Great Hunting Adventures
Volume I
Henry E. Prante
Published by Hella Prante for the Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 Hella Prante
ISBN: 978-0-9879219-1-8
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1: My First Hunt —and Almost My Last
Chapter 2: Coquihalla Goat Hunt
Chapter 3: Partners for Better or Worse
Chapter 4: Grouse: The Best Booby Prize
Chapter 6: Tatlayoko Lake Deer Hunt
Chapter 9: West Kootenay Safari: The Author's Jackpot
Chapter 10: Moose Hunt at Fish Lake
You are missed so much, Dad! You are always in our hearts and not forgotten! Our family has never been the same without you here. Love from Marilyn, Raymond, Wayne, Caressa, Monica, Michael, Hella &, wife, Brigitte, along with all the family in Germany as well!
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the accepted wisdom of all sportsmen and women who recognize that hunting is not an idle past time nor, God forbid, just a sport. Rather it is a love for the creatures of the wild and the fair chase that are important to any thinking hunter. In particular I would like to acknowledge all my partners who through the years I've had the pleasure to associate with and whose good company has helped to make the writing of these stories a labour of love. They are too numerous to name individually, but none are forgotten.
My special thanks go to Jim Railton and the late Ed Meade; both encouraged me in my early attempts to write about my hunting experiences. I also thank Will Dawson who patiently helped me understand the basics of writing in a "foreign language". Thanks also to Lorraine Harris, a colleague who has always been a most helpful, constructive critic.
~Henry E. Prante
Preface
A top-rate storyteller is rare and precious, at the pinnacle of literature. The good yarner is surpassed for some by the comedian and the clown, but the vivid story lingers longer. Such a teller of tales is Henry Prante. Prante lives in Port Coquitlam, a small city enfolded in the suburbs of the metropolis of Vancouver, British Columbia. "Poco," as the residents lovingly call their city, is a great jumping-off spot for game shooting in the wildlife-filled interior and northland of massive British Columbia.
"B.C." has lured thousands of would-be and frustrated hunters from all over the world, especially from the Germanic countries, where the standards for courteous, conservative hunting have been set and cherished for centuries. And B.C. lured Heinrich, now aka Henry, Prante in the early 1950's as a 23-year-old: he was drawn by the instinct that so many of us have been unable to resist, inherent in all men, handed down through millions of years of physical and social evolution.
I can’t name the exact year, but vividly recall meeting this powerfully built, intense, quiet outdoorsman during the early fifties at a fish and game convention of the "lower mainland" region of B.C. Prante (pronounced "Pranty") was a delegate for his own Port Coquitlam and District Fish and Game Club. Despite his temporary lack of command of English, he was outspoken on hunting ethics, a subject not too well appreciated in North America in those days.
As a career outdoors writer, one of my moonlighting jobs was freelance or ghost-editing for various outdoors journals. I was astounded a few years after seeing Prante at those early wildlife meetings, to be handed the chore of editing one of his articles on shooting. It needed some polishing, all right; most articles do. But, aside from the struggle he was so rapidly winning with English, the man had that golden touch of the teller of tales, something I believe we inherit, rather than develop, which smacks of the great musical and other artistic talents. Whether or not Mr. Prante is another Shakespeare or even only a Jack O'Connor, his pen fills my nostrils with the aroma of wood smoke, the sound of a clean river gripping a canoe paddle, the sight of sunrises and sparkling water, and the chill or warmth of blizzard or campfire.
Aside from the simple but vivid prose, there are no personal "secrets" in the author's neatly packaged shooting log. The stories appear chronologically, the earlier admitting to the faults we all showed when we started out, even an innocent brush with the law. His later hunts brought great rewards and some pointed conclusions about poachers or game hogs that Prante and partners encountered.
For those who enjoy the many aids to hunting, the author, without becoming technical, reports on trips in most kinds of watercraft and vehicle used for hunting. With him we live in motels, cabins and tents. Sometimes we share nights under the stars or in the high mountains with no shelter at all. Henry Prante in 1985 still is young. I'm confident he has many more stories in him. In fact, he just produced a similar book of B.C. tales in German and has been told it rapidly sold out over there. Let's hope we’ll read more of them.
