My hunting trip

So this is the story of my trip. I’m going to try to do this in diary form.

Sunday, Sept. 28

At 5:00 AM Jim came to pick me up at my house. I had been up for an hour, trying to get the last few things ready before going, like packing the cold things in to the cooler, and taking one last shower. As Jim pulls up, my mom and brother are up as well, and Rourke starts packing things in to the truck. Me, well, I’m still not ready. I have to grab some extra things that I forgot earlier. Once everything was packed, I hugged my mom (of course) and we left. It was a pretty uneventful ride up, being so early, but once it got later, other people started driving. We joked that they were headed to such cushy jobs, while we went to live in a tent for 7 days.

 When we got to Yorkton, we stopped for gas and Timmies. For those Americans reading, Timmies is Tim Hortons, which is the biggest (and best) doughnut shop in Canada. Jim’s a big coffee guy, but I don’t drink, so he got me a hot chocolate. After getting gas, and a map, we made a final phone call from his cell. He called another hunter that was coming to the same area, to see if he was up. He wasn’t, until the phone rang, and he was quite displeased to be woken up. After that, we lost any signal, and the only radio stations left were CBC and CJME, which are both news channels, and neither of us really liked them.

 About 2 hours later, we arrived at our destination. We had three, 1 mile pack in trips. The first one, I brought all my clothes, a pail of rope, and a 2 gallon jug of water, and Jim took two 10 gallon pails. Let me tell you, it wasn’t a simple hike. I think we took at least 5 breaks that trip. The next one was his clothes, and all the food (two backpacks, and two coolers). The last one, we decided to throw everything in the canoe and drag it. Dragging a full canoe 1 mile really kills the legs. We probably took 8 breaks. And once it almost ran over Jim.

 Once we had everything at our campsite, it was time to start setting up camp. Pretty much uneventful, just setting up a tent, and some tarps, but the one thing we did that I wouldn’t have thought of, was that we leveled the ground under the tent. We got all our fire wood laid out, and I think at that point we were done.

 By now, it was 4:00 PM, and there wasn’t anything left to do, so Jim decided we should go for a ten minute hike, just over the hill, and then we’d come back, because he had never been over there in the 4 years he had been in this area. Well, a 10 minute hike isn’t long, so we just took the bow, the rifle, and the clothes on our back. It just so happened that we both had lighters, and he had a flashlight and some tape.

To make a long story short, we got… confused. Not “lost” just confused enough to not get back to camp for 17 1/2 hours. We decided to stop looking for camp at 6:30 and made camp. I won’t go into to much detail, but let’s say our clothes were wet, and needed drying. We just barely got a fire started before dark. We stayed in a little place where there were about 15 lodge-pole pines in a “U” shape, and we got a roof out of pine boughs and tape. It was windy, but not too cold, so we weren’t freezing to death, but it sure was cold! We had quite a few cramps in our legs, and some were so bad, I could hardly bend my leg. I think I got 3 hours of sleep that night, and Jim got 1.

 Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I bought a pair of water proof boots for this trip, $150, and forgot them at home… Dummy.

Monday, Sept. 29.

 We had been up all night, and neither one of us really wanted to stick around, so at about 6:00 AM, we started looking for camp. We decided that we would stay in the lowlands, so that we wouldn’t get ourselves even more lost, because if we went east, there was nothing but forest for several miles. Enough for us to never get out alive. Jim figured that if we stayed in the lowlands, we’d end up back at the beaver dam, which is where we first got “confused”.

Luckily, he was right, and we ended up back where we started. No we just had to find out which way we came from. We went over a couple ridges, and the third one was just too big, we figured there was no way we would have gone over it. So straight ahead of us was this ridge, behind us was the way we came, and to our left, was where we camped last night. But to our right was the thickest forest we had ever seen. So we decided to go with the only logical way, and go right. We came out about a ½ a mile south of our main camp. We finally made it out. We were so tired, we got back to camp, had a little bit to eat, and then slept for about four hours. Well, Jim slept; I sat up listening to him snore, which is what I did the first three nights as well.

