So, last week Jon said he was going to take me on a date. Boy did I get excited, especially since we haven’t been on a date since we left Colorado last August! Well, dating in rural Manitoba has a different feel than suburban America. Sure if we were young and unmarried, we’d probably go to dinner or even the movie theater in Dauphin. But we have been married nearly 19 years and we live in the country so we bundled up and grabbed a Coke and the camera. Jon loaded the quad in to the trailer and we headed out in to the woods.
At our first stop, Jon unloaded the quad and I grabbed the laptop and sat on top of a 60 pound bag of oats while we slogged through the sometimes muddy trail to one of our bear baiting sites. It was one of the first really nice sunny days we have had here this late spring and the sun was still warm enough to keep the chill off as the wind blew in our faces. I held on around Jon’s chest (which after months of wood chopping has become quite buff I might add), as I took in the scenery all around. Puddles, boulders, tiny little spruce trees growing along the side of the faint trail. The sun was at the point in the evening sky where it casts a warm glow on everything and the woods became more dense as we rode along in the quiet. Well as quiet as a million frogs and birds can be anyway.
I tried to imagine what it must have been like for the First Nations peoples who first lived here, the abundance of wildlife, the dark starry nights before the electric lights of towns and farms made the stars seem fewer in the sky. How did they navigate the thick trees, where did they make camps, what kinds of plants did they eat?
We passed stands of tall white birch and pines, mixed with tamarack and poplar trees all with a thick layer of dogwoods and wild bushes, dead leaves and tall brown grass underneath. I saw a small ridge with some boulders and imagined that might be a good place for a bear to den in the winter protected from the elements. I began to feel really small on that bag of oats in the middle of the ever deepening bush.
“Just a little further”, said Jon.
We rounded a sharp corner, passed a fallen tree and I saw an old wooden tree stand. Then we came to the spot. Bear baiting is a common practice among hunters Canada-wide. The bear have just spent months in hibernation and are hungry. Everyone has their “secret recipe” to bait so I’ll just leave it at that. We got off and began looking around the area, searching for signs that bears had been there. Scat, hair, paw prints, well that and the barrel was nearly empty so we knew at least one, but maybe multiple bears had been visiting our buffet. Our trail cam was missing one of it’s bungee cords and pointing down at the ground so something was visiting.
It felt a little eerie, like that scene in those teenage slasher movies where the pretty girl is about to go skinny-dipping in the lake in the dark and you’re yelling at the screen saying “no don’t go in the water!” The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I became much more aware of my surroundings. Thoughts like exactly how far back in the bush we were and that bears had been there just hours before started to run through my mind as we put out fresh bait and cleaned up some garbage the previous owners had left behind. I know bears are scared of people and would probably have heard our quad and wold stay away until our scent was gone from the area – but this people was a little scared of bears just at this moment.
Jon showed me a skull he found on the ground of some type of weasel and I discovered new species of plants that I hadn’t seen around camp, mosses and lichens and almost tropical looking little succulents that could only grow on the wet forest floor. There were thorny stems of what I wondered might be wild berries. As I looked up at the towering trees, I tried to imagine the excitement of sitting in that tree stand , waiting with your bow, your nerves on edge, your senses heightened as you wait for that trophy buck or bear to come in to view. Nothing but the sounds of the wind in the trees or a distant bird, the rat-a-tat-tat of a woodpecker. The smell of wet earth and leaves mixing with your breath as you try to be still and quiet-waiting. Waiting for that breathtaking moment when you line up the shot, say a quick prayer for a clean kill and release your bow, your heart pounding in your ears while the adrenaline pumps through your body. Then that almost spiritual moment when you get to the animal and thank God for the beauty and bounty of His creation, for providing this food for your table and this experience to share with other outdoors men and women. The sense of being fully alive in that moment when you have experienced death close at hand. It is a truly unique human experience, one that true sportsmen understand and respect.
As we drove back out on the trail, back to the truck and on to our next bait site, I anticipated the coming weeks, when bear hunters will be in camp experiencing what I just described and telling me about it back at the supper table in the evenings. And I thanked God that I get to be part of the story…………
manitobamusings 