~Lee Straight http://www.steelheadermag.com/lelandstraight.html
Introduction
Ever since I was old enough to read books and hunting literature it has been my dream to roam the trackless wilderness of Canada; to hunt wild game, to climb tall mountains and to paddle my own graceful canoe over clear waters teeming with fish and fowl. In 1952 that dream became reality when I moved to British Columbia from Germany with my family and established myself as a builder of boats and yachts. It was not easy to raise four children and to follow my dreams of exploring the British Columbia wilderness, photographing it, hunting and writing about it, at every given opportunity. Financially it was more difficult than I had imagined, but worked extra to scrape up the funds needed and I have no regrets.
For over 30 years now I have hunted in B.C. on countless trips through some of the finest hunting country the western world has to offer. I travelled by car, 4x4 truck, trail bike, horse, canoe or river boat, by aircraft and even freight train to reach my hunting ranges. I have climbed from sea level to the summits of sky-scraping mountains and have hunted every species of game this province has to offer.
It was tough going at times, hair-raising, even dangerous but it was all highly dramatic and beautiful. To find game was, of course, always the excuse to get away into the wilderness. To kill game was, of lesser importance unless I needed venison for the family. Perhaps I should confess that my hunting philosophy is really that of a livestock farmer who cares for his animals and culls his herd only to make a living or to protect the range and propagate only the best of his stock. Thus I have never been a trophy hunter. But I have, on occasion, killed trophy-sized game. My greatest reward of the hunt was always the unforgettable adventure of living on raw land, in harmony with nature or against all odds.
Who would not enjoy the view from the top of the Yalakom Mountains, or the Ashnola region’s glistening lakes where one can bump into a California bighorn ram, a mountain goat or mule deer among brilliant autumn colors reflected in mirror-shiny waters? Who would not enjoy living, if only for a brief span, in the swamp and water world of the Atlin region where the largest of our moose roam, where mountain caribou and stone sheep often stand etched against an azure sky in unbelievably sharp detail? And who would not enjoy a trip along the turning and twisting Coquihalla River as it winds its tortuous course through deep canyons gleaming like molten silver in the light of a harvest moon? Who would not love to ride a sure-footed saddle horse and feel at one with nature?
These are unforgettable experiences for me, bound together by the companionship of good partners. Indeed, when others stop along our crowded highways to stare at nature, it is the hunter who truly lives the experience as he sits near a game trail and waits for his quarry. He sees the life and death experience in true perspective. He might observe a grizzly grazing in a meadow or digging for marmots or hear the bugle of a rutting bull elk; the dry cough of a bull moose. He goes to sleep with the chorus of timber wolves singing him a lullaby, yet he also knows that the song probably means death for some creature unlucky enough to cross the wolves.
I suppose I am a sentimentalist because these are the things I crave most. Of course, I have killed plenty of game but I never was wasteful and our family and friends ate the meat. I could never bear to see someone discard a killed animal. Whenever a moose or other big game animal was too far to transport for salvage, it was left to go its way.
I have always worked hard and spared no expense to recover my game to ensure that it had not died in vain. My trophy wall does not show the bragging-size horns and antlers of prime breeding stock, simply because I always wish to return to find the woods and wildlife healthy and plentiful.
Times have changed since my early hunting days. Good hunting partners have died or faded away; new partners have come along and they too have greatly contributed to my enjoyment of the great outdoors. Sometimes, though, things did not work out as well as they might have. Still, to give an accurate account of what hunting in British Columbia is all about I have included such experiences. To avoid embarrassment I have changed the names of some of those involved because it has never been my style to ridicule or belittle a friend no matter how deserving said friend might have been. If my revelations do cause someone discomfort, I apologize because it is not intended.
~Henry E. Prante
1952
In the late fall of 1952 I had my first hunting adventure in British Columbia. As a descendant of an old, German ship-building family, on my mother's side, and farming-hunting stock on my father's, I was happy to be in Vancouver where I was close to both sea and forest. It is hardly surprising, too, that I should have thought of combining boating with hunting.
