Probably the latter.

So all those reminiscences and promos are nice, but that still doesn’t change the fact that here I sit in my basement on a Thursday evening, feeling guilty for not posting here in so long, feeling doubly guilty for sitting here tapping away at the keyboard now instead of helping my wife pack more of our stuff for the move in two days, and feeling sorry for myself for leaving all my friends, a few hunting associates, and dozens of soccer teammates in southwest Ontario behind. The guilt and general malaise is offset by the above-mentioned giddiness as August slides into goose season and what for me and my buddies is the true “New Year’s Day”. It is the start of what we wait five or six months for, it is the start of getting up too early and going to bed too late, the start of having our cheeks sun-burned, wind-burned, and frost-burned repeatedly over the next four months. It signals the start of someone going over their boots, and the start of enjoying some peaceful meditation in the outdoors. Some of us will get sore backs from carrying gear, carrying game, and hiking long miles. Others of us will just get sore sides from laughing way too often and wrinkles from smiling so damn much. And even though it is the beginning, it is a reminder that it eventually comes to an end and that there will come a time when we have to wait again for the calendar to roll over once more.

The only remedy for our affliction is to get out there and make the most of it while you’re able to.

Have a great opener everyone, no matter what you’re chasing.

hunting, lists upon lists

Minor Pleasures

July 10, 2012 Shawn West Leave a comment

The fact that I’m itching to get hunting is apparent to all, and that I can’t stop yammering about calling contests, waterfowl weekends, and gear that I need to buy is not helping matters.

Of course for every thing that really makes me downright giddy about the approaching hunting seasons (waterfowl, fall turkey, and deer specifically), there are about a hundred things that the non-hunting people in my life think is negative, or at least weird, about my passion for the outdoors. Most have long ago given up trying to convert me, and truth be told, most of them don’t think hunting is ‘wrong’…particularly when they see me making and eating delicious things out of game animals. But a sad symptom of our ultra-modern, urbanized, smart-phone culture is that scads of people that I come into contact with on a daily basis in my personal and business relationships that have no appreciation for all the tiny, esoteric, and absolutely exceptional experiences that are to be gained from spending long hours afield. And that’s fine…I don’t derive my self-esteem from whether they find me somehow “different”.

But in the spirit of conciliation, and in an effort to further reduce the ridiculous clichés that people ask me on a daily basis, here’s a list of some things that non-hunters think of as inconveniences and irritations that are, in a hunter’s mind, simple pleasures to be savoured.

Wood Stoves

I always get “But what if the stove goes out? Don’t you guys freeze?” The answer is, yes, if the fire goes out, it gets cold. The trick is to not let the fire go out…and I happen to hunt with a group of guys who are adept fire-stokers. By 1am or so the camp is downright tropical, in large part thanks to my father and uncle who seem to be cold-blooded reptiles of some sort. In our deer camp it is not uncommon to wake in the night and lean out a window or walk out to the porch in one’s underpants, just for the sweet relief of a brisk November night. Early fall goose camps are even worse, because it is usually pretty mild already without someone literally ‘putting the wood to’ the camp stove. At least it is a dry heat. On the plus side, we can all, for the most part, bond over our constant berating of anyone putting wood in the stove.

Mattresses (Air or Otherwise)

Another question I constantly hear is “What do you sleep on? The ground? The floor?” and to that I usually shake my head and remind people that although roughing it is a key component of the hunt (and I have nothing but respect for the high country hunters who operate with canvas tents and pack horses), for us, we do have a modicum of comfort. One of our camps has dedicated bunkbeds with old, generally feculent mattresses on them. In the other, most of us use air mattresses. Last year, I got tricky and got a synthetic camp cot, primarily because I wanted a bed that I could fold up (since everyone was either walking on or flopping down on my air mattress as they pleased) that was likewise not going to develop a slow leak and deflate in the night. Unfortunately for me, this cot proved a little too comfortable and some certain individuals in camp took to unfolding it for me and resuming to sleep on it as they saw fit. In the bunkbed scenario, lower bunks are prized possessions. Owing to hot air’s natural tendency to rise, and given our healthy cabbage consumption (in the form of sauerkraut, cabbage rolls, Brussels sprouts, and coleslaw) mixed with the tendency mentioned above for certain camp elders to keep a raging inferno going in the stove at all hours, sleep (if it can be called that) on a top bunk is memorable to say the least. Waking up in a sweat surrounded by a cloud of miasma used to be a rite of passage in our one camp. Since we took to draping heavy sheets over the doorframe a few years back the heat issue has improved slightly…the noxious odour, not so much. Still beats sleeping on the floor though…barely.

