Memories of long past hunts

John Y Cannuck

John Y Cannuck

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Going back to the 1960's for this one. I was a young fella, out with two of his uncles, one of my cousins, and a friend of my uncles and his kid.

We had rented the cabin my grandfather used to live in. There was no furniture inside, just a mattress on the floor to sleep on. The wood stove was gone, and only an old oil space heater remained to provide feeble warmth over night.

My uncles and their friend slept in 2 trailers. Nice eh?

Breakfast was served at the trailers, standing room only.

My uncle brought his Super 8 movie camera and took video of us. It was very cold and the camera ran slow, so that video when played back makes us look like a bunch of mad men running around in the foot deep snow.

My cousin was dragged there by his dad, he hated hunting, and swore he'd never kill anything. The friends kid, he was mr tough guy. Dressed in black leather and chains, right down to the smooth soled pointy boots. Long greasy black hair too.

Off we go to the first run of the day. One uncle was dogging the other took us in the trail and placed us on the watches.

Both uncles, and my cousin were armed with sporterized 303 SMLE's. I had a Baikal side by side 12 gauge loaded with buckshot.

The friend and his gangster wanna be kid, both had '94 Winchesters

About half an hour into the hunt, I heard a noise behind me and spun, shotgun at the ready. It was the gangster kid, off his watch, wandering around, not wearing any red at all. I told him he's lucky I didn't take him for a bear. He told me he didn't think the buckshot would go through his leather :redface:

2 hrs later my uncle fired his handgun, and we all marched out half frozen to the cars for a shot, (bottle of rye under the seat) and to warm up. I didn't even hear my uncle come through that time. Nothing seen.

times were very different!
 
There were very few deer about back then. It was considered normal to not see a track for the season. But, we hunted anyway, had a great time. My cousin drew peace symbols on the old stove in the bush with the tips of his bullets. He talked to the squirrels when it was his turn to dog.

The gangsta guy turned out to be a real nice... ok he was an idiot, what can I say?

Lunch was sandwiches on one of the watches up on a bald spot of granite, where we had a fire to warm by. After lunch my uncle took that spot, and we sat for the afternoon. As the afternoon wore on, there was a shot. It was my uncle, shot a deer while sitting by the fire. Scared the crap out of me, I was on the next runway, and quite close. No, I was not asleep, being a young fella, I was far too excited to be hunting for that to happen. He'd told me about shooting deer by the fire before but I would not believe him. Wasn't the last time he proved me wrong either.

Watched my uncle gut that deer, was the first time I'd seen it done. We all had huge belt knives. It was the thing back then, everyone had to have the giant of a knife on their belt. It would be years before I found out how much handier it is to gut a deer with a small blade. Oh yes, gangsta guy had a giant double edged blade you could shave with.

Tied the deer across the back of my uncles Plymouth, he didn't want blood in the trunk. Hung it behind the house where my grandfather had hung all his deer over many years, on the limb of a big pine. Celebrated that night, but it was the only deer that year.
 
Went hunting with my Dad as a kid . We had to drive somewhere but parked at a lodge with the plan of hunting deer between the lodge and the power line . Dad knew the lodge owner who came out to say hello with a couple of other men . One of the men kinda stood out with his cowboy hat and a 6 gun holstered on his hip . The owner introduced us . The fella with the cowboy hat was Roy Rogers and during his hunt he nailed a huge white tail with his Weatherby rifle . 1960 ?
 
I did not get the desire to hunt from my family....not exactly sure where the influence came from, but I have always liked guns.

My dad gave me a 22 "rabbit gun" when I was 8, and I spent a fair bit of free time toting it around and knocking off gophers, starlings
and such pests. By the time I was 13, I had acquired a sporterized M17 30-06 [ammo in the day was $3.79/box of 20]

Then I wanted to hunt something bigger, since I had the gun for the job. I had a Swiss/French Neighbor, whose son and I were
close friends, and they wanted to hunt also.

