Once I had the cabin rented, I needed to find work, and at the time if you were a logger and looking for work, you would go to the Quinsam Hotel pub which was called the office by most loggers. This was a logger’s bar and the best place to find out who was hiring. Lots of times, you would get phone calls from outfits who were interested in hiring you personally. I had been looking for a job when one afternoon I got a phone call, I took the call hoping it was for employment. It was not an employer, it was my best friend who had moved up to the interior a few months back and hoped to get me to join him there. I asked him where he was living and he told me it was Wildwood, just north of Williams Lake, and I said you bet ya man, be up as soon as I can make arrangements.
I went home and packed my stuff and the next day I was on my way back to this town that had been so attractive to me. I arrived at 3:30 am and as the bus pulled into the empty hotel lot I saw not just my buddy Larry but two other good friends, Paul and Roger. All were looking tired and yet at the same time excited to see me. These were good friends, we considered ourselves like brothers, and the reunion was great. I could feel that some amazing adventures were about to happen.
I took a canoe trip up the Cariboo River with a buddy in the fall of my first year, we planned on going right up to the Bowron lakes and back again. The Bowron Lakes are a series of lakes in the Cariboo. You can canoe right back to where you started. We figured it was going to take about 10 days to complete. We put in at the south end of Cariboo Lake canoed up through Cariboo Lake and reached the Cariboo Falls below Bowron Lakes in 7 days. It was quite the journey.
Areas with fast rapids always seemed to be followed by deep, calm pools. These spots are where we would make camp as the fishing was always phenomenal. The best spot to drop in a line was always just where the rapids flowed into calm water. We would keep enough fish for supper and quickly release all the others. We would usually keep the rainbows that were so firm and red-fleshed. These beauties could reach 2kgs or more in this river. There are plenty of Bull Trout here and they are fun to fight, these trout can reach 5kg or more. I found the flesh to be pale with a bit of a dirty flavour in the bull trout so we just had fun catching them.
We saw many moose along the way and you could not imagine a more majestic animal than these beautiful creatures. Moose are the largest member of the deer family, they can stand up to 3.5 meters tall, they have brown fir and the bulls have a huge set of antlers during the rut. It was late September, and the leaves were turning, with gold being the dominant colour. Mating season was in full steam and you could hear the bulls bellowing through the forest. Occasionally you would hear them fighting with the crashing of antlers ringing out all along the river. Sometimes a big bull would come to the water’s edge to watch us go by, this would be so exciting, filling me with wonder every time.
Grizzlies were everywhere, seems they were hanging close to the river knowing the salmon were on their way to the spawning grounds and would be passing through soon. One morning a very large male came charging out of the morning mist straight at us. As he came through the water it was splashing out both sides and you could hear him grunt with every pace. It was just where the river flowed into cariboo lake and the water was fairly slow moving allowing us to power past this bear. That night we made camp on an island surrounded by deep water. We continued upriver until we reached a spot on the river that was almost like a narrow lake, it was called Kimball Lake. This was a beautiful place, the highlight of the trip for sure. As we canoed our way along we encountered numerous old homesteads dotted along the shore, abandoned now but awesome cabins that at the time would not take too much work to make livable again. I would imagine most are gone by now.
The trip back down the river was much faster as we were running with the flow. We ran into the same grizzly on the way back, at least he looked like him. He was standing on the river bank growling at us as we went past. We wound up spending 12 days on the river, on the way back to Williams Lake, we stopped at the likely pub, had a couple of beers and got invited back the next weekend for the fall beer races. This sounded intriguing.
