Speaker 1: Welcome to This country Life. I'm your host, Brent Rieves
Speaker 1: from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
Speaker 1: I want you to stay a while as I share
Speaker 1: my stories and the country skills that will help you
Speaker 1: beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as
Speaker 1: part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best
Speaker 1: outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends,
Speaker 1: pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I
Speaker 1: think I got a thing or two. The teacher old Canada.
Speaker 1: I've been to Canada three times in my life. Each
Speaker 1: trip was the trip of a lifetime, all of them
Speaker 1: hunting trips, but each unique in its adventure and the
Speaker 1: lessons learned. We're taking a trip north of the border
Speaker 1: this week, but no need for the Rosetta stone. I'm
Speaker 1: semi fluent in Canadian. I'm going to tell you all
Speaker 1: about them, but first I'm going to tell you a story. Plans, suburbans,
Speaker 1: and boats. Five of us with bear tags and one
Speaker 1: with a camera waited at a predesignated spot on an
Speaker 1: unnamed river that bled off the eight hundred square mile
Speaker 1: Wallaston Lake in Saskatchewan, Canada. We were one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty three miles south of the Arctic Circle and over
Speaker 1: two thousand miles away from Arkansas. We'd rented a suburban
Speaker 1: when we landed in Saskatoon, and if that wasn't far enough,
Speaker 1: we were still a thirteen hour drive from the airport
Speaker 1: to where we now sat. I was there filming them
Speaker 1: from my good friend Klay Knuckleman. It was back in
Speaker 1: the days before he or I worked for me Dieter,
Speaker 1: and even before the original Bear Grind East podcast. This
Speaker 1: film was in support of Bear Hunt magazine and we
Speaker 1: were on an adventure, an adventure that began the day
Speaker 1: before when I showed up at Clay's house three hours
Speaker 1: before we were supposed to leave for the airport, and
Speaker 1: he said, Man, I've been so busy getting the magazine
Speaker 1: ready to go out that I haven't even packed yet.
Speaker 1: I laughed, but he didn't. Then I knew he was serious.
Speaker 1: Hold a cow, let's get to pack it. Thirty minutes
Speaker 1: later we were on our way to the airport with
Speaker 1: seven days worth a gear. He never broke a sweat,
Speaker 1: while I felt like I was having kittens the whole
Speaker 1: time until we were checked in and waiting at the gate.
Speaker 1: I hate flying, not the actual physicality of flying. But
Speaker 1: the process of flying it used to be a relatively
Speaker 1: simple process, as those amongst us who have traveled by
Speaker 1: air prior to the tragedy of nine to eleven can
Speaker 1: fully attest. And I know the reason for all the changes,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate the redundancy of ID checks and screening.
Speaker 1: I get it. I'm all for it. But that's the
Speaker 1: process that makes me anxious. There's too much responsibility on
Speaker 1: my end to have everything I'm supposed to have to
Speaker 1: prove to someone who doesn't know me that I am
Speaker 1: who I say I am. Plus I lose things often.
Speaker 1: Alexis is constantly saying, in her condescending mom voice, if
Speaker 1: you just put things back where they go instead of
Speaker 1: laying them down in random spots, you wouldn't lose them.
Speaker 1: She usually follows that up with have you seen my phone?
Speaker 1: I can't find my phone. Me and that gal were
Speaker 1: made for each other anyway. There the five of us
Speaker 1: were standing in the middle of Saskatchewan, having survived the
Speaker 1: first two legs of our journey into the North. James Lawrence,
Speaker 1: Ryan Greb Carney Easter, and Clay Bold Nukem and yours.
Speaker 1: Truly it was June and we were all wearing jackets
Speaker 1: to cut the cold wind that blew off Wallaston Lake.
Speaker 1: We were waiting for the last mode of travel to arrive.