At about 4:00 PM, we decided to get up, and go look for sign. We got in the canoe, and paddled up Midnight Creek, about 100 yards north, to Midnight Lake, and paddled across it to the north end, where the creek resumed. Now Midnight Lake, at the deepest point, was about 4 ½ feet deep.

 About another 100 yards up the creek, we went on shore to look for sign. At this point of shore, there was an open plain, with some willow bushes on the south end, pine and spruce forest to the north, to the east was the creek, and to the west was a bay from Midnight Lake. So we were in an inlet of sorts. We didn’t find any fresh sign, but there was some old sign, and beds, so we decided to go further north.

 A mile north of there was a spot that we called Snaggle-tooth tree. At this spot, two years earlier, Jim had seen the biggest moose he had ever seen. He said it probably would have been in the top 10 moose in Saskatchewan. He was sitting in this Snaggle-tooth tree, and it was getting late, so he got down, and just as he touched ground, he heard this bull grunt, and turned around and saw him. The bull was standing about 15 yards away from him, and when Jim drew his bow, the bull just stood there, staring straight at him, for about 1 minute, but Jim couldn’t shoot him, because all he would have hit was bone. Finally, after standing there for a minute, the bull starts to run off in to the willows, and Jim missed his shot.

 Anyway, when we got to that spot, we didn’t find any sign there either. Every year before this, Jim had found several fresh scrapes. After that we decided to go back to camp, because it was starting to get dark. And sleep. Sleep is good, especially when you have to get up early the next morning; 5:00 early.

Tuesday Sept. 30.

 So as I said, we were supposed to get up at 5:00. Well, we didn’t get up till about 7:00. And every morning, I was the first one to get out of bed, and start the fire and get the kettle going. After we had breakfast, we got in the canoe, and went back to the willow spot, and called. We heard a couple moose breaking trees in the forest, but not a lot, and they wouldn’t come out. We sat there till about 11:30, and then went back to camp for lunch and nap. Jim decided we needed to nap every day. Then after our nap, we went back to the willows to call, but we didn’t hear anything. We stayed there till about 6:30, and then went back to camp for dinner and bed.

 Wednesday Oct. 1

Again, we didn’t get up till about 8:00, and had breakfast. But instead of going to the willows, we had arranged to have lunch with the guy we called at the lodge, so we went down the creek. This creek isn’t your typical creek though. From where we camped, the whole creek south was rocks and timber. 

There were a couple fresh signs, but still nothing we could really rely on. We ended up stopping at one spot, because we heard a bit of crashing, and we sat on the side of a hill for about an hour, and then decided to leave, because the crashing had gone away. It was a really good spot, because we could see the whole valley, but we still had fairly good cover. Unfortunately, we still didn’t see anything.

 By this time, it was closing in on 11:00, and we still had about a half hours walk till we got to the road. When we did, we had to unload the gun, because there is a 400m game preserve from the road, to prevent truck hunters. So as were unloading the gun, we’re sitting on a hillside, and so we just decided to wait and try to get a ride, because we had been walking almost all morning. One guy stopped in his rhino, and gave us a ride back. They were camped at a lake at the other end of Midnight Creek, called Isbister Lake. They hadn’t seen anything either, and there were three of them, each going their own way. Hunting in the same area, but covering more ground. After we got back to camp, Jim decided to go straight to the Lodge. I don’t know why we didn’t just go straight from the rhino to Jim’s truck, but we didn’t. Anyway, we got to the Lodge, and found out it was closed on Wednesdays. So we didn’t get our lunch, but we did get to talk to other hunters, and no one had seen any moose either, but some had seen tracks and fresh willow cuts.

 About an hour later we decided to go back to camp for lunch, and then head out again. I can’t remember where we went, but we didn’t see anything. I think that was the night where we were at the trail head by the lake, and there was a bull right across the creek from us, but he didn’t come out. That was the closest to a bull we were all week.

