Another Cariboo summer is slowly succumbing to the long shadows of autumn.
From my perch above Horse Lake I can hear the call of the Canada geese more frequently now as they abandon their far northern breeding grounds where the tundra will soon empty except for the foxes, ptarmigan and the wolves.
Loons call more frequently than they did during the height of the summer season, reminding me they too will soon be gone before winter overtakes them. I noticed the hummingbirds have already abandoned our feeders, so they have been stored for another year.
Our squirrels, I say ours because we don’t have the heart to get rid of them even though they are getting pesky, are hoarding the pine cones from the surrounding trees, along with the peanuts we so foolishly feed them.
Firewood is also beginning to pile up in our yard as we too make preparations for the coming onslaught of snow, cold and long nights.
In spite of that, it is at this time of year that I look forward to the changing colors in the surrounding forests and the crisp, night air evoking images of times past. Memories of cherished people, whose faces and voices I see and hear more vividly with the passing of each successive year, persistently come to mind, even though they live on only in my memory.
In late September and early October the hunters decked out in camouflage suits and bright orange vests will eagerly gather at lodges or makeshift camps, in anticipation of the fall hunt.
As October’s Moon of the Falling Leaves stealthily approaches with each passing day, I am spirited back to a time when our family busily prepared for the annual moose hunt in Northern Ontario. Everyone I ever knew was still alive then and it was an exciting time.
My father took me on my first hunt when I was about five years old. It was the last day of deer season and we went into the bush in a ‘52 Chevrolet sedan delivery. Through a child’s eyes the excursion was uneventful, but I got to sleep with my dad in the back of the vehicle where he prepared supper. It was already dark.
In the morning, I awoke to my dad slipping out the back door of the old Chevy. He told me to go back to sleep. Instead, I watched him, draped in his red and black checkered mackinaw disappear through the pines, recently festooned with layers of thick snow barely supported by their drooping branches. He was clutching his single-shot, .25 calibre Cooey Canuck rifle in one hand with the intensity of a 15th century coureur-de-bois on mission to feed his family.
It wasn’t until I was 10 years of age that I remember another hunt. In early September the McIntyre clan, consisting of my father, my older brother, a variety of first cousins, my childhood friend and few chums of my dad would prepare for the season. At the time partridge (grouse) season started Sept. 15, while the moose hunt was usually launched Oct. 1.
Such trips, in reality, evolved into tradition. In hindsight I wonder why my dad took us all along in the first place. Our time was pretty much spent goofing around in the bush while my dad and his friends would head off in the opposite direction hoping to intercept the game we were scaring off with our woodland antics.
While I don’t recall ever bringing home the big prize from those ragtag safaris, we usually did get a feed or two of partridge. The hustle and bustle of preparing what can best be described as crude meals are indelibly etched in my memory.
So too are the evenings whiled away trying to stay warm around an open fire as the men let down their collective guard and told risque jokes or recounted ribald or funny stories from their past.
I think I learned more about my father on those trips than I did in all the subsequent years of growing up. My father had a hard edge about him. Sent to an orphanage at age five, and in his formative years, life went downhill from there. Still, out of the hardship and struggle, was born a sense of self and a confidence I was never able to match.
We usually headed to bed fairly early during those excursions, although the men stayed up later enjoying a drink or two, or, maybe three, late into the night.
Year after year we would prepare for each season by taking the musty old tent out of the shed, oil up the shotguns and rifles, buy naphtha gas for the lanterns and camp stove, and make sure we had enough food for 30 or 40 people. In the early 50s we did not have the gadgetry of today. Our tent was actually made from a Second World War canvas cargo parachute bought for a few dollars from the local war surplus store.
Dad always brought along a large hunk of slab bacon, eggs, bread, beans and some stuff my mother would make. Thanks to mom our diets didn’t entirely cause our arteries to plug solid prematurely from the camp food, although they might have come perilously close.
As the years sped by, in blur of schooling, marriage, child rearing and career building, the trips became less frequent. In my early teens I lost my older brother to the folly of a drunk driver. Cousins moved away, old friends died off, fading away as friends have a habit of doing. Eventually our family tradition ended and was relegated to a box of black and white Kodak moments.