Speaker 1: In the last twenty four hours. We had been kept
Speaker 1: from walking by the engineers at Boeing Chevrolet and whatever
Speaker 1: water vessel was that we now waited. That was forty
Speaker 1: five minutes overdue to our agreed upon meeting spot that
Speaker 1: was supposed to keep us dry on our ride to
Speaker 1: the Bear camp. It must be a big boat to
Speaker 1: carry us and all our gear. We had a ton
Speaker 1: of stuff. Hard cases with camera gear, bows, drones, and
Speaker 1: Duffel bags of clothing and hunting gear were stacked at
Speaker 1: the edge of a dock that looked like it had
Speaker 1: been built by the students of a beginner carpenter class
Speaker 1: in the dark. The boats we were expecting to ferry
Speaker 1: us the last part of the trip had to be big,
Speaker 1: so we were wondering how in the world they were
Speaker 1: going to fit into this small area and this homemade dock.
Speaker 1: I also wondered where the boat was. There was no
Speaker 1: way other than using a SAT phone to contact the outfitter,
Speaker 1: since he was the one coming to pick us up
Speaker 1: and we doubted he'd be able to answer, so we
Speaker 1: just waited. Another thirty minutes ticked by with us entertaining ourselves,
Speaker 1: before we heard the sound of an outboard motor getting closer.
Speaker 1: Then we saw the boats, two of them. One was
Speaker 1: what i'd call a ski boat. It had a console
Speaker 1: steering and a walk through windshield and a fifty horse
Speaker 1: power outboard motor. The second boat was a fourteen foot
Speaker 1: aluminum vehu with a forty horse power motor and a
Speaker 1: tiller hand. Now, either those weren't our boats, or we
Speaker 1: weren't going very far, I figured, But they were our boats,
Speaker 1: and we were a long way from the end of
Speaker 1: the boat riding. Were fixing the tape I had figured wrong.
Speaker 1: The boat's coasted to a stop along the edge of
Speaker 1: Canada's version of a Beverly hillbilly's boat dock, each pile
Speaker 1: by a pair of strapping lads who ended each question
Speaker 1: or mildly facetious statement with a like been waiting long
Speaker 1: a or pretty long trip ah. After all the introductions,
Speaker 1: we started bringing our gear down to the boats, and
Speaker 1: the outfitter suggested putting all the gear in one person
Speaker 1: in the bigger boat. He was driving that one, and
Speaker 1: the rest of us would load up in the smaller
Speaker 1: boat for the ride across the lake to the camp. James, Carney,
Speaker 1: Ryan and I opted for the lighter boat after packing
Speaker 1: the bigger one to the absolute gills with bags and cases,
Speaker 1: then covering it up as best as we could with
Speaker 1: tart to try to keep it all dry. I asked
Speaker 1: that hockey loving cat who was minding the tiller how
Speaker 1: far we were going, and he said, oh, it's a ways,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't kidding. In Arkansas, you could hop in
Speaker 1: any conveyance available from attractor to a bicycle, heading any
Speaker 1: random direc direction, and in two hours you're going to
Speaker 1: be somewhere, somewhere where there was something something other than water,
Speaker 1: moss and trees and seemingly endless wilderness. Now, don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong, I was digging it. I loved being in
Speaker 1: remote places, and getting there is usually a big part
Speaker 1: of the adventure. But for the past two hours I
Speaker 1: felt like my teeth were getting loose from the constant
Speaker 1: battering that the boat was taken and transferring to me.
Speaker 1: I hooked my legs underneath the seat as best as
Speaker 1: I could, and I had a gi Joe kung fu
Speaker 1: grip on the gun and the seat. My behind was
Speaker 1: hitting about every other wave. The waves that didn't take
Speaker 1: me a foot off the bench washed over the bow
Speaker 1: and sides, and the strong wind was soaking me in
Speaker 1: my fellow Arkansas with the cleanest water I'd never wanted
Speaker 1: to drink. At this point, I looked out of the
Speaker 1: rain hood i'd pulled down tight around my face in
Speaker 1: a feeble attempt to keep the lake out of my clothes,
Speaker 1: and the bank to the Arbard's side of the boat
Speaker 1: was invisible, nothing but water, and it looked as big
Speaker 1: as the ocean. I looked to the port side and
Speaker 1: caught it an occasional glimpse of Earth between the solo
Speaker 1: cups of water. Old Mother Wallerston was spitting in my eyes.