So we headed up to the likely pub next weekend to see what these beer races are all about. Seems that it’s a timed race where you run through a bit of a course, then into the pub where you navigate around a few tables to the end of the bar where there is a draft beer waiting. You drink this beer as fast as you can, then you run out the side door, around a corner and then back to the starting point and ring a bell. The one with the longest time was eliminated from the race. If you fall, it’s an instant ejection from the race. My 3 roommates and I all signed up. There were quite a few contestants. All went well at first, but the more beer you drank, the tougher it got. Soon contestants began to stumble and fall on the corners. After about 8 or 9 beers, we were down to just a few racers left, I was one of them. Finally, after more than a dozen beers, we were down to just two of us, myself and a big cowboy. This fella was standing far steadier than I. It was my turn now and I was giving it my all, the crowds were cheering loudly as I made it through the first course and had my draft.
Then as l came out the side door and attempted to round that last corner I stumbled and though I tried to keep upright, it was a fool’s attempt and down I went. Fun was had by all that day, I never laughed so hard.
My first year in Williams Lake had me working in various mills, logging for a few companies and doing some chimney building. Then I took a job as a bartender at the biggest hotel and nightclub in town. I would work the pub downstairs until closing time, then I would go upstairs to the club and spend a couple of hours as a bouncer. This was a cowboy town and the boys would be getting pretty drunk by the time I came on.
Behind the bar was some sawed-off pool sticks with leather straps, these were to control the crowds when things got out of hand. They worked pretty well. My buddy Larry and his girl Laural both worked in the club, she was the head waitress and Larry was another bouncer. One night, a customer came running up and said a bunch of guys had hauled my friend out an exit door and were beating on him. By the time I got across the club and out the door, all I found was Larry lying on the ground choking. After checking him out, I realized had been kicked repeatedly and needed to go to the hospital, he was in rough shape. But then, it was a rough bar, it was called the Chilcotin Hotel. Heard it has now burned down. The bands that played here were pretty well known, one of the bands that played here a couple of times a year was Jefferson Starship.
After closing, they would come to our house, set up and play for another few hours, we loved it, the parties would get a little wild at times, with hundreds in attendance, the city did not take a liking to our parties though. One afternoon, a police car pulls up and an officer walks up and hands us an eviction order, not from our landlord but from the town of Williams Lake. It appears they found a way to move us on.
We took to doing forestry contracts of one kind or another around the interior. At one point we were doing a spacing project where we had troubled youth learning how to use the tools for doing forestry work. One evening while we were relaxing after dinner, we heard a plane going over the tent camp that seemed to be having some difficulty, all of a sudden it went quiet. Then there was an explosion. It was not very far from camp so some of us went running to the crash scene, it was horrific, the plane was totalled and the 3 occupants were dead, two adults and a child. I heard later that they had been on their way back to their ranch. Our youth helped to pack out the bodies after the police and coroner finished. Some took it pretty hard. It was pretty harsh.
After the plane crash, we bid on and won several spacing contracts out in Bella Coola, what a place, so beautiful. The mountains go straight up from the river bottom to touch the sky, the valley bottom is not very wide but is full of small farms. Alexander Mackenzie on his journey across Canada ended his quest for a route to the Pacific in Bella Coola. Traditionally, Bella Coola was and is the home of the Nuxult People, once wrongly classed as Coast Salish, today the Nuxult are classified under their distinct category. In 1858, the valley was used as a link to gold fields up in the Chilcotin.
We began to buy and load up the gear needed, lots of new saws, stoves, big cook tents smaller wall tents, and other various supplies to get these contracts started.
Bella Coola
Our first trip into Bella Coola was in a 1958 2-ton Chevy truck that was loaded with most of the supplies. Paul and I were heading in to put up the camp, others would be arriving over the next few days. It was going to be a long trip. The road from Williams Lake was a long and dusty 454 km road to get to the top of Freedom Hill. When we saw this hill for the first time, we could not believe what we were looking at. The hill road is 11 km long and over that length, it drops 1.3 km in elevation. It took us 4 hours to drive the 11 km to get down the hill. Our brakes kept overheating on the way down and we had to stop at all water sources to splash water on them to cool them down. The brakes would be red hot.