Hygiene

“Don’t you guys all stink after staying in camp together?” Okay this one is partially true. Yes, after a day of hiking the backwoods or carrying decoys in and out of fields we are generally sweaty, hungry, and dirty. And yes, a shower is not always an option, although we are lucky enough to have an outdoor shower at one deer cabin we hunt out of. Our fingernails get grimy, or feet get wrinkly, and we itch in places we don’t always itch. But that is not to say that hygiene is completely out of the question. Almost everyone in camp at least brushes their teeth, and a steel pail of water gathered on a short trip to a lake or stream can be heated on the glowing steel of one of our blazing wood stoves to provide enough hot water to at least splash down the most offensive nooks and crannies. I choose not to shave while in camp, others do. It’s no big deal. In deer season, when scent control becomes somewhat important some individuals become a bit more fanatical about cleanliness…me, I steer clear of that cyclical argument and just let myself smell as ‘natural’ as possible. Keeping a shaved (or more apt in my case, balding) head of hair addresses the need for frequent use of shampoo and if you can locate the one man in camp who is cleansing, conditioning, and moisturizing their hair I’ll be you I can point out a hunter that just isn’t appreciating the experience on as many levels and senses as I am. I even have an uncle who came up with a clever use for Penaten cream one year. I’m not sure if it was stranger that he was using it or that he packed it with the foresight to know he’d need it. In the end it is okay to get kind of gross. It means you are doing more important things than fretting over what your cabin-mates think of your appearance.

Diet

“So do you just bring enough bacon, beef jerky, and beer to last you the week?” I wish…I love bacon, beef jerky, and beer, and if that was all I consumed for a week of hunting I might lose some weight. I think if anything has really changed about the modern hunting experience it is that I would wager very few hunters just pack in essentials and rely on their woodsmanship skills to provide their sustenance. Gone are the days (for many of us I bet) when eating on a hunting trip meant that you ate what you killed or else you nearly starved, and I’d bet double that those days expired many years ago. I don’t think I’ve ever been to camp that didn’t have enough food to feed everyone in it twice. Now some camps are better than others in terms of selection and quality; for every camp I’ve been to where the menu is exceptional (like our deer camps for example) I’ve to as many others where hot dogs, chips, mixed nuts, and beans were all there was all the time. Most camps fall in the middle, and frankly I couldn’t care less what is on the menu, as long as there’s a lot of it. Hunting is exertion for most of us, and that relative level of exertion varies from hunter to hunter, but nonetheless when the sun goes down and the guns go away, I’ve never met a man or woman alive that wasn’t ravenously hungry after a day’s hunt. Bacon, beef jerky, and beer would cut it…but I’d rather have more.