Lo and behold, we found a mentor, Max W...... an older German gent who was an avid hunter, and he offered to take us where we could
find deer to hunt.
The 4 of us went up into the fly hills area of Salmon arm a couple of times, and on the second trip, Max shot a nice muley...I was
hooked!! I can still picture that deer where he lay under a massive Fir tree, and watching Max field dress it. Excited? You bet!!

A couple of subsequent trips into the area did not yield another deer, but we saw them, just lacked the experience to capitalize.
Then came the day in early October...I am sitting on a log, munching on a Sandwich, and I catch a movement off to my right.
It's a deer! A lone muley doe [legal at the time], 75 yards away, and she is oblivious to my presence. She is slowly moving along,
virtually broadside.
I [too quickly] mount the rifle, and take off the safety...the deer sees movement, and starts to move more quickly. I am so nervous
that I cannot keep the sights on her, but finally think I see enough vital in the sights to pull the trigger. BOOM!

This next part I'm not too proud of, but here is the truth. That shot took both her rear legs off at her knees :( But, obviously, she
now cannot jump or run. The second shot missed entirely, but the third was true, and anchored her. PHEW!!! relief, and then the
magnitude of the event overcame me. I started to shake, I cried a little, and then composed myself to do the dressing.

My pal was soon on the scene, congratulating me and then his dad came. I can still see in my mind the location and surroundings
of that start to my hunting career.

Now, 60+ years later, it is with reverence that I view an animal I have taken for food. What a privilege I have had to be able to
enjoy the provisions of the grand outdoors. I do not know how many hunts I have left, but I still am in decent shape, and enjoy
the time in the woods or afield immensely. Dave.
 
Guyborough County, Nova Scotia. The last county before Cape Breton. Was a flush year for rabbits. A few years later the coyote would arrive and change everything.

The rabbits were so thick there was a brown browse line along all bushes and smaller trees.

Kick a brush pile and invariably 5-6 rabbits would flush.
There was myself and my buddy in one team. His father and landowner with his beagle the other team.

We stayed the long weekend the retired landowners rural home. His wife was an awesome cook too.

We divided all proceeds I went home with about fifteen or sixteen snowshoehares.
Dad was on ship at Puerto Rico so Mom was happy dad's Cooey shotgun came home unscathed.
Of course I cleaned it afterwards.
The Labradorian inside mom was smiling the generous game bag. Not to mention the lower grocery bill that month.
 
Jaaska said:
Went hunting with my Dad as a kid . We had to drive somewhere but parked at a lodge with the plan of hunting deer between the lodge and the power line . Dad knew the lodge owner who came out to say hello with a couple of other men . One of the men kinda stood out with his cowboy hat and a 6 gun holstered on his hip . The owner introduced us . The fella with the cowboy hat was Roy Rogers and during his hunt he nailed a huge white tail with his Weatherby rifle . 1960 ?
Click to expand...

That is cool!
 
That old camp taught me a lot, my uncles were hard WW2 men, with soft hearts. They'd kick the crap out of you for stupidity, but were the first to lend a hand when you really needed it.
I learned I have a strange ability to howl like a dog for hours on end and not get hoarse, I learned to not be afraid of the bush, even at night. I learned direction, and how to navigate in the bush without staring at the compass every ten seconds.
I think it was here that I first picked up my first love of all things natural, although I didn't realize it at the time.

My first dogging episode. My uncle let me off in front of an old log cabin up the highway from where we hunted. "Just walk up the driveway past the old barn, turn NNE, and walk until you hit our line. Should be about 2 hrs" he said "Make lots of noise once you're past the barn.

I was concerned about someone living there, but he assured me it was abandoned. It wasn't.

So, I wandered in. There was no car in the drive, the grass was long, it certainly looked abandoned, but as I came up to the house, the ancient old man came out the door with a loud "Who the Hell are you".

I told him the truth, and who had let me off. He grinned. Apparently the two were old friends, or rather this guy and my grandfather were, they fought in WW1.

Anyway, he said I best be on my way, as the guys would be cold.

"Oh" he says, "don't try to go around the swamp, have to cross it. Too big to go around"

SWAMP??? Nobody mentioned a swamp! Visions of all kinds of things were going through my head.