It was only a matter of time before I learned that deer roamed the coastal islands. I built myself a small boat and saved enough for a Mod. 98 k army surplus rifle. When hunting season came, a friend loaned me a single barrel break action shotgun. Of course, I had already purchased a $12 Alien-Resident hunting licence and two deer tags for 50¢ each. I was ready... or so I thought.
Chapter 1: My First Hunt —and Almost My Last
The clear waters of Howe Sound were mirror smooth and the November sun had just sunk behind the snow dusted mountains of the Sechelt Peninsula. For the third time my little outboard motor began to stutter for no apparent reason. Luckily, when it quit I was within a few hundred yards of the rocky shores of an island.
"Only a quarter-mile to go," I thought, "That’s not bad. I'll row to shore and there, somehow, I'll fix that troublesome engine because if I can't I'll have to row all the way back to Garrow Bay."
Alone in the boat, I silently took stock of my situation. I checked the supplies that would have to last me until I returned home: a little butter and a few slices of bread and cheese - leftovers from my lunch. When I'd set out I hadn't thought I would need anything else.
But that had been in the morning, at first light. That morning I had many happy thoughts. It was wonderful to putter on the smooth ocean and inhale the pungent salt air, to feel the breeze on my face. I don't suppose any captain on the 7 seas were ever happier than I was at that moment. The high mountains of the Coast Range glistened with the first white of winter. Not a cloud marred the beauty of the deep blue sky. But then the waters of the Pacific Ocean began to play tricks on me. A wind came up from nowhere and a half hour later the sea was suddenly so rough that I made little headway. Large waves rolled towards me, their foamy tops hissing as they passed under the keel. I contemplated turning back then, but didn’t dare for fear of capsizing.
About 10 a.m. the motor had stalled for the first time and I was forced to row for an hour to keep from being swamped.
Throughout the day the wind continued to play tricks on me. When it finally subsided I had drifted, rowed or motored so close to an island that I could no longer consider turning about. I had no maps or charts of the area, not even a compass. "Why would I need that stuff?" I’d thought before leaving home. "All those islands are plainly visible. You can't get lost on little old Howe Sound."
When the motor had quit for the second time the sun was starting to set. After many pulls that frayed the starter rope it fired up one more time. I looked up from my labours then and noticed some white cliffs on my starboard beam where a half dozen chubby seals and a colony of cormorants eyed me curiously - surely wondering why I had cursed so loudly. Watching them, I had made some progress towards shore before the sun set and the engine finally quit for good.
I started rowing towards land then, thinking that I would have to spend the night somewhere and wondering how that was to be done. "There must be a hollow tree here," I thought, "If there's not, I'll have to build a little shelter of some kind, make a big fire and enjoy it all." Aside from shelter, my main concern was for my wife and two-year-old daughter at home who would wait up for me and worry.
Suddenly I heard a human voice. I turned around to see where it came from and saw the outline of a cabin among the trees on shore. Blue smoke drifted from a chimney and on the beach of the little bay stood a man who continued to call out to me. I was surprised. I had not expected the island to be inhabited. I aimed the boat for the man on the beach. As I got closer I could see that he was elderly. "What are you looking for?" he called.
My command of the English language was not nearly as good as it should have been and I had to formulate an answer rather slowly. Meanwhile, I reached the beach, where the old man grabbed the painter and dragged the boat onto solid ground. Then he saw the guns lying in the boat. "Are you a hunter?" he asked.
I nodded.
He tied the boat to a large chunk of beached driftwood, muttered something about "tides" and said that they would not come high enough overnight to take my boat away.
"When I saw you coming I put on the kettle. Coffee ought to be ready now. Bring your gear and come on in." Then he just turned and walked towards the cabin. I followed. The house was brown. Its paint was peeling in a few spots and a little black and white dog sat on the door sill, growling. "That's Patsy," said my host, "she helps me pass the time around here."
The cabin was simply furnished, but very clean and cozy. In the old-fashioned woodstove crackled a warming fire and before I knew it a steaming cup of coffee was thrust into my hands. Only when I drank it did I realize how cold I had been. I still shivered.
The old man introduced himself. Alvin was his name and he said that I was lucky to have found him here.