Speaker 1: I started using naval terminology in my thinking, as the
Speaker 1: voyage to the end of the Earth drug on past eternity.
Speaker 1: I figured, since we had all obviously been shanghaied by
Speaker 1: sailors posing his bear hunting outfitters, that I might as
Speaker 1: well learn the lingo. I looked back at our pilot.
Speaker 1: He was wrapped up tight in his rein gear with
Speaker 1: nothing other than a small peepole where his eyes should
Speaker 1: have been. Occasionally a black tuft of hair would flip out,
Speaker 1: before getting soaked and seeking refuge back inside his parker.
Speaker 1: I caught him checking the GPS he had in his
Speaker 1: pocket and mouth of the words how long eh? That
Speaker 1: was in my best Canadian accident. He yelled above the
Speaker 1: din of the outboard, in the crashing of the hull
Speaker 1: of the boat on the waves, that we were almost halfway,
Speaker 1: Almost halfway, for the love of humanity, was where we
Speaker 1: were going going to look any different than where we
Speaker 1: were it? It all looked the same as far as
Speaker 1: what I could see now from the boat, and the
Speaker 1: same I'd seen for the past one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: miles the road before we pulled up to that dock,
Speaker 1: big round rocks, jack pines, and moss. I caught a
Speaker 1: glimpse of Claybow's boat as it launched in the air
Speaker 1: between the waves, the foot being the only thing that
Speaker 1: stayed in contact with the water. My fund meter had
Speaker 1: pegged out. I was ready to hit the bank. Gordon Lightfoot,
Speaker 1: Ontario borne balladeer and President of Canada. His greatest song ever,
Speaker 1: one of the personal favorites of mine was on repeat
Speaker 1: in my head, over and over it played in Three
Speaker 1: and a half hours later, we pulled up to a
Speaker 1: dock that looked suspiciously like the first one I'd seen
Speaker 1: fifty five miles earlier, when that whole ordeal started. Clay
Speaker 1: and the boss outfitter had pulled a head as we
Speaker 1: rolled into calmer waters and were waiting for us on
Speaker 1: the bank. Clay was smiling, happy to be there, happy
Speaker 1: to be bear hunting, but mostly I think, happy to
Speaker 1: be alive. He walked out onto that unsteady dock. He
Speaker 1: reached his hand out to me to help me up, smiling,
Speaker 1: then he said, what do you think about that? When
Speaker 1: my second foot hit the top of that dock? I said,
Speaker 1: does anyone know where the love of God goes? When
Speaker 1: the waves turned the minutes to ours, Clay's eyes got
Speaker 1: white and a surprised look came across his face. He
Speaker 1: squeezed my hand and said, Wow, did you just make
Speaker 1: that up? No, Clay Bow, Gordon Lightfoot died and that's
Speaker 1: just how that happened Old Canada. On my third trip
Speaker 1: to Canada, me and Clay Bow found ourselves in British Columbia.
Speaker 1: It was a stark contrast to the terrain of northern Saskatchewan.
Speaker 1: This was mountainous, thick wooded terrain and clearcuts. We were
Speaker 1: hunting black bears in the same woods where grizzlies lived.
Speaker 1: I'd always wanted to see a grizzly. I've always wanted
Speaker 1: to go on an archery hunt for one, and like
Speaker 1: a lot of folks, I'm intrigued by I also have
Speaker 1: a lot of respect for him, which is a manly
Speaker 1: way of saying they scare the soup out of me.
Speaker 1: I'm not scared of much, and I have been in
Speaker 1: places and situations in my law enforcement job when I
Speaker 1: probably should have been scared at that time, but I
Speaker 1: was also focused on the mission hand and fear was
Speaker 1: never a real factor. All that went straight out the
Speaker 1: window when we got to Jeff Lander's primitive outfit and
Speaker 1: bear camp. Jeff is a bow hunter. He and his wife,
Speaker 1: Lanta have become good friends of mine. They're good people
Speaker 1: and she's from Arkansas. Good job, Jeffrey. Anyway, glad I
Speaker 1: got to camp earlier than anticipated, and he said we
Speaker 1: could go out that afternoon. Since we had plenty of
Speaker 1: light left to hunt. They decided not to use the
Speaker 1: electric bikes that they had out forced to travel down
Speaker 1: the gravel in the dirt roads for fear of rounding
Speaker 1: a curve and surprising Old Gribbs. Stories that include surprise
Speaker 1: and grizzly don't usually end well for either party. I
Speaker 1: liked his thinking. The last thing I wanted to do
Speaker 1: was surprise anything that had claws, teeth and was grumpy
Speaker 1: to start with and could run thirty five miles an hour.