So, off I went, howling, breaking brush pushing over dead stubs, the bush was easy walking for the first bit. scrubby junipers, a few Oaks trying to scrape life from the thin soil. no sign of life at all. Then I hit what must have been the edge of the old farm, and the trees closed in. Blow downs, wet leaves. My first introduction to just how slippery loose bark on a wet log is. No Idea how many time I fell, but I definitely fell. What had been fairly flat, turned uphill, and eventually I came out on a small rock ledge. Below me was a swamp. My thought was "surely not" it looked like it was a mile across, but it was probably 200 yards at the most. I checked my compass. It pointed straight across the middle. The swamp stretched out of sight in both directions.

I determined that some day, some how, I'd get my uncle back for this.

Down to the waters edge, I could see that if I hung on to the tag alders I could get across jumping from lump to lump.
There were a few times when I was a near thing but I got across with only one soaker.
Our line was not far from there, and the rest was easy enough. No shots fired again.
I did play a few pranks on my uncle as the years went by, but I never ever got him back for that. He died a horrible death in an oxygen tent in hospital. I miss him very much.
 
Great stories, guys.

I've only been hunting about 13 years. My dad quit hunting when I was a very young kid, and although he and his cousins and uncle had all shot geese and ducks and rabbits and also tried for deer when I was younger, that was all over. I was fascinated by hunting when I was young, read every William O. Steele book about frontiersmen that I could get. Spent a winter listening to Dad read Traplines North, devoured all sorts of modern sporting books too.

Once I was out of the house and married and had some new, younger friends who took me out shooting, couldn't wait to go. I need to write all those early memories down so one day I have them when nothing else is left.
 
John Y Cannuck said:
^^^ I found out later that there's an old beaver dam hidden in the tag alders you are supposed to walk across. But you have to come down the ledge in just the right spot to even see it.
Click to expand...

LOL.

My hunting stories are not near as interesting or numerous. I grew up in a hunting family even though the first few years of my life were in a city. But in my childhood years when reality and imagination often intertwine I began. The first hunt I remember was a winter rabbit hunt sometime after I got my first gun: Being poor my parents couldn't afford the upper crust Daisy Red Ryder so I got a cheaper one... I'd have been about four years old for this hunt. Adjacent to my grandparents farm was an abandoned rail line, crown land quite scrubby in addition to the farm. As I recall, after a couple hours tromping the brush only my dad's 20ga report was heard and so between grandpa, dad and two uncles we went home with just a rabbit. I felt like I was a hunting version of Rambo... before Rambo existed. The dominant lessons instilled in me that day was handling my BB gun safely. Aside from that I picked up things that while I don't cognitively remember being lessons, no doubt were the first building blocks for my hunting and bushcraft pursuits.

I still have that BB gun though it was never really capable of taking even the smallest of creatures: while it was used to shoot targets, mice etc. that ball didn't start rolling until my dad gave me his childhood pellet gun. I still have and use that old Gecado air rifle. By age eight I had graduated to Killer Elite of marauding squirrels, rabbits with a Cooey 39 but the gateway had to be that miserable old single shot 12ga. Even though I had a love hate relationship with that thing, duck and goose hunting thrilled me to the core. I'm not sure if it was my dad just being equally excited or excited by my excitement but on the few duck blinds we constructed over the years there were lots of memories. One of the funniest things I remember he used inexpensive reloads which didn't always cycle the magnum semi-auto he used but I spotted a flock of ducks and as we crowded side by side at the end of the blind his gun just went "pop" like the cork gun in Peter and the Wolf. What a climactic conclusion to that buildup... squib. My laughter at his comical appearance quickly spread.

