Lintz Lake Recreational Site, Northern BC

No moose but a great time off the grid.  I'd driven up a couple of weeks before leaving my Rockwood Mini Lite RV in storage at Southbend RV and Mini Storage.  (Good people. Safe inexpensive place.)
Now I drove my truck  up with the Honda 250 off road on road motorcycle in the back.
We'd actually shot  grouse on the way up, bagging two with one shot near Clinton. Gilbert would never forgive me if I let one go.  He's really a grouse hound.  Runs in great circles after jumping on the one bird and making sure it's down.  These grouse were intereting.  In the past they flew into the trees but these all seemed to fly a little and then run. Maybe genetic selection. Most got away.
After the long drive I arrived at 10 pm, too late to get the RV so  stayed at the nearby Caravan Motel in Quesnel . (Good people, clean, friendly, safe place).  I'd listened to Paterson's exciting thriller Private London on the way up.  Love Patterson. Love audio books on a long drive.
After a night in the motel I picked up my RV heading out on Blackwater logging road.  It's an easy gravel road drive with no surprises.  There are a number of off road Recreational sites all through the Omineca hunting zone where spike fork moose were open along with mule deer bucks.  These recreational sites are usually just a clearing, some have a picnic table and there may or may no be an outhouse.  I have the Northern BC off road map and the sites were as marked there.
Only one other camper in the area.  I talked to other hunters and they'd said that the good weather was allowing the game to go to bed early. Not a great omen but one other fellow I talked to had shot a young buck. No one had seen moose.  They may not have migrated down south that early but I didn't have the time to drive further north either.  It's also a lot to do with fate, luck or God's blessing.  Hunting isn't just about getting game either. It's the journey as much as anything.
I drove Blackwater trail to Pelican trail and then to the Lintz Lake.  I off loaded the motorcycle.
I liked setting up camp.  Sunny day.  Lovely lake.  Blue sky.  Beautiful view.
I used an electric pump with hose to the lake  to resupply the  RV water tank. I love my Honda 2500 generator.  With an adaptor I had it hooked into the RV  charging the batteries and running everything.   The propane supplied the fridge, heater and stove. I had hot water, electricity, lights and showers.  Roughing it.  I like the 'roughing it' part.  I really was off the grid, no cell service, no internet, but I had my Satellite Phone and kept in touch with my assistant Hannah.
That first night  I explored   in the truck and walked some.  With dark I continued out to Berkley beyond West Lake to  the outskirts of Prince George. I'd come about 80 km from the camp. I wanted to fill up with diesel for more truck driving about and to  have some more gas for the generator.  I'd planned on passing through Vanderhoof before getting to the wilderness but taking the Blackwater Road never got back to civilization.  Finding the Lintz Lake RV site I stopped. I'd never been in this area. That's what hunting is about. A lot of exploring.  And this was truly fabulous country.  Gorgeous lakes, pines, spruce, rolling hills.  Canada's north at its finest.
On the ride back to camp at night I saw a couple of wild cats in the head lights, chased a bear a bit, and had some deer cross. (I thought they were bobcats but I just looked up pictures and they had to be young cougars by appearance.  Bobcats had short tails and these two critters had long tails but must have been young cougars by their size, about half that of a full grown adult cougar. Similar face and ears though. Actually matched a cougar with winter fur with what I saw so expect that's what they were, with winter fur coming in - pretty exciting to see)   During the day all the game would be sleeping after frolicking away the night.
It rained through the night. Riding the motorcycle with Gilbert on back the next day was precarious.  Slippery so couldn't go fast.   Hard to look up though with the slick mud roads.  Seeing a grouse I had to stop.  Let Gilbert out of his box.  Load the 20 gauge Bolito shot gun and then hope to shoot.  We missed several grouse with the motorcycle because of the timing. There were rabbits too but I never even got the shot gun loaded before they were off. The deer and rabbits I saw never stopped moving.
On Sunday morning at dawn I was sitting for an hour in a blind on a hillside before stalking about.  Still nothing.  More grouse.
I hunt big game with my Ruger 30:06 stainless steel rifle using Federal Nozzler Partition 180 grain bullets. I have been shooting the grouse with my Boito 20 guage shot gun which has an interchangeable 12 guage barrel. The 20 guage has been perfect for the upland game, not harming the meat but still bringing down the bird.