Speaker 1: That's like fifty six in Canada. They're even faster up there.
Speaker 1: I didn't want a surprise one, but I did want
Speaker 1: to see one. Jeff hooked us up with our guide Gary.
Speaker 1: That's a good dude, and old Gary knows his way
Speaker 1: around the wilderness, and those bears both kinds playing. I
Speaker 1: got our stuff ready in short ordering. Before we knew it,
Speaker 1: we were heading down a one lane dirt road that
Speaker 1: was about twenty minutes away from the camp. I was
Speaker 1: quizzing Gary on his exploits and grizzly bears and wondering
Speaker 1: if we'd see one before the week was up. He
Speaker 1: said it was a good possibility, but there was no guarantees.
Speaker 1: They're as scared of us as we are them, he said.
Speaker 1: The road we were easing down in Gary's truck wasn't
Speaker 1: much wider than a one lane of a two lane highway.
Speaker 1: Alder maple and pine trees that were thick on each side,
Speaker 1: thick enough that you couldn't see but a few feet
Speaker 1: past the edge of the road. But up ahead, about
Speaker 1: three hundred yards that's two hundred and seventy four into
Speaker 1: Canadian the road opened up on each side. The sun
Speaker 1: was shining and lighting up what looked like a big
Speaker 1: hay pasture, quite a contrast to the darkness that stood
Speaker 1: on each side of the road. I'd learned two things
Speaker 1: about Gary in the short twenty minutes i'd known him.
Speaker 1: He was a religious man. I liked that. And he
Speaker 1: also toted it a a three point thirty eight la
Speaker 1: poor rifle that was secured in a spot beside me
Speaker 1: in the back seat. I like that too. Used correctly,
Speaker 1: both of those can get you out of a tight spot,
Speaker 1: one quicker than the other and one for longer than
Speaker 1: the other. Gary said, we'd walk the last one hundred
Speaker 1: yards down the road and slip up to the edge
Speaker 1: and peek down the woodline to see if we could
Speaker 1: catch a black bear feeding on the ankle high grass
Speaker 1: that they loved this time of year. Good plan, he said,
Speaker 1: he'd done this many times. Found a bear, initiated a
Speaker 1: stalk and got within bow range. That's what we wanted.
Speaker 1: We might as well fill the tag on opening day.
Speaker 1: We were in a single file line until the last
Speaker 1: few steps. That's when Gary motioned for us to be
Speaker 1: quiet and to stand beside him as we crept the
Speaker 1: rest of the way to see down the edge of
Speaker 1: the woods clay in the middle of me. On the
Speaker 1: far right, he whispered, Now, you guys, look down to
Speaker 1: the right. The woodline goes down a lot further than
Speaker 1: it does on this side. I'll check over here on
Speaker 1: the left. We eased along almost in cadence. Two more
Speaker 1: steps and we'd be able to see all the way
Speaker 1: down the field edge. I strained to see anything that
Speaker 1: remotely looked like a bear. I was laser focused on
Speaker 1: everything that was going on around me when Gary whispered,
Speaker 1: don't anybody move. The tone in which he said it
Speaker 1: made me hear look over here at the grizzly bear
Speaker 1: that's about to kill us. All slowly and methodically, I
Speaker 1: turned my head to see two grizzly bear cubs and
Speaker 1: a south stand fifty yards away. The sow was chomping
Speaker 1: down grass like they weren't making it anymore, and the
Speaker 1: both cubs were staring at us. The one in front
Speaker 1: and closest to us was standing on all fours, and
Speaker 1: the one behind him and nearest to the south stood
Speaker 1: up on his hind legs to see over his sibling
Speaker 1: and so he could see what we were. They both
Speaker 1: bolted at the same time and ran away from where
Speaker 1: we were standing, and passing right in front of the
Speaker 1: nose of Mama Bear. And looking back on it now,
Speaker 1: she didn't pay them any attention at first. I'm sure
Speaker 1: they did that, playing and chasing each other all the time.