It took me a long time to like deer hunting: I was always small, got cold easily and was an active boy. I was keen to try it and so I got stuck up on a wooden stand in a pine tree: At that point I didn't care for deer hunting. Not moving, being cold and chattering like a red squirrel: no wonder I didn't see anything except a blur and so that initiation was tough and disappointing. But I think about that when teaching others: took my friend's two boys out and it was brutal cold. NW wind in the face, no deer but they weren't alone. Youngest had to bail but the oldest toughed it out. They both learned it isn't always easy and that I wasn't kidding about getting cold and how much clothing was necessary. A couple years later rekindled my zeal no longer influenced by the idealism of childhood and finally vindicated.
 
Another old story.
Many years after the old camp with my uncles, I got invited into my father's camp. His advice that first year, as I remember it, was never to turn my back on the other guys in the camp. "They'll skin you if there's a nickle in it"
Well, I did not find that to be the case at all. That camp was made up of two fellow Mechanics, and Real estate man, a Fuller Brush salesman, and industrial salesman, a city cop (Sargent) and two master Blenders from Corby's Distilllery all of them were vets, except the three youngest.
With the exception of one they knew pretty much squat about hunting deer. They depended on one man to place them on watch, and dog the deer out.
That man was a 65 yr old Black belt in Karate, and fellow mechanic. We were to become life long friends.

This camp used real dogs, no need for howling through the bush. It's where I took my first running deer.

Normally, when we got a deer with the dogs, you knew it was coming, you could hear the chase start 10 minutes or longer so before they arrived. But that was not the case this day. I was standing at my usual spot, at the base of a low ridge, staring up at 'the notch' where the deer pretty much always appeared, if they were going to at all.

By this time I had set the shotgun aside and moved to a Model 94 Winchester. It had been two hours, there was no snow, but it was still damned cold, and I could barely feel my fingers. I knew the run should be over in a few minutes. Then the dogs started, and instantly a buck appeared in the notch, with the dogs in sight right behind. He was down the hill in two bounds, and I had only time for a quick shot with the factory sights, and he vanished behind a lump of terrain.

The dogs stopped? I hurried over to get them on the trail again, assuming I had missed. But on arrival I found them licking blood off the leaves. The six point lay just behind the mound. The shot could not have been more perfect. Range 50 feet or so. Heart / lung. I looked like a teriffic shooter to the guys at camp. But I knew it was far more luck than skill. That would come in time.

Most folks figure that deer run with dogs are always worn out, and shot on the run. Not in our gang. I hunted with dogs for probably 30 years, the vast majority of the deer I shot were either walking, or standing. We rarely used big dogs. The deer were often so far out in front of our beagles, they were just loafing along looking for a spot to loose the dogs.
 
I don't have many interesting or exciting big game stories from growing up as all my hunting as a young kid then into my early adult years was small game and waterfowl. As a youngster I tagged along behind my Grandfather on old trappers trails, logging roads or along a creek edge that connected a series of ponds that flowed between two lakes separated by about two miles over a series of large hills looking for grouse. His camp was 5 miles south of Lake Temagami as the crow flew with nothing between but heavy bush and huge rocky hilly terrain. Shot my first ruffed grouse when I was 10 with an old single shot 4.10 my Grandfather carried that actually was my Grandmothers. A grouse flew up into a branch about 30 yards ahead of us, we walked up another ten yards then Gramp handed me the 4.10 had me shoulder it, told me to pull the hammer back with my finger off the trigger. Once I had it cocked he told me to line it up with the bead sitting on top of the birds head. I did and pulled the trigger. To a 10 year old kid that 4.10 sounded like a cannon in the bush and from behind the gun I watched the grouse fall to the ground where it lay beating it's wings full throttle the way head shot grouse do. Gramp told me to empty the gun as I stood dumbfounded and excited staring at the dead bird ahead under the tree. He took the gun from me and said "go get your partridge". I ran up and grabbed it and held it up for him to see and he smiled a big smile and said "good job lad, let's go get Grandma a few more for a stew" and off we went. I never got to hunt near as much with him as I'd have liked as by the time I was old enough for my own hunting license he retired and they moved to Vancouver Island and we were in southern Ontario so trips to visit were few and far between and during summer when school was out. My Grandfather had been a very avid moose and deer hunter up until he was about 50 years of age and then quit hunting moose and took up deer hunting again in his retirement chasing blacktails on the island. By the time I was old enough to afford to visit them on my own dime each year he had hung up his guns and just fished. We spent as much time in the boat chasing salmon as could be fit into a one week visit at Christmas each year. I only got to deer hunt with him one trip out. It was August and blacktail season was open for bucks only at that time of year. We saw 72 deer in three or four days of hunting and only one buck which we never got a chance to shoot before it vanished into the shalel that grows in the mountains on Vancouver Island. One thing to this day I cannot master was his ability to walk through thick bush without making a sound. He was 6'-2" and 240lbs and moved through bush like nothing I've ever witnessed. He was so silent and stealthy w/o breaking pace that if I didn't know better I'd swear he was floating above the ground.
 