That afternoon I took the Ford F350 Superduty Crew Cab Harley Davidson Edition truck for a drive and almost got stuck.  Going down hill turning I slowly  slid off the slick road into the ditch. Despite all my northern driving experience with ice and snow I still slid off the road with that horrible sinking inevitable feeling of several tons of  truck sliding over the side.  Thank God the ditch was shallow. I put the winch I have in the box  to a tree only to pull it out by the roots.  Nothing else to winch to.
So I couldn't winch myself out backwards.   I chopped down some trees in front of the truck to get some room forward. I put the truck in 4wd low gear slowly floored it heading uphill on a major slant, getting some traction amazingly, and made it out going forward. I was praying a lot. I had the satellite  phone with me so could have called a tow truck.
Once at Fort St. James when my truck in winter moose hunting got stuck I'd had to spend the night by a fire  till another hunter came by in the morning and took me off to get a tow truck. Half the adventure of hunting is surviving.  I was truly thankful to get out of that scrap safely and cheaply. Tow trucks are expensive. When I throttled the truck out of the ditch and up the side I thought for a moment I might actually flip the truck on it's side.  I tipped a van on it's side once and that resulted in considerable damage.  Not as bad though as the time out hunting my truck got carried away down stream in a flash flood waters.  Then there was the time I got stuck and getting unstuck tore the door off the 4x4.  It was a wonderful feeling to get unstuck and drive back to the gravel road.  
It makes for a lot of gratitude.
I shot  nine grouse altogether though saw another 20 or so.  They were in coveys.  A good year for grouse. Lots of berries.
 Gilbert had a great time. He runs in circles so fast and so far and happy as only a hunting dog can be.
We got out in the wilderness.  We camped We 4x4'd.  We motorcycled off road.  We hiked. We sat in ambush.  I got up close to some extraordinary wildlife, rabbits, voles, deer, bear, cougar.  I shot grouse.  I took pictures.  Hunting is about enjoying the outdoors and wilderness to the fullest.
Back at the RV I read Harlan Coban, great novelist, and ate canned food I cooked on the stove.  In the morning I just had coffee.  In the woods I carry sardines and Gilbert and I share that. I have an apple. He doesn't like apples but he likes Little Caesars I bring along for him..
This morning I was up at 5 am and didn't go out, just packed up and drove the truck and rv out on row the main logging roads, seeing does but no bucks on the way back in the morning.
 660 kilometers plus some one way. Nearly $300 in diesel just to get to Prince George with RV from Vancouver not to mention the return and  all the other fuel and equipment costs. 9 grouse.  Makes those little birds very expensive by the ounce.  If that was what hunting was all about which it isn't.  Among trophy hunters those grouse are the real trophies.
When I was a kid I learned taxidermy and stuffed a grouse I shot as a teen.  It was a lot of chemistry making a bird into a mummy.  Art and science too.  Now I just love cooking grouse.  I love eating grouse.  Grouse is partridge by another name. It's like the Christmas song, "partridge in a pear tree'.  All my partridge have been in pine, spruce and willow or along the side of the road getting gravel to help with digestion. I've yet to see a grouse in a pear tree.
 I especially love hunting grouse with Gilbert. His enthusiasm and joy is a wonder to behold.   A man and his dog.  Dad called Gilbert "monkey dog'.
It was a great weekend off the grid.  Great hunting though no moose. Now I'll be hunting lower mainland. I've got a tag for sheep and goat and while moose are rare in the south there's a whole lot of deer.  And grouse, of course.  Thank God for Gilbert and grouse!  

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Treestand Hunting

Victor is a serious moose hunter. Every year he bags a moose from a tree stand. He'd been in a motorcycle accident years back causing some injuries to his back and leg that made humping about the backwoods a bit too painful for pleasurable hunting.