"Usually I live on the other side of the bay. This is just a summer camp and I'm caretaker for absent owners. I used to be a miner, at Britannia, but now I'm retired and live on the island all year around." He wrinkled his brow and shook his. "I’ve never seen anyone in such a small boat come over here from the mainland. Certainly not this time of year anyhow. This sound is not a duck pond, you know. When the Squamish wind blows not even the water taxi from Horseshoe Bay will come out to bring my groceries."
The old man continued to talk, never waiting for an answer to his questions. After the introductions I hardly said anything. Apparently, he had not had a chance to speak to anyone for some time. And while he was always polite, he was not entirely complimentary. He constantly berated me in the third person. He lamented someone's” ignorance “ for crossing deep and potentially dangerous waters in a little “bucket", for being dumb. But despite the old man’s peculiarities, I did have the feeling that I was most welcome.
"Where had you planned to sleep, huh? Maybe outside in the cold? Under a tree maybe? Only a dummy will sleep under a tree. I have two soft, warm beds in here - you stay, eh?"
"I’ll manage," I said. "No, you won't!" came his surprisingly strong contradiction.
I was puzzled by this man, but considering my alternatives I agreed with him and thanked him for his invitation. Meanwhile it grew dark outside. Through the kitchen window I enjoyed a great view of the sea, the twinkling lights of Horseshoe Bay and the moving navigational lights of boats and ships. A brilliantly lit ferry steamed across the sound on a westward course. I thought it was the Black Ball ferry on its way to Gibson’s or Nanaimo.
The old man began to fumble with a gas lantern, something I had never seen before. He pumped pressure into the tank, held a burning match near the white globe and with a sudden "plop" filled the whole room with yellow, hissing light. "Suppertime," he said. He put more wood on the fire and set a few pots on the stove. "There isn’t a hell of a lot to eat around here," he said with a grin. "The water taxi should have come day before yesterday. But for now it's enough. If you shoot a deer in the morning we’ll have plenty of fresh meat anyway, eh?”
He paused for a moment and then looked at me with the sorry, dead-serious face of an undertaker. "You do know how to shoot a deer?"
"Of course," I lied. "Heard there were lots of deer on Gambier Island."
"Gambier?" the old man scratched his head. "You don't have to go there. We have enough of them right here."
I must have looked puzzled because he spoke again. "You think you’re on Gambier Island?" "Yeah, where else could I be?"
"On Anvil Island, my boy. You sure did get turned around, didn't you?" Alvin grinned now as if he had heard a good joke. "We don't have as many deer as Gambier, but there are enough for you to practise on. Sure hope you don't foul up, though, otherwise we might get kinda hungry."
I felt like a complete fool then. Where and when did I get off course? I recalled having crossed what I took to be a huge bay where the wind pushed me around considerably. As I sat watching the old man cook our dinner and smelled the good food, I was as embarrassed as a teenager without a driving license; but I was still glad to be on the island, even if it was the wrong one.
"God knows if there is such a warm, friendly place with a resident cook on that damn Gambier Island," I thought, trying as best I could to hide my embarrassment.
While the old man cooked Irish stew he asked what kind of trouble I had with the motor. I didn't know that either, in fact I had no earthly idea how I was going to make it run again.
"I’m not a mechanic," I said. "The friend who lent me the motor assured me it would run perfectly, that it was in first class condition."
"Sure, people always say that," my new friend ventured, "but have you got tools to fix it?"
"No," I answered truthfully, but withheld my original thought - "I don’t know anything about outboards. With tools I might make things worse rather than better." "I’ll lend you some tools in the morning," he offered. This stew was very tasty. The old man had served boiled potatoes with it, some vegetables and a bottle of beer for each of us. He said it was the last beer he had in the house.
I didn’t really know how to express my gratitude towards him. He was the most generous person I had met since coming to Canada. After dinner I continued to worry about my wife. She had not been happy to see me go alone into what she only too rightly perceived to be raw wilderness. "She must think I’ve drowned, or that I've a broken leg, or that some wild animal has eaten me. In the morning she'll call the police for sure. Someone is going to come looking for my remains sometime."