The Toilet

So we’ve come to this. Nothing is more misunderstood or more commonly reviled, misrepresented, and joked about than what a bear, or in this case a hunter, “does in the woods”. Call it want you want, from outhouse to shitter. It is ubiquitous and simultaneously revered and feared. That is the one stereotype I cannot shake, and that is the view that we as hunters all have to either use a hideously depraved outhouse or alternatively brave baring our sensitive bits to the wilderness and going in the forest. Now I’ve visited many outhouses from the rankest and most vile (which I encountered when I wasn’t even hunting…it was at a punk rock festival concert in mid-August, the odour haunts me still) to one’s that have a fair modicum of creature comforts, but I still cannot say that I’ve had an outhouse experience I would define as ‘pleasant’. I even, at a young age, contributed man-power to actually digging and installing an outhouse. You learn a lot about yourself in moments like that. All this said I have no real problem with the outhouse at the end of the day…even the two-man version at one of the deer camps I go to (picture it!). It is the conundrum of biology that makes it so; that ‘any port in a storm’ approach that sometimes occurs when your stomach is bubbling and you’ve been without running water for a few days. Making sure you exercise good timing is important too in any outhouse adventure. It pays to be the first one into an outhouse the morning after ribs and sauerkraut for dinner. Anything other than first and you may as well hold it for the woods, and this alternative is likewise not without risks. While I will keep this G-rated (both out of respect for the reader and to protect the guilty…you know who you are and I know that you read this) I have stories in my repertoire about the disasters that occur when you either wait too long and then lose control while peeling off multiple layers of pants and long-underwear or if you get excited and don’t quite get the pants out of the way before squatting. I’ve already shared one example of the logic that must be employed if emergency strikes and you find yourself without toilet paper (hint…bring an extra pair of socks). Regardless, the exigencies of our need to eliminate waste make us all equal. I feel particularly sorry for female hunters in this respect…the one time I took my wife hunting she made me well aware of the intricacies of that particular interface and it is (I argue) the one compelling reason that she won’t take up hunting with me on a full time basis.

So there you have it…a far from exhaustive, but hopefully still informative list. I am aware in re-reading this that I’ve made all of the above points seem negative through some sort of tongue-in-cheek narrative, but I can assure you that the sum of these component parts do make up what the hunting experience as a whole is. Just like there is not a catch-and-release component to hunting as I define it, there is likewise no extricating the above moments and experiences from hunting as I know it. To be honest, I wouldn’t have it any other way…even the outhouse, but only if I’m first to use it.

hunting, random thoughts

Fixin’ and Tinkerin’

July 4, 2012 Shawn West Leave a comment

So here we are deep into the dog-days of summer around my parts and since nobody seems keen on letting me onto their property with some cottontail distress calls and a .243WIN, there’s nothing for me to hunt. I’ve never met a community that so loves groundhogs and coyotes that they look past any damage those populations are doing. Oh well.

So what do I do in the meantime to stave off the stir-craziness? Well, I do what every other dyed-in-the-wool hunter does when the hunting stops. I toy around with my gear, I tinker with things I ought not to tinker with, and I rig together solutions for problems that never really existed.

Examples? Sure!

I was fortunate enough last fall to have bluebird weather for pretty much all of my waterfowl hunting. Didn’t get rained on once; and only got a bit damp and dewy one humid morning in late September. Despite that I am fanatically putting the WD-40 to all the dry, un-rusted hinges of my layout blind that prior to me slopping them with gunk were in near-mint condition. I mean downright pristine; now they are kind of shiny and slippery…but I’m good in case I do get some wet weather when I’m goose hunting in a couple of month’s time. In another semi-related example of waterfowling as a mental illness, I am seriously considering weaving together some kind of homemade “stubble-wrap” (it’s like bubble wrap, but more painstakingly manufactured and infinitely less addictive to play with) to put on my layout blind. I endured some mild teasing last goose season for my apparent ineptitude when it came to grassing up my blind, so in an effort to protect my ego, I’m thinking of creating some kind of matrix with lawn clippings, decorative corn stalks from the local craft shop, polymer glue, and chicken-wire. I’m not sure if this would decrease or increase the teasing, but if it garners me another 45 minutes of sleep, I’m all for it.

I also just can’t keep my hands of my firearms right now, and this is something I’ve come to be quite comfortable with over time. It seems that every July and August finds me almost robotically cleaning, oiling and then re-cleaning and re-oiling all of my weapons…even ones I haven’t used since their last cleaning and oiling. To the untrained eye this may seem like classic obsessive-compulsive behaviour. So what, like you’re so well-adjusted?