There is a story on the creation of this road that goes something like this. The road was built to within a mile of the top from Williams Lake and almost to the bottom. The military had agreed to complete the road but the people had to survey the route. With only one day to post it in the mail or lose the military aid, a rider got on his horse and rode up the steep ground going back and forth. He ribboned the route as he went along. They got it in on time and the military did its thing. I have heard this story many times and it’s a good one, the only problem is this story is not true. The real story is the government only intended to build the road out to Anahim reserve. Then out as far as Hagensborg up the Bella Coola valley.
The locals in Bella Coola would not be satisfied until the road was complete though, so they formed a volunteer road-building crew and began to complete the road themselves. They started with bulldozers at the bottom and the top and quickly had the road from Anaheim to the top of the hill constructed. This caught the eye of Phil Gaglardi, who at the time was the Minister of Highways. He was impressed and thought they just might have the gumption to build this road so he offered to help cover the costs, even though the government engineers stated it could not be done. This was a good choice as these boys did indeed build the road, this section is known as Freedom Hill. He only paid some of the costs, but it was enough for the boys to get the job done.
I must take my hat off and give kudos to the residents of Bella Coola and congratulate them on building the road that is Freedom Hill. Although there are 11 km of road on this hill, the full road that needed to be built was more than 60 km long, this covers the area from Anahim Lake to Hagensburg in the Bella Coola Valley.
The bulldozers met 88 km from the Pacific Ocean, they touched blades as the last of the boulders were pushed aside to a jubilant shout from the volunteers. This was the third route to the coast in B.C. after both the Lower Mainland and Prince Rupert route. Another route had been proposed that would go from the Cariboo down to Bute Inlet. This was proposed by Alfred Waddington who was a surveyor for the Canadian Pacific Railway company.
I have often wondered if a road could have come in from Tatla Lake and connected with the Atnarko River valley, this valley is home to Lonesome Lake. If you have not heard of this lake, look up Crusoe Of Lonesome Lake. It’s the story of Ralph Edwards and how he settled in this lake area to build a ranch out of the wilderness. I have not been to the Atnarko Valley and only know about this valley’s travel possibilities from books and stories. As I looked at Freedom Hill for the first time, I thought that a road through this alternate route could not have been as difficult to build as Freedom Hill was.
The Bella Coola valley is narrow with mountains on either side that reach right up to the sky. After arriving in the valley, we set up the camp on Noosgulch River, just up from where it joins the Bella Coola River. This River is east of Hagensborg, and about 20 miles up the valley from Bella Coola. We had 35 employees, most were local First Nation boys along with a few of the valley white lads. They were a great bunch of guys, they all worked hard and got the jobs done right and on time. Everyone got along.
Right out in front of the camp, just below a bridge, there was a slow-moving deep pool where you could fish, later in the year we would swim here to cool down, this water even in late summer was extremely cold. We used this river to bathe, it was still early spring when we first started to use it, you would jump in with a gasp from the cold and quickly get out, then you would soap up before throwing a bar of soap back in where it would sink to the bottom. Then jump in again to get the soap, rinsing off as you do.
During the spring, we would see a First Nations elder come every day, strip down and lie in the river for hours, one of our boys told me he was doing a cleansing ritual. I had much respect for this elder.
Our tent camp was set up right where the Grizzlies travel, tracks could be seen in the morning by late-night travellers. One day I heard our dogs barking loudly somewhere in the thick underbrush so I wormed my way into where they were looking up a tree barking, i looked up to see a very small grizzly cub hanging on and it was calling for its mommy. The brush was so thick you could not see more than a few meters. I gathered up the dogs and got out of there before the sow returned from where ever she was. My heart was pounding.