Since flipping my Polaris Quad my back had been hurting. So I asked him about the treestands I'd recently seen in the Cabelas catalogue. (Cabelas is the one stop shopping for adult males who've outgrown the Sears catalogue.) Everything related to hunting all manner of game in all kinds of conditions is found in Cabelas. They've even opened a new store south of the border near Bellingham and it's been my plan for a year to get down there and attend a hunter revival meeting. My friends Luke and Sonny had been and they were pretty much ecstatic describing being inside a Cabelas store like they could walk as Lilluputians right into a Cabelas catalogue
Victor borrowed my Cabelas Catalogue and said he'd look into it for me. Next thing I know, Victor has a newer Cabelas bigger cadillac tree stand and has sold me his old one for next to nothing. He said his was lighter but now that I expect the new one might have hydraulic lift, hover craft and heated seats that made it more appealing than the original basic package. For me the price was right and I figured if this had worked for Victor it was surely going to bag me a moose on it's own. Given all the good mojo it had collected with Victor I kind of hoped it would maybe fall on an animal and crush it in the night so I could just come along and collect the game.
It was spring when Victor showed me how it went up. It was fall when I first took it hunting.
Tom is a Queen's University Mining Engineer, Airplane Pilot, and sailed back from Hawaii with me one summer after I sailed solo to Hawaii one winter.
Meanwhile I'd found a place with regular moose highways all over near Clearwater BC. It was a perfect place for a tree stand. I'd carried the treestand all over in the back of my truck by then looking for just this spot. Finally Tom and I were going to assemble it and put it to good use.
It has a big seat at one end and a half dozen interconnecting scaffolding bits for the ladder. Left to my own devices I'd have had the seat facing the tree but Tom turned it about on the ground getting the bits facing forward to save me later embarrassment.
Getting the 16 foot high contraption up against a tree was a whole other proposition. First the tree I had originally picked was hardly 10 feet high. The next tree we picked was high enough but had a little tree in front of it making for later difficulties. It really should be just one tree and bare tree at the bottom. This little tree caused the whole thing at the last moment to shift so only half the of seat was against the tree and half of the brace. But that only came to light later.
Having watched movies of the Alamo and other Hollywood renditions of wall scaling in war by men charging with ladders, we naturally approached this 'laddered' tree stand the same way. Tom and I got under the ladder walking it up as we assaulted the tree. We forgot that in the war movies they are using light weight wood ladders, not steel scaffolding with a blood heavy padded seat contraption on top. That heavy seat at the top wasn't at all in a cooperative mood, either. The tree stand just about catapulted us back to the ground as it twisted away from the little tree and left us very glad there was no enemy above with cross bows and boiling oil.
While I was trying to remember what Victor had told me about getting the tree stand up, Tom figured a rope was the answer. Thankfully Luke had left one in my truck.
With this Tom got behind the tree and lassooed the tree stand pulling it up to the tree. That worked a heck of a lot better than our previously plan. He even went on to climb up the ladder tying the rope higher and higher each time, having me fetch him up the end. Pretty soon he actually had the stand up and tried pivotting to sit for awhile admiring his work, high up in the tree stand way, close to God.
Proud of himself, he descended, having tested the engineering creation said, "Now you can use it."
I remembered I was afraid of heights from falling out of Garth Robertson's tree when I was 6 or 7 years old. Though I've climbed sailboat masts, worked on roofs with my father and brother, it all seemed at that moment in retrospect, to have been psychotic 'counterphobic behaviour." The ladder was wobbly, seemed very flimsy and the tree stand seat was really really high up there.
Of course, I snagged my rifle on the safety bar that is used to keep a person falling out of the stand. I had to slither up through this opening and laying my rifle across the chair arm rests make this daring pivot. I snagged my coat and the knife on my belt bucket after that. I was exhausted from effort and terror when I finally had myself turned around so I could sit facing out from the tree.
Seeing I'd finally got myself in place Tom showed his approval by bidding adieux. He left in the truck taking Gilbert the cockapoo with him. Victor had given me a basket I could haul Gilbert up in like the Mediterranean monks had done. I figured we'd reserve that plan for another day.
It was nearly an hour before I became unfrozen and got a bit comfortable sitting way up in the ether near the space station. A bird flew by almost hitting my face.
The view though was incredible. The treestand is a great way to hunt. Unfortunately I nodded off and woke with a startle so sure I was falling that I almost threw myself out of the chair to compensate for the feeling.
Victor had told me "Don't kill yourself." I understood better what he meant now.