Game calls have a special place in my heart, as anyone who frequents this forum is well aware of. The summer months become a symphony of wilderness sounds in my house, as I tune up goose and duck calls for the workout they will be receiving from early September right through to January. This year I’ve heard a rumour that there will be a summer turkey calling contest as well for me to attend, so whereas in the past the yelping, cutting, clucking, and purring normally stops it has this year remained a fixture of the noise that permeates my house. I am likewise preparing to re-attend and re-embarrass myself at the Ducks Unlimited Goose Calling Contest in Toronto this August, so I often find myself seamlessly swapping out my turkey diaphragm calls for my Tim Grounds Super Mag: if you haven’t heard such music, I assure you that you are missing out. Throw in the tantrums of a bossy three year old and the wailings of a ten week old baby and you have the makings of a cacophonic maelstrom of wilderness and human language. When the calling ceases, I am feverishly working, almost in mad scientist fashion, to tweak and tune my instruments in an effort to smooth out any sour notes…so yes, I’m aware that most of those are due to operator error, and no I don’t care. I’m too stubborn to learn new methods so I’ll just reverse-engineer the calls to suit my style. Yes, I know that voids the warranty.

Of special focus this year is physical fitness. Before anyone that has actually met me starts giggling, know this is based solely on my recent broken leg. I have not turned over some radical new leaf, and I will continue to consume fried meats, potato chips and dip, bacon and eggs, and the occasional cold beer. Maybe some fruit and vegetables will fall in there by accident, who knows. I have, however, found that the long term sloth that I became accustomed to during my recovery has left me woefully weak in a cardiovascular sense. Since we don’t normally drive into the places we hunt (no one in our group owns a waterfowl trailer, and I don’t ATV much in deer season) I am making an effort to get jogging for the next 90 days or so. When I’m hunting, I like to save my breath for making snide remarks and using a goose call; I’d rather not be winded and gasping just from bringing in a gun and some dekes. Plus, it is nice (and cost-effective!) to fit into all the gear I wore last year.

All this preparation however, comes at a price. We are preparing our house for sale, and being out in the garage clanging away at gear or blaring on various and sundry game calls does make me less available for things like de-cluttering, home staging, picking paint colours, and providing my thoughts on carpet patterns.

Don’t worry friend, I’m managing even without those simple pleasures. I sense that these chores that my wife so graciously takes on while I do my important hunting prep are somehow mysteriously linked to much of my gear disappearing into Rubbermaid boxes that are sealed with intricate and completely impenetrable webs of duct tape. Luckily I have a variety of secret stashes where I can squirrel away all I need to ensure my continued efforts are not thwarted.

All in all, the coping process as I count down to the opening day of goose season (which is the first sure sign fall is coming as far as I’m concerned) is going pretty well. I’d be happier if the regs would just come out so I can go buy a license and really put preparations into high gear, but that usually isn’t for a few weeks yet. For now, it is just time to enjoy the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer. Enjoy your soda, pretzels, and beer.

hunting, reflections

Huntin’ With Dad…

June 16, 2012 Shawn West Leave a comment

The initial plan for this weekend was to go visit family for a few days over the Father’s Day weekend, but a flu bug laid me up for a few days and I wasn’t really up to travelling at all. My wife and kids were healthy enough to travel though, so here I sit, flying solo for Father’s Day tomorrow. Which is okay, I haven’t really much of an investment in Father’s Day…after all I’ve only been a father for two of them (before this year) and they’re pretty much like any other day, really.