One sunny day after work, one of the boys and I were walking up the road toward a pool on the Noosgulch River that was great for fishing. Both sides of the river have big old-growth timber that you hike through to get to a slow-moving deep pool. This was not far from camp, it was good fishing and we were looking to get enough for a good feed for camp. The road was a temporary skid road cut into a steep hillside, there were sparse but big trees growing and plenty of sand and scrub grass in between. It was steep. As we were walking along this road smoking a joint, and just enjoying the day, we heard a sudden noise up the bank. It was a big grizzly bear. He saw us and as he turned to head up the hill he slipped and started to tumble down the bank. He rolled down until he fell off the steep upper edge and landed on the road with a very loud grunt from the bear. He stopped rolling right at the edge of the road and was having trouble retaining his balance, he looked just like a man, arms flailing around, trying to catch his balance, and then he slipped over the bank and continued to roll down the hill toward the river in a noisy and undignified fashion, he just rolled right of sight. I looked at my companion and asked him if he just saw what I saw. With the joint still in his hand, he said he had. I felt sorry for the bear.
The valley is full of grizzlies and we saw them almost daily. We always were very careful when down by the rivers during the salmon spawn. Watching these bears fish for salmon was always cool. These bears also loved apples and most of the valley bottom farms had apple orchards. One time on a visit to a farm owned by some friends, I saw the biggest grizzly I have ever seen. They had a split rail snake fence separating their backyard and their apple trees. If I stood by this fence, it would be chin-high to me. I watched this bear walking behind this fence, heading toward a feed of apples. He was walking on all 4’s and his hump was well above that fence. He was a common visitor to the farm.
After getting camp set up and ready, the crew began arriving. We were out working 2 days after our arrival, we had 32 guys working on this contract. All was going well until one lunch break when all my guys were down on the road, getting ready to start a new section.
Then a couple of white hats from Crown Zellerbach came driving along and said they were here to inform us that they wanted us to move our camp. I informed them that the contract we had from the BC Forest Service said that this was where we could set up our camp and as it was crown land, we informed them that we would not be moving. Kinda got some sour looks on their faces, and then one of them noticed that we had quite a few First Nation boys working for us and had the gall to say, your not paying them as much as the white boys are you. At this moment, one of our boys, a big lad, was walking past the truck and I heard him say, what the fuck and he started back, I told the white hats, they had better take off while they can. They did. Now, our boys started to voice their anger over this and I too was pretty pissed off about it, so Larry and I headed to the CZ office to chat with the head guy.
He tried to brush it off as a misunderstanding, but we were not buying into that. We told him that we going to bring our entire crew down the next morning and we expected to hear an apology from the white hats. He said it wasn’t going to happen, so we said we were going to send our story to the Vancouver Sun to let them do an article about it. The next morning, we showed up with all our boys and the company bigwigs and those white hats came out. The company headman stepped forward to say he was sorry we misunderstood what his boys had said. My crew started to yell at him that that was bullshit and to get his boys out front and have them speak for themselves.
Finally, they came forward and said the words, we are sorry for what we said. We left to head to work, our crew was pleased that we had gone and done this for them, and I heard a while later that those white hats had been fired, probably not for what they said but more likely for causing so much embarrassment to the company.
We had started working here in the early spring, it was now October. Our camp had become pretty big, large wall tents, off-the-ground cots and a great big cook tent. But with the rains that had started to fall daily, I mean heavy rain, we started the process of renting rooms in the hotel in town. A couple of more days and we were going to move everyone into town. Tomorrow, we would all start to get the camp ready and move the day after that. I had headed to bed early that night, but was jolted awake by yelling at around 3 am, wondering what all the noise was about, I stepped out of bed and came knee-deep in ice-cold water. It was a flood. I quickly threw on my clothes and ran out. Sure enough, the river was running right through camp. Damn, a lot of stuff was already washed away. We started to salvage what we could, several of us had ropes tied around our waists and were trying to get stuff before it washed away. We took everything we could salvage to a high spot by the road on the other side of the river, just past the highway bridge.
A crew of boys got the big cook tent moved and set up so they could start the stoves to cook some food and begin to dry things out while the rest of us were back at camp fighting the river and saving as much as possible. You could see the cook tent up on the hill, just across the river. It looked good and they were making coffee and some food for us, it was a nice sight. Then all of a sudden, the light in the tent got bright just before the tent burst into flames. It seems a tent peg had torn loose in the wind and the corner of the tent fell onto a stove. By the time daylight came, we had salvaged what we could, we had lost quite a bit of shit, and we had lost out big tent and stoves, along with plenty of clothing, and other gear to the fire. We moved into the hotel and finished the last couple of contracts before shutting down.
