Facing the Hunter (20 page)

In fact I remember people at a camp getting very angry when a deer that had been there all summer was shot by someone from outside the area. No one at that camp would have hunted that deer.

Of all the places I hunted, I believe the Fundy coast was the best. The hunting ground ran for miles above the rugged coast of the Bay of Fundy, where my brother owned 140 acres of land. Deer were plentiful there, and coves and small hidden back fields offered seclusion for the game. My brother’s land ran to the bay through alder swales and hardwood and, in the middle, a grove of crabapple trees with small apples that became very sweet in the fall. There were both bear and deer there, and one had to be careful when coming upon those trees, which were surrounded by dense alder bushes, not to accidentally interrupt a feeding bear. I found the deer didn’t run as heavy as the deer on the
Miramichi, but they were more plentiful. Perhaps the big buck on average weighed twenty pounds less, but I am only talking from personal experience and I could be wrong. Still, thinking of the great eighteen-point non-typical that David Savage took in the south of the province and comparing it to deer that Peter, Les, and others took in the north, the deer did seem somewhat smaller.

I went hunting there with my brother that year, long ago now. But I myself did not have my rifle with me. My brother had seen a lot of partridge down on his land, and one crisp November morning we decided that we would gather enough for a good stew, which we had not had in a while. So off we went in my truck, and with his twenty-gauge shotgun we managed to shoot five or six partridge along the side road that led from his property out to the bay.

I know I wasn’t dressed warmly enough for this excursion, but I am not sure if that was the reason. At any event, in the next few days I came down with a cold and flu that kept me down for the next week and a half. That meant I didn’t get out hunting with either David Savage, whom I had planned to hunt with, or my older brother, whom I had planned to meet up with at our camp on Mullin Stream. Perhaps it was fortuitous, perhaps not, but I missed, because of my illness, the storm that trapped hundreds of hunters in the woods—many of whom had had no idea the storm was about to descend, and just as many who had known but were unprepared for it.

David had wanted to come to our camp, and had planned his holidays around it. Like many avid hunters, he set aside at least a week of holidays for hunting. But when he phoned me, the night before I was supposed to drive up
and meet him, I could hardly lift my head off the pillow.

“I can’t go,” I said. And to prove I wasn’t shirking, I sneezed a lot. “But,” I said, “you can go to my camp anyway. My brother might be in there tomorrow night, but he’ll be happy to see you.”

David said he would see, but I knew he wouldn’t want to go to a camp where he didn’t know anyone. And I felt bad, and apologized for letting him down. But there was little or nothing I could do about it.

That night he made his way up to the Mullin Stream area alone, past the bridge across the Narrows—one of the finest places on the entire south branch of the Sovogle. The area, though worked and clear-cut at places, is still a rugged and pristine land, filled with streams and heavy woods. It gets cold and snowy on the high ground earlier than in the valley, and one can feel the bitter air by mid-October. David travelled another sixteen miles from the bridge across Mullin Stream, at the Narrows. There he met a man he knew, who had his huge trailer parked at 2.2 Mile Road. That, to him, was the best of luck, for that was where he wanted to hunt anyway—it was an area, about five miles or so from our camp, that ran above the South Branch, proper, where David had taken two or three deer in the last few years, and he was a firm believer that he could luck in there.

“So I was set,” he told me. “Blair was there with his trailer—and although he hadn’t lucked in as yet, I was certain we would see something the next day. I was still thinking I might go into your camp for an afternoon if I had time, but I thought I would get a deer here. In fact, I was sure I would. There was some snow down, and I was hoping
to get on some tracks in the morning. It was still light when I got there, and I took a short walk into the woods, toward the river. There I picked up a trail of a doe and fawn—and saw a buck track, too, but not a large buck. I came back into the trailer and cooked up some deer steak that night. We had a game of cards and got to sleep.”

At the same time, my brother had gone into our camp, and if he was still waiting for me or not I didn’t know. I had told people I would be in but, of course, circumstances were such that I couldn’t make it. He was there with a friend, Ken Francis, and they too had scouted the area where my younger brother John had taken the eight-point a few years before. They had seen many tracks, and were actually hoping for a new snowfall to help them along—I think perhaps everyone was, at that moment. In camps all over the Norwest, men were preparing for the hunt: oiling their rifles, checking their sights and scopes, making lastmoment decisions about what direction they would take. It cost a few their lives.