But I do have a Dad (something I have in common with a few billion people…mine writes a column at this link. You can check it out if you’re so inclined.) and he is the primary reason you all are reading this. Dad has always been a staunch conservationist and sportsman, and it was the enthusiasm in wilderness, conservation, and hunting that he literally lived that serves as the bedrock for my own passion for the outdoors. This blog is merely a public extension of my love of the sporting life. To say Dad lived a wilderness life would be mild overstatement, but not by much. While he was not a ‘log-cabin hermit’ he was always involved in the outdoors. He grew up in Lion’s Head, Ontario on a working farm surrounded by forests, meadows, marshes, and big-water. I grew up hearing plenty of stories about wandering through woods following animal tracks, sneaking into the marsh to watch ducks, doing hard but rewarding farm work in the outdoors, fishing for speckled trout, and all sorts of other quite idyllic-sounding pastimes that Dad and his brothers engaged in through their childhoods and adolescents.

In career, Dad had a job doing something he was passionate about. He was the first Ducks Unlimited employee hired in Ontario and he worked for DU Canada in various positions for nearly 30 years, associated in the implementation of hundreds of projects in Ontario. He took very apparent pride and joy in driving us to wetlands to show us how wilderness could be returned to areas that had been degraded, and how those places were worth working for, volunteering at, and taking care of. I met landowners and coworkers that Dad was associated with and they all had the same passion and focus. It made me and my siblings, at a very young age, feel a part of something bigger and more important than ourselves. We were part of nature and could take steps to learn from it and make sure it remained strong. It wasn’t a marketing or PR statement. It was real, you could get muddy, and you could do your part. That was probably the most important thing I learned from Dad.

Work and family obligations aside, hunting was always a primary focus of Dad’s life. He took vacations, and they were for hunting. When he was not hunting, he was telling hunting stories or tinkering with guns and gear. When we went on family trips to visit family in Lion’s Head, it meant we were doing some kind of hunting too. We learned gun and hunting safety at a young age and were relentlessly reminded of it, hopefully to our benefit. My brother, my sister, and I were all exposed to hunting, and although my sister never took it up, she has a firm appreciation of the tradition’s importance and place in society. My brother and I are avid hunters, with my brother holding the deer hunting bragging rights in this tepid sibling rivalry. I’ll take the calling accolades, at least relative to my little bro. I think he’d take that trade-off.

Anyhow.

Dad had strong opinions about what hunting meant, how it should be done, what was ‘fair-chase’ and what wasn’t, and a whole host of other idiosyncratic traits about the tradition…just as we all do. I’ve inherited a good many of them, but sometimes we disagree, and that’s fine too.

But the purpose of this post is not to present my Dad’s biography. That’s for another day, perhaps. The point of this is to relate, in honour of Father’s Day, my favourite stories from hitting the fields and forests with my Dad.

Hunting With Kids

I had been tagging along with Dad as a spectator since I was eight or nine years old, but being the oldest child in my family meant that after I was licensed, for a few years at least, Dad was my only hunting buddy; he knew all the good spots, and he could drive. I was also the oldest child to take up hunting in the family so even though my brother and cousins have been coming out as spectators since they likewise were kids, for a stretch there I had something in common with Dad that none of the other kids had with their Dads: we both had hunting licenses. That figures large in the mind of an early adolescent, I’m told. Stories about being out with Dad have already figured in this forum before, usually to prove some point or provide a contextual reference for what I’m talking about, but this first one is just about learning.