My buds went back to Williams Lake and I decided to book in with a couple of the guys who worked for us, they had become pretty good friends, and I was going to stay for the winter. Their parents had bought and converted a small sawmill into a pretty cool home, it was in Hagensborg They lived in an upper area and the 3 boys lived in a lower part, almost like a separate apartment except it had no kitchen. Had lots of fun, and did plenty of hiking in the valley. The fishing was awesome.
Their place was pretty private with the closest neighbour living about half a mile down the road, he was an asshole. Anytime we crossed paths with him, he acted like a privileged jackass, seems he had a problem with us all being less important than he was. This guy had a big fancy house with a driveway that was cut into the ground where it went into his garage in the lower part of the house. This was lined by cement walls. As we walked by one night after a bit of partying, we noticed his big, expensive car parked in the driveway. There had been a bit of a thaw that day before it refroze again and his driveway was frozen solid. We thought we might be able to angle his car a bit with the 4 of us pushing. We easily were able to move it by rocking it up and down while pushing at the same time. We got it broadside with only 10 to 12 inches between the ends of the car and the cement walls. With the ice covering, we did not even leave footprints. Sure would have liked to have seen his face the next morning. He would have had to wonder how his car slid around during the night.
These guys knew their valley well and loved to hike, I got to see so much. I enjoyed a trip we took across the Bella Coola harbour in an old inboard/outboasted clunker the boys kept docked in town. We were headed to the old Tallheo Cannery. At one time canneries dotted the west coast of BC, there were hundreds of them. Workers would be hired from the local communities when possible and more brought in to fill the ranks as needed, those brought in would stay in bunkhouses on site. Over 300 worked seasonally at this cannery. As refrigeration started to be more common, many of these canneries died out. Although fish processing was over here long before my visit, the cannery building was still used as a net loft. When we went over, the fuel dock and store were still in operation. We spent a wet and windy day exploring the area.
I have a love for waterfalls and one day we drove up Blush Road to Odegaard Falls, at the time it was a well-maintained logging road, although I hear it is pretty rough today. Blush Road begins in a tight canyon where the Nusatsum River flows almost onto the road. Then it’s a drive up a valley to the trailhead. We made short work of the drive, parked and hiked in on a rough trail. It was in the fall and there had been heavy rain for days. I could hardly believe how active the falls were. I had been there in the summer and thought it was cool then. Now after all the rain, it was pretty awesome. It was so loud, I thought it sounded like thunder.
One afternoon, we were all up fishing in the Bella Coola River, just above Firvale, the trout fishing was good here and it was a nice place to just sit back and enjoy the scenery, the mountains were covered in glaciers in all directions, flowing down the sides of these mountains was a sea of green speckled with so many waterfalls that I lost count. Although the sky above was blue, there was a fog rolling down the river, it was cool watching this slowly block our visibility to where we could just barely see the other side of the river. I first heard it, an elk bugling, it was haunting and as I looked across the river to where a small grassy meadow was. I saw him, a majestic old bull elk, sporting a huge set of antlers. As he moved through the fog, head held high, his antlers caused the fog to swirl behind him, all the time he was calling out to his herd. I was mesmerized by the vision of this elder.
In the spring, I took a job working on a ranch. The ranch was a pretty big spread, 220,000 acres, I would be working the back end, about 15 miles from the main ranch, my home was a one-room cabin with a sod roof, wood stove and a spring outside the door for water. A table, a couple of chairs and a bed were brought up by wagon from the main ranch and all was good to go.