Thursday Oct. 2

 This morning we went out to spike. We got all our gear, plus food and water for 2 days, and sleeping supplies. We canoed to Snaggle-tooth Tree, and had lunch, and then we canoed upstream till we couldn’t go any further. Now why couldn’t we go any further? Well, remember I told you south of our camp were all rocks and timber? Well, it was like that again. We decided to walk a bit further, but we didn’t go very far before deciding to go back.

 On our way up, Jim spotted a place where there was a hidden creek, and he had been up there before, so we decided to go that way and make camp. It was more of a swamp then a creek, and there was one spot where it had a very small beaver dam, about 4 feet across, and it was in the side of a sort of basin. I didn’t see it, but Jim did, so we went over this dam. It’s a good thing to, because the creek kept going for quite a ways after it. After a little more paddling, we got to a spot were we thought would be a good place to camp the night. We went for a little hike to see if there was any sign, and there were some old willows, and some beds and tracks, but still nothing fresh. We did see some wolf tracks though, and some elk as well.

 As we’re getting all the stuff out of the canoe, Jim picks up the 2 gallon water jug, but it feels really light. So he opens it up, and it’s only a quarter full! He says to me “Trent, didn’t I tell you to fill the jugs?” And I said, “I did!! It must have leaked!” And sure enough, in the bottom of the canoe, was all the water from the jug. So all we had left was about a liter of water to last us dinner and breakfast the next morning. We boiled perogies in some of the water, and then used the same water to mix with our soup. Jim thought the perogies were good even without the salt and pepper, and I remembered we had brought a big bag of pepper to cover the moose with so the flies stay off. So he put some on his perogies, but he puts WAY too much on, and this is strong pepper. Needless to say, his mouth was on fire by the end of dinner. And then it was bed time, in our little pup tent, just big enough to fit Jim, myself, and the gun.

Friday Oct. 3.

We ran out of good water, so we had to boil some beaver water; you have to boil this water for at least 5 minutes, because otherwise you can get Beaver Fever, which is like Montezuma’s Revenge. Anyway, we got our (mmm mmm good) porridge, took down camp, and head home, because there wasn’t anything worth sticking around for.

After getting back, I think we ended up going back to the lodge so that Jim could have coffee. Then we went and checked in on the guy that had given us a ride, to see if they had seen anything, and then went to Taryl’s ( the other hunter we had called) camp to see if they had seen anything, and have coffee. Jim is obsessed with coffee. They hadn’t seen anything either, but they had a bear Thursday night.

 We decided to take a look at the other side of Midnight Creek, on the north end of Isbister, but still didn’t see anything, and it was REALLY hot. It must have been something like 25 C outside, so nothing was going to happen other than us swelter, so we went back to camp and…

Slept.

We got up at about 3:00PM and went to a little beaver pond north-west of our camp, because we thought it was a lake that some people had seen some tracks. We sat there for about 2 ½ hours, still not seeing anything, but we did hear some crashing. It was getting dark, so we went back to camp, but decided to go back the next morning. Then we had the bear incident. We had this bear hanging around our camp from about 7:30 PM till 1:00 AM. Jim told me to sleep light, in-case the bear came in, and 5 minutes after we got in the tent, I fell asleep, while Jim got to stay up and watch for the bear. It was such a satisfying sleep.

Sorry Jim.

Saturday Oct. 3.

Seeing as though this was our last day, I decided to force Jim to get up “early”, so I got up at 5:30, so that he would get up at 6:00.I think we got to our north-east spot at 7:30. We had 2 bulls crashing around on the other side of the pond, but they wouldn’t come out, so at about 10:00 we decided to go around the lake to go get him, but we had to go the long way around so that the bull wouldn’t catch our scent or see us. Unfortunately, the walk around the pond took us 2 hours, and by that time, we had lost him. Then it was lunch, nap and then back to our spot to hope and pray that something would come out before sundown. No moose. Not a single one. So we came home exhausted, beat up, and empty-handed, but had a really good time.

decided to peel-out at a stoplight in Yorkton.