At that moment, across the province, somewhere north of the town of Plaster Rock, my friend Peter McGrath was staying at a camp with some people he had worked a motor plant shutdown with that summer. He was invited to the place, and if the people are convivial, and there is a place to hunt or fish, Peter will be there. I have often telephoned him only to find that he has been bass fishing here, or salmon fishing there, or duck hunting somewhere else, with a variety of people whose names I had not heard before. “I met a lad at work,” he would begin, and regale me with a story about a hunting or fishing trip that three days before he’d had no idea he would be on. In fact one year, a few weeks
after he got to Toronto, where he was working a shutdown at Ford, he told me where deer were, and partridge, for he had been out scouting the land on the perimeter of the largest city in Canada. I am sure that this is how he was, is, and will be until the Lord takes him home. Now he was in a large hardwood ridge filled with brooks and streams that ran for miles down into the Saint John River, and he was preparing to hunt a section of wood he didn’t know.

The snow started early the next morning before light—before any of the hunters had woken—but by the time my brother and Ken were up, the day was already heavy with snow. After their breakfast of bread and tea, my brother took his twenty-gauge, and a couple of slugs, and started up the old road, toward the washed-out bridge, while Ken planned to hunt back behind the camp. By the time my brother got across the bridge, Mullin Stream had just made ice, the snow was about five inches deeper than the night before, and he soon picked up tracks that led up from the river into the old spruce and fir stands above the tractor road, which he decided to follow. He was sure the tracks belonged to a buck and doe, and he felt very confident he might luck in by noon hour.

The snow was at least as deep up in the Plaster Rock area, where Peter was, and he was out alone along the hardwood ridge, where the snow fell in large flakes all across the width and breadth of the giant birch stands. It made the day gloomy, and it was difficult to see far, and he was continually clearing his gun scope and trying to keep it clear. Here, Peter said, tracks were everywhere, and “as soon as I was on one I would see another more promising.” One year, sitting up on a hardwood ridge, Peter was scanning the
side hills and distant spaces between the large trees for the sign of deer, when, looking straight out, he suddenly realized there was a buck standing fifteen feet away, staring straight at him. Though he was not as fortunate this day, and in no way was the visibility as pure, he did see many signs, he saw a few doe, and he was sure if he kept on his toes he would have a shot at a buck. The thing was, it kept snowing, and he kept travelling.

He had come a long way from the day he had, on the Miramichi side of Plaster Rock Highway, gotten so turned about on the rugged hardwood ridges that he was sure he was lost. For one thing, he now made sure he carried a compass when he went into unknown territory—especially along ridges. But he knew as well that this snow was unusual, and that it looked as if a major storm was brewing. He continued, however, to move away from the camp he was staying at, move farther into the myriad of hardwood, where the deer were moving freely in rut as the snow got deeper. By noon it looked as if it were three o’clock, and the clouds were low.

David Savage was up at dawn and that morning hunted the right side of the 2.2 Mile Road, that is, the side farther away from the river. He had passed up a doe (though he had his doe licence) and he was concentrating on a giant set of tracks, which he followed most of the morning. At about ten o’clock he sat down and opened his small rucksack for his lunch of tea and corned beef sandwiches. The snow now obliterated the buck’s tracks, but trailed away across the 2.2, and he decided the deer must have been checking its scrapes back down toward the Sovogle River. So after his tea, he strapped his rifle on his shoulder and
started out again, following the slurred impressions of the large buck, toward the river both of us, and Peter and Ken and Bill, had fished many times, on sunny days. He went down almost to the river, and waited until well into the afternoon.

By afternoon, as the snow fell over the trees and deepened in the hardwood ridge, Peter, some 150 miles to the northwest, found himself at least five and a half miles from the camp. The snow was now deeper than he had travelled in before, and deeper then he’d imagined it would be. He had, well, cigarettes and matches, a half pint of rum, and some candy bars. He had no change of clothes, no extra pair of underwear or sweater. And as the wind picked up and began to drift over the footprints he would use to travel back out, he wondered if he was not to be stranded there. It was difficult to see very far. On good days he would be able to see from one far-away ridge to another, and with his scope check movement at five or six hundred yards. But now he could see no more than five or six yards altogether, and it was worsening. His beard was frozen, and so too had his eyelashes turned to ice.