I drove out the Bella Coola Road to the turnoff and drove to a property located at the end of the road. The ranch had left a riding horse and a pack horse for me to use to get to the ranch. I parked my truck and saddled up one horse, packed the other with my gear and headed into the ranch, just me, the horses and my pup. There was no running equipment on the ranch, no drivable roads, only an old winding wagon road, it now was quite overgrown and had sections of corduroy road through the swampy areas.
On the way in you have to go through a ranch owned by a cantankerous old cowboy. He would eventually become a friend, but the first time I met him, he put the willies on me. I was on the old road where it goes right past his cabin. He came out with his six gun in his hand, it was now pointed at me as he came up to my horses. I had been told that he did not like people much. I could see that. He wanted to know who I was and once I told him who I was and where I was heading, he grudgingly let me through.
This old guy was pretty tough, I remember when he was 83, he gave himself a bad hernia clearing land, but he also had hay that had been cut and was drying in the field that had to be put up. He was too proud to ask for help. So he took an old inner tube, wrapped it tightly around his belly and spent the next week putting the hay up. He then headed to Williams Lake to see a doctor, he immediately was sent to the OR for a hernia operation. Like I said, one tough old guy. Sad to think that this old timer and all the other old cowboys whom I had the pleasure to meet were at the end of their era and are long gone now. They have given up their spurs for wings.
One really bad winter, I mean it had been very cold, It had been 40 below for weeks, and the snow was deep. My meat supply had been eaten, and getting down to the main ranch for supplies was not in the books. I had even butchered one of my milk goats for meat. I was out hunting every day, looking for a moose or deer, then one day, I opened my cabin door at first light and there, right in front of me was a moose, eating hay with my horses, one shot and I once again had meat. I quartered it, hung it up and left it outside to freeze. hunting season was over but this was so needed to survive.
The next day, I took my meat saw, a small power saw with the oiler disabled and started to butcher the quarters up and wrap the meat. I had an outdoor freezer box where the meat would stay frozen until spring thaw. It was weird, but whenever the saw was not running, I would think I could hear its echo far off in the distance but it was strange, it would get loud, then quiet, then loud again. This went on for an hour. Finally, I realized it was not an echo of my saw, but was couple of snowmobiles, and they were heading my way. Sound travels a long way in the cold north and it still took a while for them to arrive. As they got within sight, I saw to my horror, that the snowmobiles had an RCMP officer operating one and the other had a Game Warden running it. I was wondering in my head just how they had known that I had killed a moose before I had killed it. I mean, we were 2.5 days from the nearest road, I had shot the moose only yesterday. It did not add up.
After feeding them and letting them warm up around the stove with a hot cup of coffee, we got to chatting. Seems they were not here over the moose but were out trying to find out if any of our cattle had been rustled, seems some rustlers were working in the area.
The reason the game warden was there was that he was also the range manager for our area and he knew all the ranch locations. While the constable was writing up his report, the game warden and I were standing on my porch chatting about the extreme weather. I tell him we had been snowed in for a while and things were tough, I point at the moose head and remains, casually saying, we were out of meat and had to butcher one of my goats. He smiles and replies, yup I can see that, that’s all that was said about that moose. They got back on their snowmobiles and off they headed to the next ranch.
It was nice to see visitors, even if it was a short visit, it could get lonely up at my cabin. One time when I was craven a human conversation badly, I decided to ride to another ranch that was about 20 miles from my place, there was an old timer there who had settled here back in the 30’s, he was a pretty cool old cowboy. He had bought a small herd of cows in the prairies and drove them out to here, put up a claim and has been here ever since. He lived alone. When I knocked on his door he was having a nap on his couch and nearly fell off as he would hardly ever get visitors even in good weather times. He put coffee on and fed me while we chatted. I stayed for a few hours before I said it was time for me to head back, evening was coming on.
He thought it was too late and said I should stay the night. But I wanted to get on home and with the ground being snow-covered and a full moon coming up, it was like daylight and the ride would be easy. So I got up on my horse, called my pup and off we went, we got back after midnight and it was good to warm up. It was good to see someone. You know, sometimes I would randomly run into this old cowboy out and about, as our two ranches were bordering each other. We would ride along until we came to a water source. I would get a fire going and he would pull a coffee pot and the fixings out of his saddlebags and make coffee. We would relax, have a coffee, smoke a bit and visit. I think we both enjoyed these moments of companionship.