Speaker 1: It was when they hit the woods and didn't stop
Speaker 1: that she looked at the way they'd left and realized
Speaker 1: they were running away from something. Then she looked back
Speaker 1: to see what they'd run away from, and there we stood,
Speaker 1: all three of us, side by side, looking like a
Speaker 1: big bear hunting oreo with the double stuff On the
Speaker 1: right hand side. Mama Bear stood up on her hind
Speaker 1: legs and stared at us for what seemed like a week.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what that translates to, and time wise
Speaker 1: in Canadian but in reality it was really only for
Speaker 1: a few seconds. She woofed loud when she stumped her
Speaker 1: front feet down on the ground, and it rattled the
Speaker 1: stuff in my pockets. In my mind immediately calculating the
Speaker 1: number of clean sets of drawers I had back at
Speaker 1: the camp. Should I live through this, for I was
Speaker 1: going to need some. Then as quickly as I processed
Speaker 1: all that, she was gone, disappearing through the same hole
Speaker 1: in the woods her cubs had gone. It was absolutely magnificent.
Speaker 1: She was beautiful, and so were her cubs. I felt
Speaker 1: privileged to have seen them and to have lived through it.
Speaker 1: Clay doesn't remember it being as significant an event that
Speaker 1: I do, which proves my adage of if you want
Speaker 1: want two different accounts of a singular event, get two
Speaker 1: eyewitnesses to the same thing. To the individual perception is reality,
Speaker 1: and mine may have been biased by my innate fear
Speaker 1: of standing unarmed within the rock chunking distance of Asil
Speaker 1: Grizzly and her cubs, my only defense being my inability
Speaker 1: to look like I tasted bad. Clay barely remembers the event,
Speaker 1: and Gary, the guide with whom I spent a week
Speaker 1: spotting in stalking barriers all over British Columbia, probably doesn't
Speaker 1: even remember us being there. Did I manufacture the events
Speaker 1: and how they unfolded? Did I add some spice or
Speaker 1: use poetic license and telling that story about my first
Speaker 1: encounter with a grizzly bear? Absolutely not. Were my perceptions
Speaker 1: of that close encounter romanticized or clouded by how I
Speaker 1: interpreted her reactions to our surprise meeting. Absolutely I don't
Speaker 1: know what was going on inside that bear's head. But
Speaker 1: while lie biologists tell us that for them it's fight
Speaker 1: or flight, and I'm glad you chose the latter, perception
Speaker 1: is as individual as the cat doing the perceiving. That's
Speaker 1: something we can all learn from, and that's your challenge
Speaker 1: this week. Listen to folks tell their own bear stories
Speaker 1: and try to see it from where they were standing.
Speaker 1: You don't have to agree with them, and just as important,
Speaker 1: they don't have to agree with you. It's not a
Speaker 1: new concept to be respectful of another's viewpoint, but it's
Speaker 1: one we're all a little out of practice. Up. We're
Speaker 1: all neighbors on this spinning rock, or, according to some folks,
Speaker 1: this humongous flat thing we're surfing through space. On either way,
Speaker 1: your neighbor is your neighbor. I'm leaving my second trip
Speaker 1: out for now, and I'll talk about that on another day.
Speaker 1: That was a special trip, and part of the reason
Speaker 1: I'm able to talk to you now is a direct
Speaker 1: benefit from that excursion. It's a good one and it
Speaker 1: literally changed the life path for both Clay and me.
Speaker 1: We got some fun content coming out soon on the
Speaker 1: med Eater YouTube channel. Be looking for that announcement in
Speaker 1: This Country Life. We've got a few surprises there too.
Speaker 1: Until next week, this is Brent Reeves, sign it off.
Speaker 1: Y'all be careful.