“I knew I had to find a shelter or get the hell out of where I was,” he said. He had his fur-lined hood up, which mightn’t be the smartest outerwear except for the fact that he seemed totally by himself in these ridges, and the snowfall was becoming harder and turning all the trails into almost identical topography: a blur in front of him, and a blur to the side, and a blur behind. He turned and made his way in the direction he thought he had come, checking the compass once. He headed out toward the southwest, uncertain which ridge he was on but at least
certain, this time, that he was heading the way he wanted.

At some point in the afternoon David’s friend shot that doe, hung it in the trees for the night, and made it back to the trailer. David, too, made his way back toward late afternoon, when the storm was so bad he felt he couldn’t see anything in front of him, and it was useless trying to keep his scope clear. Every time he lifted it, it was filled with fog. So he started back, while a whirlwind surrounded him. He got to the trailer at about five that afternoon, told Blair about the big buck he was tracking, and, as he and Blair had supper, Blair told him about the doe he had taken. David spoke about getting the doe that was hung in the tree in the morning, but there was no way they could get it now. They sat up late, listening to the sound of the storm as it closed in upon them, wondering if they would be able to leave the 2.2 anytime soon.

My brother and Ken both had a long, hard day as well. My brother didn’t want to give up on the deer he was tracking, but the tracks became blotted out by one o’clock that afternoon, and as he walked, thinking he was still in the spruce wood above the tractor road, he realized suddenly that he had crossed behind the end of that road, and was in the thicket near where my brother John had taken the deer a few years before. The only reason he knew this was because of a great old oak that stood alone, and rose up above the surrounding spruce, that he knew was well to the east of that tractor road. He had gotten there by crossing a road that was now completely snowbound. Realizing this, at about two that afternoon, he made his way back, toward where he thought the road would be, and finding it, as the day was fast becoming unlivable and dark, he made his way
south toward the cabin. Ken also had come back from the woods, without seeing any game that day. For a while they waited, for me, thinking I would be coming in. I hadn’t been able to tell them I was in bed sick and unable to get there. At seven Bill went out to the end of the 17 Mile Road, to see if I had gotten my jeep stuck, but finally came back, unconvinced I was safe but not knowing what else he could do.

It was late afternoon when Peter made it down to a brook, from which he believed he had left earlier that morning. But it was now past twilight, and he had over a mile and a half still to travel. The storm ferocious, he didn’t know if he should attempt it. His beard frozen solid and his hands and feet numb, he saw a small cabin at a point in that brook where an old road came down. He decided, if he could get in without breaking in, and light a fire, he would stay the night. And this is what he managed. He lit a warm fire in the stove, took his boots off, and dried out his socks and boots, then sat with his feet on the oven door and drank his rum. Unfortunately it caused his friends some major panic, and they all went out searching for him, well after dark, and worried all night where he might be. But be that as it may, he did the right thing, and perhaps the only thing he could do. He would move when the storm blew itself out.

The storm was over by Monday morning, and David Savage got up at first light. Huge drifts of snow angled along the old 2.2 Mile Road, where I myself spent days of my youth travelling from one fishing spot on the old South Branch of the Sovogle to the other. It meant that the main road into the Mullin Stream area was drifted over as well, and dozens of hunters were now stranded.

Blair had to get the trailer ready to leave—they didn’t know if they could get it out onto the main Mullin Stream Road or not. While Blair began to get things packed, David took his rifle and went down the 2.2 to bring Blair’s deer out. He had walked about two or three hundred yards, the world about him completely white and the sun dazzling on the new fallen snow, when he saw a spot far down the road, at a turn, almost four hundred yards away. He stopped, raised his rifle, looked through the scope, and saw the big buck he had been tracking two nights before. He had his 30-30 with him, and a four-hundred-yard shot at a deer with a 30-30 is a long shot. But David decided to take it. He fired once, and the deer seemed to go sideways just slightly and leave the road. David walked through those drifts, and down to where the deer had crossed, and saw no blood. But he did see a small, very small tuft of deer hair in the middle of the road. To him this was unusual, and he decided that, blood or no blood, he had come very close, so he followed the tracks into the woods, and within forty yards, he saw a spot of fresh blood, and then more. He followed the tracks, as the snow got deeper and deeper, and found more blood. Then he saw where the deer had fallen. He continued on, and then stopped and, looking to his right, saw where the deer had finally lain down, burying itself up to its back. When he reached it, it was dead—a ten-point buck, 240 pounds.