My thoughts were suddenly interrupted by Patsy’s low growl. The old man, said, "Yup, there'll be some deer on the point in the morning. When Patsy acts like this, it means deer are sneaking past the house. They love to go where the bush is not too thick. At the point is the best feeding area for them on the whole island. But don’t you miss, you hear! I see the barometer is falling like crazy. There's another storm on its way. You'll have to stay a while longer. So, if you want to eat well, bring me a deer."
The barometer was accurate in its prediction. When the old man woke me in the morning it was still dark. A strong wind buffeted the house and rattled the window panes; sometimes it blew smoke back out of the stove.
While we ate breakfast I looked out at the sound. Our bay looked calm enough, but farther out the sea was capped in the now familiar white. As daylight grew stronger it seemed the water was boiling. As far as I could see there was only black water and snowy foam.
The old man grinned. "What did I tell you, eh? It's no day for boating. Just go out, get your deer and then we'll see what happens."
I had no choice in the matter. In any event, I did want to hunt and experience the romance of it all. I wanted to try my rifle on real game and not just paper targets.
"How will it perform?" I pondered, "How will I? I don't want to become even more of a laughing stock than I am now."
The coast or Columbian black-tailed deer, Odocoileus hemionus columbianus, is a close cousin to the larger mule deer of the B.C. mainland. This much I had read about the species I was about to hunt. I knew that deer are good swimmers and thus populate most islands of the Pacific coast of North America. I knew that they have few natural enemies on the smaller islands, but that they do sometimes outstrip their food supply. I also knew that deer love to browse on all kinds of berry shrubs, vine maple, hazelnut and mountain ash, as well as on dogwood, cedar, hemlock and fir; and that one of their favourite foods is mistletoe.
As I walked out of the cabin, I sincerely hoped my knowledge would help me bag a good buck.
I loaded my rifle and set out to hunt. The island was quite rocky and in places densely covered with underbrush. New to Canada, I did not recognize most floras. I knew that B.C. trees supplied excellent lumber, although in the raw wild I couldn’t tell one species from another. Most of them simply looked like overgrown Christmas trees to me.
But I didn't have to walk through much of the unidentified forest. Just 100 yards from the cabin I saw my first deer. It was a buck, too. He stood on a pile of rocks looking toward two fat does that browsed on some bushes. Remembering the old man's advice I simply aimed the rifle and fired. The buck dropped as if hit by a sledge hammer, the does fled in leaps and bounds for heavy cover.
I got excited. My God was I nervous. I stumbled and fell a few times, skinning my shins as I made my way to the fallen buck. There I stood in awe of what I'd done. Such a beautiful creature. In my excitement I hadn't noticed that the old man had followed me. He suddenly laid a hand on my shoulder to congratulate me- -and I nearly jumped out of my boots.
"Not a bad shot," he said as he examined the animal. "Not bad at all. You didn't spoil an ounce of meat. Well, at least you can shoot, huh? For lunch we'll have fried liver 'n boiled spuds."
The whole carcass weighed no more than 100 pounds. The buck's antlers were smallish and had only three short tines on each beam.
"No great trophy, this," I thought.
The old man must have read my mind. "Don't worry about them horns," he said, "we can’t eat them anyway."
The old man did not waste time. He had his knife out and dressed the carcass quickly. Together we dragged the buck to the woodshed and hung him to cool. I was duly impressed with such quick work and glad that he had done it — in fact, he had shown me what I didn't know without making me expose my ignorance further. I really liked and appreciated that guy.
After we enjoyed the liver at lunch, I tried to get the old man to help me with the motor repair. He shook his head.
"Nope, don't know anything about those things either. But I’ll get you the tools. You have plenty of time now, "you'd never make it home today anyway."
Four full days I fooled around on that damn motor until suddenly sputtered back to life. I didn't know why the engine ran again, unless the little plug of matted material I had pulled from the gas line had been my problem all along. The old man seemed to think so. Anyway, it now purred like a kitten. It was only an 11/2 h.p. motor and at the best of times it would give the boat a top speed of perhaps 2 1/2 knots.