I was somewhere in that distant past that lurks around the age of eight to ten years old, and Dad and I were out hunting rabbits in the snowy environs of the mixed woodlot south of the farm with the family beagle, Chum (and that’s ‘family beagle’ in the extended sense…uncles, cousins, friends…a lot of people hunted with Chum in his day). As the beautiful hound music rang through snow-covered boughs, it seemed to be taking an eternity for the rabbit and dog to circle and figure-eight their way through the undergrowth. Like most kids, I was getting bored, and my feet were getting cold. I broke off a small twig and started playing with it. The hound was getting closer. I made little circles of footprints in the snow behind Dad. Chum was still getting closer. I saw Dad shift two hands onto his Remington .22. Something was fixing to happen. The dog sounded like he was on top of us, his bays and bawls chiming like church bells in my ears. Dad stood statue still, the rifle half-shouldered. I couldn’t see anything and my heart was hammering in rhythm with Chum’s frantic howling. Without thinking I said “Dad? Where’s the rabbit?” Now this isn’t censorship: I legitimately can’t recall exactly what the hissed rejoinder was that I got from Dad, but I’m somewhat confident that he didn’t swear at me. And then poor Chum’s howls starting getting further and further away. I’d obviously kind of screwed things up by talking, and Dad let me know that. While I looked sheepishly at my Welly boots, Dad concisely explained that the rabbit is usually well ahead of the dog. I said I was sorry and Dad just said in a resigned, pleasant way “But that’s how you learn I suppose.” And then we kept on hunting. I can’t remember if we got that rabbit or any others that day, but I remember that I could have gotten cursed out pretty hard. Dad isn’t a competitive hunter, but when he’s hunting, well, he’s hunting. So those were three things I learned that day. Be quiet because hunting can be pretty serious, but most importantly, if you screw it up (or if your noisy kid screws it up, more accurately), just shrug your shoulders and keep hunting.

After that trip, Dad told my uncles that hunting with me was like hunting with a baby raccoon rambling around behind you the whole time. I don’t think he meant it in a bad way, but only he knows for sure. I didn’t take it in a bad way.

We all like to think that on some level, our fathers are without flaws. Of course that isn’t true; they are just people like the rest of us, and they are prone to failings and defects. Dad probably won’t like this story out for the world to see, he may even suggest some revisions for me, but this is my version.

Even When You Shoot Poorly

In May, 2007 Dad and I were out chasing spring gobblers in the Simcoe County forests north of Barrie, Ontario. We were sitting on opposite sides of the base of a broad old pine tree that had low-hanging limbs that provided good cover. Dad was working the box call, and I was sitting listening for responses. It was gusty, so anytime the wind went down, Dad would make some calls. After a time, we heard a throaty gobble. Dad called again, louder and more excitedly. The response was immediate…and closer. He ran another series of yelps and cutts together, and this time there was no answer. I know Dad’s intent was to get me my first bird, but the bird was coming from his side of the tree, so I hissed for him to shoot it if he could. Seconds later I heard Dad whisper “There he is.” At the farthest corner of my right-eye’s peripheral vision I saw the outline of the gobbler standing at full periscope. Dad’s shotgun barked from behind me and I heard the bird flopping. I turned and was astonished to see the bird get its feet and begin running. As I fumbled to get the gun on it, and shove the safety off, and try for a shot, Dad hissed an unrepeatable curse as he blazed two more shells at the now low-flying gobbler. I watched it glide through a low opening and set its wings and soar like a wounded goose out of sight. At that point, I’m not ashamed to say that my might father…a man who I knew had dispatched many a turkey with a single shot to the head from his 2 ¾-inch-chambered Remington Model 1100, a man who I had watched crumple geese and ducks with ease, my hunting hero who had a basement full of deer antlers from his successful exploits…my dad began setting the one-man Guinness World Record for cursing himself. Just as he had squeezed the trigger, he told me that his steady arms had forsaken him and the muzzle had dipped just slightly. There was nothing Dad hated more than shooting a turkey through the body with a shotgun. Not only did he lament ruined meat (in fact it was nearly criminal in his eyes to ruin a delectable turkey that way), but he didn’t like spoiling the glossy, iridescent feathers. After a few minutes we tracked the bird, and were happy to find it laying, neck-outstretched, on the leaves just a hundred yards from where Dad had shot it.

As we approached it, I asked Dad if he had any shells in his gun. He said no, he had only brought three. This eventuality had never even crossed his mind. I only had 3 inch shells so I offered him my gun. He gestured for me to aim for a spot well removed from his location and that if the bird was still alive that he’d usher it that way for me to shoot if need be. He was confident it was dead though as it had not moved at all the whole time we approached and conversed loudly. As I stood watching Dad approach it I didn’t even have the gun half-ready. Safety was on and I had it in cradle carry. I saw Dad pick up a stick, which I assumed was going to be a blunt instrument in case the bird was still barely alive. I was astonished (for the second time in minutes, I might add) when Dad casually tossed the axe-handle sized twig on the bird’s back.