One time, just after I started working on the ranch, I had to journey to town on business, after taking care of my obligations, I headed back to the ranch and I arrived at the end of the road where there was a lodge I saw that the old cowboy was there loading up a wagon with supplies, he said he was heading in the next morning. He hoped I would travel with him, so I said sure. The lodge would put us up for the night in the bunkhouse. They always let us leave our vehicles at their place. When I bunked down for the night, I pulled off my 2 pairs of wool socks but then did a stupid thing and did not separate them. The morning temp was about -25 and I just pulled them socks on as I dressed, had breakfast and then hitched my horse to the oldtimers wagon and we headed out. About an hour out my feet began to hurt, It seemed my inner socks were still a bit damp from driving into the lodge in my truck with the heat on. The old cowboy stopped right away and built a big fire, had me remove my socks and we dried them by the fire. My feet looked pretty bad and as they began to warm up, they began to hurt, each time the pain was too bad, he would have me stick them in the snow. Eventually, they came back, my socks were put back on dry and warm and we headed on with our trip. If I had not been with this old cowboy, things could have been pretty bad. I felt like a real newb.
The lodge was pretty cool, the owner and his wife were awesome folks as were all their cowboys, the spread was a working dude ranch, people would come stay and get to do cowboy stuff, and they paid well to do this. The owner’s wife was a guide for these folks. She told me many tales about taking guests out. One tale had me laughing pretty hard. She used to buy large orders of fake arrowheads and seed the creeks around the ranch.
Then she would take the guests out looking for them when they would find them, she would say they were so lucky to find an arrowhead. The guests would take these trophies home and display them for all to see. She was a real hoot.
The fall is the time to get out hunting birds, like grouse, geese and ducks. When the geese would migrate in the fall, sometimes as many as 10,000 would stop in the meadow out front of my cabin. I would go out before daylight and quietly lay down at the edge of the meadow. It was flat and if I laid in the right spot, I could aim for head level, fire and bring many geese down with one shot from my marlin 35. I would wait till I could see before taking the shot. As soon as I shot, the geese would fly up in one huge flock, honking loudly and flying off. Laying in the field would be several geese, all shot through the head by the same bullet.
One fall day I was out hunting grouse, they were one of my favourite birds to eat. As I rounded a curve on the trail I was walking on, I spotted one up ahead, so I took aim with my 22 and was ready to fire, then I noticed that there was something wrong with this bird. Its wing appeared to be broken. I found that I could not shoot it now and spent the next ½ hour catching it. I took her home to my cabin and tried my damnedest to get her fixed up. Spent the night looking after her but in the morning, she passed on. I buried her gently and even shed a tear about it all. Funny how that works.
Later that winter, I was out moose hunting on a series of natural meadows not far from my cabin, the snow was so hard that I could walk on it without snowshoes. As I walked along, trying to make as little noise as possible on this crunching snow, I kept my eyes on the meadow edge looking for signs of moose, or perhaps a whitetail deer. Then all of a sudden, the snow in front of me exploded with a burst of noise and flapping wings flashing past my face. The whole event scared the crap right out of me, and I fell back, with my rifle going off. Turns out it was a pair of grouse that had been startled by the sound of my boots on the snow above. I found some pretty good humour in this and still laugh about it. The grouse will build tunnels in the meadow’s long grass that become trails for them to travel once the snow covers the meadows.
One summer day, I was asked to come down to the main ranch to construct a new outhouse for them. I built it out of logs and it was skookum. I had dug a new pit a few meters from the old one and used the dirt to fill in the old hole. Then I built a log deck over the part of the floor that was not over the pit hole. I covered this with boards. Next came the log structure and roof which I covered in tar paper. I then added a proper toilet seat for comfort. Like I said, it was pretty well built.
