The autumn morning dawned crisp and clear in the middle of October as the locals enjoyed a late, mild fall. John drove to town and picked me up at the school after work like he normally does.
However, today I wasn’t feeling normal. No, I definitely felt something unusual in the air.
As I buckled myself into the truck, I turned to my husband and said, “baby, I feel lucky.” John, not missing a beat, waggled his unibrow seductively and drawled, “does this mean what I think it means?”
Read Also
Stock dogs show off herding skills at Ag in Motion
Stock dogs draw a crowd at Ag in Motion. Border collies and other herding breeds are well known for the work they do on the farm.
“You betchya, baby. Wanna go hunting?”
“More than anything in the world,” John said as he put the truck in high gear and we raced for home. When we got to the house, we hurried around the yard, collected everything we’d need and tossed it into the truck.
“Got the skinning knives?” I asked.
“Check,” John countered.
“Gun? Bullets? Scabbard? Quad?”
“Check, check, check, check.”
“Clip? Binoculars?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, “Let’s go.”
We leapt back into the truck and drove to his secret hunting spot. Upon arrival, we unloaded the quad, strapped everything we needed onto the racks and started putt-putting through the backwoods of the Peace country. We could tell by the ease of the wildlife around us that the area had not been hunted much this season. A doe and her fawn watched us as they grazed alongside the trail. Grouse scuttled along the path ahead of us. The scent of ripe cranberries mixed with that of the fall foliage and invigorated our senses. Perhaps this is because ripe cranberries smell like rotting socks in a gym bag.
We approached a cut-line intersection and 100 metres on, a moose stood broadside. I was nearly unseated as John thrashed about trying to pull the binoculars, still attached to my neck, up to his eyes. The moose stood unconcerned, gazing at us while it chewed its cud. Excited, John glassed our potential meat supply to see if it was legal.
“It’s just a cow,” John whispered.
“Aaggk,” I responded as the strap proceeded to cut off my air supply.
John, noticing my face was rapidly turning blue, quickly removed the binoculars from my neck and hatched a plan.
“The next time we see a moose, I want you to jump off the quad, and crouch inconspicuously behind it. While I’m glassing the moose to see whether or not it’s legal, you remove the gun from the scabbard, and have it ready if I need it.”
After the binocular chokehold, that seemed easy enough, so I agreed and we proceeded down the trail. We startled another moose, which crashed over the path right in front of us.
My husband stopped the quad, and I assumed the position behind it with gun in hand. John peered at the moose as it glared back at us from the brush.
“It’s another cow,” he muttered. “Maybe she’s got a boyfriend nearby.”
He continued to look through the surrounding bushes. All of a sudden, he saw a huge bull moose not seven metres away on the other side of the trail.
“It’s legal,” he squealed in a tone unbefitting a manly hunter of the North. “Gimme the gun, gimme the gun, gimme the gun.”
John grabbed the gun, slapped the clip into place and proceeded to grab the bolt in order to put a bullet into the chamber.
Unfortunately, the bolt had mysteriously disappeared, and John grabbed nothing but air.
“What the heck?” John screeched.
The bull smiled nonchalantly and picked its teeth with a blade of grass as it watched John flailing about for the bolt.
“What’s wrong? Did you lose the clip?” I asked.
He slapped a hand to his forehead and the bull turned broadside so we could have a better look at his impressive rack.
“I was cleaning the gun last night and must have forgot to put the bolt back in the gun. It’s probably still sitting on the desk.”
I could tell by the grinding of his teeth that John was not impressed by the antics of the bull who had now started tilting its head from side to side. The setting sun glinted magnificently off its newly polished antlers. The cow snickered at us from the other side of the trail.
“Maybe I could bite him on the leg, or poke him with my knife,” John said bitterly.
This caused the moose to laugh uproariously and they took their time as they ambled off into the bushes.
John and I never did get a moose that year. We returned to his secret hunting spot the next evening and several times thereafter. We never saw a moose out there again.
Truth be told, we never even saw a chickadee.
Elaine McEachern is a mom, a wife, a teacher and a writer. Born in Fort St. John, B.C., she and her husband are raising their kids and assorted critters on a farm near the land that her great-grandparents homesteaded.