Some years after I married, we revived the tradition with grouse and moose hunts, although on a smaller scale. Yet, even this would come to an end.
On our last hunt together, my dad had gathered a few of his old friends and we headed up the Montreal River that ran through his property. The years were piling up on him. Both his eyesight and hearing were failing after a lifetime working around diesel engines.
Disembarking from our old cedar strip boat, our group made its way from the shore to a well-worn path, trampled down by successive generations of moose and well known to us. We each selected a blind from which to watch and wait. I was never very good at watching and waiting and quickly began to fidget.
Now, one of my dad’s favorite pastimes was to wander off in the bush by himself with a coffee can fashioned into a pail. He would find a suitable spot, generally near a small stream, build a fire and boil some water for tea. Knowing this, I decided to seek him out.
Cautiously moving back down the trail toward the river, much to the dismay of our fellow hunters, dad was not where I had left him. In the chill October air I suddenly caught the scent of wood smoke. Scanning the treetops I discovered it was rising from a small clump of black spruce in a glade just off the moose trail, in sight of the river.
Silently moving through the thick spruce grove I came up behind my dad. He was sitting on a fallen tree with his back to me, his red and black mackinaw outlined in sharp contrast to the green spruce around him. His Winchester rifle was propped up on the log beside him; he was cradling a cup of steaming hot tea in one hand, while studiously worrying the small campfire in front of him with a crooked stick.
I stood there watching him and it suddenly occurred to me that I was witnessing the end of an era, the final scene in a family drama that had played itself out for more than three decades. I didn’t have the heart to intrude on the old hunter’s thoughts. Quietly I slipped away, abandoning to memory the finality of the moment.
We never hunted again.
A few years later, my wife and I moved West to Alberta, then to British Columbia. I heard from my mother that dad had sold his precious Winchester to a neighbor for $100. He hung up his mackinaw and put his shotguns away. He gave away his Cooey Canuck to my aunt.
I had not seen the man for some time during those busy years. Inevitably the call we all dread came. He had been felled by a stroke and could I come.
At the end of a long flight a doctor met me in the foyer of the hospital and told me if I believed in miracles, dad would get better. I sat by his bedside for three days and thought about the old hunter, his life and times. When the end came I could only brush my hand across his rough cheek and bid him goodbye.
In subsequent years I tried to rekindle my interest in hunting. I even bought a Winchester rifle and had inherited dad’s shot guns. My wife and I hunted deer and grouse for a few seasons up in the Cariboo and I would share with her the experiences of my youth.
One year we were in a blind near Machete Lake. Three deer came up the path and had no idea we were watching them. I had a large buck in my sights, clicked off the safety, hesitated, and then lowered the rifle. Turning to my wife I said ‘let’s go for breakfast.’ The magic was gone. The chain forever broken.
Not much later I sold off my guns and rifles forsaking a part of my heritage I took for granted when young and is now even fading away, as if the memories belonged to someone else.
And yet, 30 years after I last hunted with my dad, I still enthusiastically welcome the coming of autumn with its warm days and frosty nights. I love to see the leaves don their magical displays of color.
The urgent honking of southbound geese and the plaintiff cry of the loons on Horse Lake stir within me a primal urge to take the musty old tent out of the shed, oil up the rifles and trek into the bush.
As I enviously observe the camaraderie of families and friends, fathers and sons embarking on the rites of fall, my thoughts are whisked away to a tiny, spruce glade in a Northern Ontario forest. In my mind’s eye I catch sight of a pensive man wearing a red and black mackinaw, pondering the vagaries of life over a campfire and a tin cup filled with steaming hot tea.
And I wish I could hunt with my father, just one more time.
Note: The above article was written in response to those who are both overtly and covertly attempting to have hunting banned or severely curtailed. I see such campaigns as the attempts by city-bound activists to impose their lifestyles and choices on unwilling or unsuspecting victims, who happen to disagree with them. I see hunting and fishing as part of our culture and is no different than the position of the First Nations people who see hunting and fishing as part of their heritage. While hunting is no longer part of my activities, I hope the skills and philosophies of hunting can continue to be handed down from father to son or daughter.
Bill McIntyre
Communications Specialist
FairForce Communications
e-mail: billmci@telus.net
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