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My family comes from a long pedigree of hunters, hence when we first landed in the area of Charlotte, North Carolina in 1721 A.D. I cannot recall hunting stories since that era, however heard many from my father from the 1950's and 60's.
In the photograph, he is in the front row, with the dark shirt holding the tall Walker Hound. To my fathers immediate right is an old gentleman, and his brother is behind him in the second row holding a model 1894. My dad told me that the brothers never got along, however loved hunting. They only communicated to each other by growling like two mad dogs. BTW, both of these gentlemen are WW1 veterans.

Two other brothers, pictured in the second row, on the far right, one brother has his arm over the other brothers shoulder. These brothers were fantastic musicians, and played many of French music and songs from before their time. Both loved hunting, however here is the catch, both were afraid of the woods. Outhouses were utilized back then in camp, and whenever a brother had to use the facility (especially in the dark), a small group would scare the sh!t out of him with a practical joke, while he was on the ####ter.

My dad owned most dogs, Walker, bluetick and black and tans. Leo, man on my fathers immediate left owned a couple dogs as well. Both my dad and Leo were the houndsmen, and who shot the most deer. I'm very fortunate that today my father still tells me stories from deer camp...........he is 85 plus years old.
https://imgur.com/a/eOo5KRl
 
^^ so many outhouse stories :) we had a lot of fun.

There was the time one of the guys was coming in to camp late. We'd shot a bear that year, and we knew he always headed for the outhouse on arrival, so that's where the bear was sitting. Poor guy, it's a wonder he didn't crap his drawers.

Then, there was the time my uncle had joined father's camp. He was in the outhouse, I came out and hit it hard with a snowball. Anyone in there? He was a smart guy, so he says "It's a two holer, c'mon in" Well, I did, that shut him up!

Then there was the time one guy was in the outhouse and a wolf showed up to try and chew the deer. The guy in the outhouse closed the door and started yelling. Wolf stayed, and one of the guys shot it out the door of the cabin.

Ah yes, there was my very first trip to the morning outhouse at that camp. It was replaced the following year, but the first time I went, I kinda wondered why nobody had gone that morning. I found out! The outhouse had no door, it faced out over the lake, and when the wind was from the north it blew right up yer arse. So, being first one out, I get to the door, and OMG! Yellow hoar frost rims the hole, and used paper flaps up through it. I stayed out there a while to make them think I was using it, but I grabbed some paper for a bush crap.
 
I like to think I miss that old cabin. Clap board siding, no insulation, or covering inside. just the siding on the studs. You could see outside in a few places, and snow drifted in the corners on second week.
But really, I miss the people. There are only two of us left now.

But enough about me. The cabin sat on the side of a hill overlooking the lake. If the lake wasn't froze, we'd take the boat across to line the middle of the ridge on the other side, and One of us would walk around the lake with the dogs. This was very successful for us, but also got the dogs lost a lot. Hunt deer all day, and dogs all night. The other camps were mostly friendly, so long as everyone kept to their territory.
That didn't always happen, and one morning one of the camps woke to find every tire on every vehicle flat. Not destroyed, they'd loosened the tire valves.
That began a war that lasted maybe ten years between those two camps. All over a tiny chunk of crown land.
One of the camps eventually folded, or they'd still be at it.