During the four days I'd worked on the engine, the old man just watched me from his kitchen window. At meal times, he served good food and was friendly. He had heard the engine fire up and run and when I came inside to clean up he had a stack of papers lying on the table. There were charts and a booklet filled with graphs and tables. I didn't understand any of it. He pointed at the book. "Eh, kid, you can’t leave here before tomorrow morning; — 10 a.m. at the earliest. You’ll have to go with the tide, or the current will take you all the way up the sound to Britannia Beach or Squamish."
I didn't really have a clue where these places were in relation to where we were, but he showed me on the charts and explained how tides would influence my journey. I became worried but I was determined to get home.
The next morning I was packed up early. I left half the buck for the old man and promised to speak to the captain of the water taxi to bring him his supplies in a hurry. The old man shook his head.
"It’s better you wait for the taxi yourself," he said. "When he comes — any time now — will take you and your boat home."
Considering I am a hard-headed Kraut, I no longer wanted to listen to the old man. I just felt I had to go home. During the past days I had seen some big boats cruising the sound; I was certain they were searching for me. At that moment, as if to strengthen my determination, a small float plane droned over the island on course for Gambier. Way out on the water I could see the odd whitecap glisten. From a distance the water did not look very dangerous.
"The barometer is still falling," warned the old man. "The real storm is still coming! If you leave now you will likely never get home again."
The old man was sincerely concerned for me. He didn't help me to launch the boat on what he thought was a dangerous mission. As I thanked him one last time for his generosity and started the engine, he stood quietly in front of the cabin and shook his balding head. Patsy barked as if she too wanted me to stay. Yes, they were my good friends indeed.
I had charted my homeward course quietly and only in my mind. I wanted to travel as far as I could in the lee of the island and then follow the shoreline of Gambier Island toward Bowen Island and the ferry route. From there I only had to cross over to Garrow Bay. If the weather got really bad, I trusted that one of the ferries might help out. Not wanting to be laughed at, I had told the old man nothing of this scheme.
The first mile was easy. The seas were calm. Then, as I neared Gambier's shore, the boat began a wild dance. I looked back and momentarily forgot to breathe. Uncountable rows of whitecaps threatened to overtake and overturn me. I searched the shore for a safe haven. All was rocky and rough and the surf battered itself into atoms of white spray.
The little engine purred away. Even at full throttle it did not get excited or give more speed. Each following wave gave me a push that threatened to capsize the boat.
"The damn thing's gonna flip!" I thought.
In desperation I was forced to steer a violently erratic course. Some waves were six feet tall. Foam blew about my head. Spray slopped into the boat. Because I had covered all my gear with my raincoat I got drenched. As each wave passed under the keel it would hold the boat for a moment before slamming it into the trough. The old man's words were constantly running through my mind: "You'll never make it, my boy."
I thought of my wife, my small daughter, Hella. "What will happen to them in this wild land without me and any other relatives from Germany here?" I started to pray and I steered like a robot. Straight ahead…. hard to port…. straight ahead again. A great wave suddenly sloshed over the stern and I found myself sitting in water. Water sloshed about my feet as the boat's floorboards floated about. Splasssshh. Another big wave came aboard. The motor sputtered badly, its' spark plug wet. After a couple of long seconds it calmed down and went back to a steady purr. Despairing, I jumped amid ships and grabbed for the oars. The boat rode the sea much better now and when I found that the motor stayed on a straight course, I bailed the boat with one hand while manipulating an oar with the other. Somehow I got rid of most of the bilge water.
I didn't know how many hours had passed since I left Anvil Island. I realized that I was now in the ferry lanes - but where were the ferries? Then the motor stopped. The fuel tank was empty and needed refilling. I had enough gasoline with me, more than enough to get me home; the problem was getting it into the tank. I balanced precariously on the stern seat and poured more gas into the ocean than into the tank. Because the water splashed wildly about, I couldn't prevent a few sips of salt water from getting into the tank.
I drifted broadside to the big waves and was unable to prevent it. I recall being surprised that I did not capsize immediately. The boat rolled like a drunken sailor in the gutter of skid road, but hardly any water came over the sides. For an hour I tried to restart the engine. No luck. It wouldn't fire up. Then a wave splashed over the port gunwale and I bailed like a madman. All my gear floated about in the bilge and got in the way of the bailing can. I was wet to the skin and feeling like hypothermia had set in. As I looked up momentarily to bring the boat back on course I saw it: salvation. Or so I prayed.