I prayed, meditated, looked at every shadow with my binoculars , ate granola bars and drank the coke I'd brought alone. I nodded off again, again waking with a startle, sure I was falling out of the sky. This happened a few times over the next few hours. Definitely very disconcerting. Also the no see um bugs found me and I'd not brought bug spray which was in the truck with Tom and Gilbert.
No game came however. I watched voles, chipmunks, whiskey jacks and jays come and go. But the moose remained elusive.
Finally because I had to pee I went back through the daring contortions that had me turned around in the seat not dropping my rifle and getting it over my shoulder so I could descend the ladder. Only my knife hilt snagged this time.
I'd got up and down the ladder a couple times more for night and morning hunting without successfully shooting anything but feeling better and more confident each time.
When Luke and Tom had gone off in the truck for early evening hunting and I was riding the Honda Big Ruckus, all of us agreeing to meet back at the lake , that last evening night, I decided as darkness fell to go the treestand and start taking it down myself.
I left a note for Tom and Luke by the lake and decided I'd start to take it down myself only to arrive in pitch darkness to find Luke's Toyota truck. Tom and he had come while the light was still out so Luke could climb up and check the system out. "Incredible," he said. When I arrived Tom and he with the scaffolding ladder on the ground.
"Taking it down was almost as much of Gong show as putting it up," said Tom. I couldn't imagine that possible so wished I'd been there to see this. Luke had loved it, seeing the incredible view one had. As the big game didn't have predators in the sky, they didn't look up. Clearly one could simply climb into a tree but the tree stand provided a whole other level of comfort to the experience. this was the cat's meow of technology. That I hadn't seen a moose wasn't a reflection on the tree stand but the incredible sunny late fall weather which had the animals having all night to cavort so that they were asleep early and late in the day.
I'd certainly recommend a tree stand. Taking a certified Engineer along the first time was a wise move too. Someone else might remember to pay attention to instructions or read them, if they consider this truly beautiful hunting addition. I was actually lifting my gun and sighting things the next day I was up in the stand. The first morning I didn't even lift my rifle but hung on for dear life trying desperately to stay awake.
Red bull would be a better tree stand beverage than Jack Daniels, just for those who might benefit from such advice.

















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Merrit B.C. Hunting with Luke and Gilbert

I began Veterans Day by phoning my father to thank him for the peace and liberty I'd experienced in my life thanks to his service in the Royal Canadian Air Force.  At 92 he'd slept in and thanked me saying, "I'd better get up and see what's going on today."  I headed out then with Gilbert to pick up Luke for the last weekend of moose hunting in area 3, Thompson. Merrit BC was our destination.  Luke had his gear ready at his home in Kitsilano so that was the briefest of stops be fore we headed over to North Vancouver to pick up my gear.  Then it was a road trip.  Gilbert loves the fast food meals stops on road trips, always getting his single fried meat paddy as part of the hunting crew.
In Merrit we made our basecamp at the pet friendly Ramada Inn.  We were out in the darkness and on site hunting before dawn. We were back at the hotel after dark.  We did everything by the book and had the drill down to a t. The only trouble was the moose didn't show. We did see a 2 point buck which would have been easy pickings except it was 4 point buck only season and Gilbert began barking shouting in dog, "Don't shoot, it's only 2 points."  Before we could understand his message he was getting shouted at. The deer departed.  We never saw a single moose. Tracks of deer and moose were everywhere.  But what we did see were wolves. Incredible animals. Up close and unpleasant.  We saw 4 altogether.  Big black ones that ran at the sight of us.  Luke saw a bobcat.  I shot a grouse.  It was ATV and Ford F350 truck heaven.  It was too cold for much sitting in ambush.  So we stalked with fresh snow covering the sound of our footsteps.  Luke rode the Polaris Sportsman 500 ATV loving it.  I had a cold so did a lot of driving around coughing and sneezing in the heated cab of my Harley Davidson edition Ford F350 diesel truck.  I'd tried sitting in the cold but began coughing so quickly retreated to the warmth of the truch hanging out scoping likely areas with Gilbert as my companion. Then Luke would rejoin us and Gilbert would be ecstatic.  At night we watched warm movies and westerns.  It was a great weekend that could only have been made better by shooting a moose.