Things work a bit differently when you are running dogs. We generally had the guys go and get on the morning watches early, and the guy doing the push with the dogs did the breakfast dishes before he came out to give us a chance to get settled in.

I remember my Dad telling me he was across the lake, pretty near frozen, when he heard a strange bang from the cabin. He was not happy when he realized it was the cabin door banging. The guy running the dogs had decided to have a nap before he came out. The guys on watch freeze, and the guy with the dogs sweats his arse off. The walk completely around the lake was, as the crow flies 13 miles. I know that because of the following incident.

I was hunting with just two other guys the second week that year, and we decided to do that 'round the lake run. One guy was to go up the road to the beaver dam at the end of the lake, the other to the narrows between that lake and the next. I would take the dogs and go 'round to the guy at the narrows and get a lift back to camp with him from there.

I came to the first man, with no luck, crossed the dam, and climbed the ridge. This ridge is very high, the man down on the dam looks like a speck from the top. The dogs always had to be coerced across the dam, because often it was running over with water end to end. So leads on the dogs, I crossed, dumped the water out of my boots, wrung out my socks, and put everything back on. By this time the dogs were looking down at me from the top, laughing as I sweated my way up.

No sooner had I got there, but the freezing rain started. Oh crap. Well, not turning back now.

I got a good chase about half way through, sat and waited, 'till the dogs came back. No shots fired?

Oh dam, he's packed it in. Back then the road to that watch was fine when the road's not ice, but you could easy be there for the winter if it got icy. It's much like a mountain road in BC, steep, twisty, narrow, just not as long.

Sure enough, when I came to the watch, nobody was there. The road out was so slippery I could hardly stand on it by then. It was not plowed or sanded back then. Nobody lived down there.
I was a might peaved when I got back, at being stranded, and at a long walk , soaking wet, for no deer, but I think I would have had to do the same myself if it had been me parked in there. I got a few drinks out of it anyway, so all was good.
 
Archery harvest compound bow, north east Alberta helped a good friend set up three tree stands his rural quarter section.
Come the fall I had permission to use anyone I desired.
Four long days in tree stand with three shooting lanes cut and survey tape various distances.
Early evening fourth day a WT doe was feeding just behind the 20 yard tape. When she approached I made sure I stood up come to full draw when a tree trunk between me and her.
Spitfire release, Muzzle 125s launched by PSE Impact.
Upon release the arrow sounded like 22 rimfire discharge. Seems I struck a rib.
Twenty very nervous minutes waiting and I thought I just fed the coyotes.
Forty yards away she was dead as a doornail. I literally thought she was a rock in the forest from a distance.
Two huge fans of blood entry and exit where she opened the wound full bore when bumping into birch trees.
Most satisfying indeed.
I probably seen deer over one hundred times yet only one dozen got close enough.
 
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I think my first deer hunt was in 1965. I was 17. My Dad had passed away that Spring and I was officially a Saskatchewan grain farmer. My first rifle was a nice Churchill No.1 Mk3. I bought two Czech refurbed 98's later on that year. I don't actually remember if I shot a deer or not. Our area, 80 miles east of Regina was excellent whitetail country, and there was a hunter or two for every deer. Lots of older men hunted to help out feeding their families. Many of the hunters back then were WW2 and Korean War vets.

I have hunted whitetail off and on ever since. I didn't hunt this year, as my usual partner had plenty of meat. I won't hunt alone anymore, in case I did actually get a deer. I need another person to help out with loading, etc. Five of us went down the the Moose Mountain provincial Park in 1966 for a special season. I was the only one to shoot a deer, a nice fat young buck, full grown. It was a long day, by the time we got it gutted and by the time we worked our way back on little trails and hay sloughs. There are only two of us left, of the five two have passed on and another poor fellow has severe dementia.

Many good memories hunting with the suffering fellow. He taught me lots about driving a semi, helped me on my farms, plus we spent a lot of off time together. A big part of our old hunting grounds are all cleared of bush now, plus posted. I guess its time for old guys like me to be satisfied with our memories and let the new people go to it.
 
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