The cradle carry was a bad decision.

The bird exploded in a flurry of leaves and feathers and began running away through the woods. It ran directly away from Dad and right to left through my field of vision. The first shot was scrambled and well behind the bird. My second shot shredded leaves a foot over the bird’s head. Now I almost shouted an unmentionable swear word. Like my Dad (who I until moments before had deemed infallible) I had only brought the three shells in the gun. Knowing this last shell would have to count, I bore down and squeezed the trigger. The bird cart-wheeled forward and the woods fell silent. With my boot heel on the tough old gobbler’s neck Dad and I looked confoundedly at each other. It was the first gobbler Dad had failed to kill with one shot, and it was the first one I had ever shot at. Dad was at the end of one type of streak, and I hoped I was not at the start of another. We both felt pretty sheepish over our bad shooting display, and I know Dad maligned himself (and we’ve reminded him over some beers at camp once and a while) for making a bad shot that ended up putting that gobbler through about ten minutes of unnecessary suffering. But the important part was that that bird didn’t go to waste. We got him, and we ate him, and we learned something. Most importantly, we know we aren’t the first hunters to shoot badly, and so long as we do our best to avoid it in the future all we have now is a laugh, a lesson learned, and a story to tell.

I don’t know about Dad, but I now carry seven shells afield on every turkey hunt.

Being Humble

I was fortunate enough to shoot a doe fawn in the first three hours of my deer hunting career, and it was a good, humane, albeit lucky, shot through the neck of a running deer. I missed the doe that was with her, but that’s nothing new for me…that just means that doe could breed again.

Regardless.

There were high fives, and handshakes, and pats on the back, and ‘atta boys” and all sorts of blurred, excited imagery for me after that. I was elated, and sad, and kind of nauseous, and a dozen other feelings. By the time Dad had walked me through the field-dressing (and if I could just get a handle on shooting deer to this day, I’d be more practiced at it) and we had planned the rest of the day, it was time that we broke for lunch. That afternoon, Dad and I were walking through the hardwoods to a spot where he was going to place me for the evening sit and he was having me recount the story. Suffice it to say, I was a pretty proud fifteen year-old who had just joined, what to my mind was, a pretty exclusive club. I was a deer hunter now. Just like my grandfather, and my dad, and my uncles and great uncles. I said something somewhat disrespectful to the deer and complementary to myself…something like “well that dumb deer just ran in front of the wrong guy this morning”, or another remark equally adolescent and inane. It wasn’t a Hollywood scene, but I remember Dad’s response like it was scripted. Without turning around or stopping he just said “Yep that was a good shot; you made me proud. Now, don’t talk about it like that and don’t let it go to your head.” And I said the eternal teenaged response to being subtly put in your place by the pater familias. I said “Okay.” And that was it. Lesson learned. Taking a life wasn’t about boasting or feeling tough or superior. It was about a tradition of being out in nature and trying to better an animal that was stronger and more resilient than you individually would ever be. And it was meant to respected and humbling, in success or failure. I have thought about that walk often, and I’ve come to believe there’s more merit in that philosophy than the alternative.

I’ve got dozens of other stories from hunting and living in deer camp with Dad, and I’m sure many more will make their way into this blog. It is a near certainty that many of you have your own tales of father-son or father-daughter or husband-wife hunting glory, despair, and hilarity and I bet you treasure them as much as I do my own memories of the outdoors with Dad.

So thanks Dad, for taking me in the woods, for teaching me how to hunt, for being there when it went down as planned, and for not being too hard on me when it didn’t. Mostly, thanks for being a good example of what a sportsman and conservationist ought to be.

I’ll be stealing most of your tricks (and all of your stories) to share with your grandsons someday.