Later that night, the rancher’s daughter who was 13 went out to use the new outhouse before bed, i was in the kitchen having a hot drink before I hit the couch where I would sleep tonight, as it was too late to head back to my cabin. All of a sudden there was loud screaming coming from the outhouse. I ran out with my gun, thinking she was being attacked by a cougar or bear, as the scream was quite bloodcurdling. As I rounded the corner of the goat house, she was standing in front of the outhouse, shaking. I asked her what was wrong. She said something very cold had touched her butt while she was sitting on the seat. I took her lantern and looked down the hole and to my surprise, there was one of the milk goats down there and when she sat down, it had reached up and touched her butt with its very cold nose. From what I could figure out when I dug the hole, some roots were sticking out. I could see that the roots at the top of the hole had been chewed back but the roots lower down were still sticking out. The goat must have found the door open and seat up and thought the roots looked tasty. She must have been reaching for some of the deeper roots and fell in.
Damn but here was this momma goat looking up at me from the hole crying out for a rescue, it was the funniest thing I had seen in a long time, her looking up all forlorn-like. We tried to get her out through the hole but found it was just not working out. She was destined to stay in the hole all night. The next morning I had to disassemble the whole outhouse to remove her. Rebuilt the outhouse again and told everyone to put the seat cover down after use. The goat was pleased.
There was always lots of fencing to do on the ranch, cattle to feed, hay to put up, and cattle drives. It was like being in one of my Western books that I liked to read so much as a young man. The ranch was a big place and the fencing was only put around hay meadows, seemed by the time you had one meadow fencing repaired, another one needed work. There was a hay meadow about 6 km from my cabin that needed fence work. I was on my horse Dexter, a big horse, my favourite horse and had got off to open the gate, as I tried to lead him through the gate he refused to go in and as he was quite big, you could not pull him in if he said no. So I got up on his back to ride him in, he got to bucking and the next thing I knew I was on top of the fence, my ribs hurt like hell and all I saw was Dexter running in a gallop in the direction of the cabin. It was a long walk back with my ribs just killing me and Dexter was waiting for me, looking all worried about how I was going to react. I let him know how ticked I was as I struggled to remove the saddle with my sore ribs. I spent a few days healing and then took my other horse Penny back to the meadow, looking around the gate I could see signs of a grizzly bear and a recent bear scat, and figured out that the smell must have spooked Dexter.
Grizzlies could be dangerous, but there was another animal on the ranch that would always try to kill you. These were our mossyback bulls that would travel the backlands solo throughout the year, come fall, these bulls would service our herds. These guys always seemed to be in a bad mood. You could be just riding along, minding your own business when all of a sudden one of these guys would come crashing out of the forest, looking to gorge you and your horse. You always had to keep an eye out for these beasts.
Besides my horses, I had my pup Cody, a big malamute and wolf cross, he had been my companion all these years and he was a good friend, his mom was owned by my friends and I had been there the day he was born. I was completely taken by this pup and claimed him on the spot, he was the runt like I had been. But he grew up to be the biggest of the litter, at 6 weeks he came home with me and was only yet a youngster when we moved to the ranch. After four years on the ranch, he had become a bit wild and would disappear for days at a time, sometimes for more than a week, thinking he might have been running with the wolves as there were many around. I would go to sleep at night listening to them. We were both getting bushed, so my mind started to think that maybe it was time to head back to the world. It had been 4 years since I came to the ranch. It was spring. Perhaps we both had become a bit wild.
A few days later I saddled up Penny, packed up Dexter with my gear and we all headed to the main ranch where I informed the boss that it was time to head out, he was not happy but understood. Spent the night and in the morning I headed out, it was a day ride out to the lodge and the start of the road to Williams Lake. I left my horses with the lodge knowing they would be in good hands until a ranchhand could come by to collect them, loaded up my truck, and then Cody and I headed into Williams Lake to purchase some insurance for the truck so we could head back to the island and Campbell River.
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