A large blue-grey boat came out of the narrows from the west as if it had followed me. It flew the Canadian flag. It was a police boat. But as I watched, even this big ship had its' own troubles; it fought the seas like a free-style swimmer. In the cabin I saw the silhouette of the pilot at the helm.
"In a moment he'll see me. He must see me. Please mister looks this way!"
I stood up in spite of the rolling motion and waved at him. I yelled too. As suddenly as it had come the police boat turned and headed for Horseshoe Bay. They hadn't seen me!
In a wild panic I grabbed the shotgun, poured the water out of its' barrel, loaded it and fired a signal shot into the air. The boat continued on its course. They hadn't heard the shot.
I loaded a second shell - buckshot - aimed straight at the boat and fired. I thought I could hear the lead strike the cabin, but the boat steamed on. I was devastated and felt totally abandoned to the mercy of the sea."This is what it feels like to prepare to die," I thought. Then, out of utter frustration, I gave the starter rope one more violent pull.
Ra-ta-ta-ta-tat. The damn thing started again as if nothing had had been wrong. I was alone on the wild sea, but I had the power to go somewhere. Letting the motor run on its’ own, I worked with both oars to help it out. Leaning into the oars my fighting spirit returned.
I watched the seas like a hawk now and aimed to miss the largest waves by trying to brake the oar to let one pass ahead of me or by rowing like hell to get out from under one. At times I thought my back would break, and the boat still rolled as if it wished to tip over.
Stop. Go. Stop. Go. I don't recall how long I rowed like a robot. The waves became suddenly smaller and finally in the lee of a point of land the sea calmed completely. It took some time to comprehend this miracle. When I turned about to look I saw the entrance of Garrow Bay before me. I steered for the nearest float and tied up to it. Then I stumbled on numb feet to shore. On a driftwood stump I sat down and with stiff fingers rolled a cigarette.
"Finally. Safe. I'll get home after all!" This is all I thought while I sat and smoked.
When I carried my gear ashore the marina operator came to meet me. He asked me who I was.
"Jesus Christ, man!" he almost choked, when I told him who I was. "We've searched the whole week for you. Where the hell were you?"
He shook his head when I said Anvil Island. "What, in this weather?"
Through chattering teeth I told him what had happened. He led me into his home to warm up and call the authorities.
Of course, I never told him or anyone else that I had shot at that police boat. That part of the story was my secret, until now.
Finally came the hardest part of the whole hunting trip. I called my wife.
1955
This story requires some explanation because, in addition to describing mountain goat hunting, this story was also my first endeavour in outdoor writing. After the hunt described on the following pages, I made a careless remark to my partner about a hunting story I'd read, and boasted, "I can probably do better than that myself."
I should have known better. Despite the fact that I was still on "fighting" terms with the English language, my partner urged me to write about the goats of the Coquihalla. Later, when I met Jim Railton of The Northwest Sportsman and mentioned that I didn't think there was enough educational material being published for greenhorn hunters, he suggested I give the writing business a try. Well I did, and here it is.
Chapter 2: Coquihalla Goat Hunt
It was during my hunting "apprenticeship" that the late Rudy Schultheiss and I decided to try mountain goat hunting. With our eagerness to learn, coupled with our unbridled enthusiasm, we often took some hard knocks. On more than one occasion our Canadian-born friends laughed until they cried over our ignorance and innocence. One friend used to say quite openly, “You and Rudy have rocks in your heads." Maybe so, but how could we learn anything without trying? There was no such thing as a hunter training course or manual. We read everything we could about hunting and, therefore, unfortunately, learned a lot of nonsense. Even as late as 1955 it wasn't always easy to distinguish between fact and fiction; thus we had decided to rely on information from friends and acquaintances rather than books. But even these sources often led us astray.
One September evening in 1955 Rudy knocked at my door to say that he had finally found a good place to hunt goats. He was excited, as he usually was when planning a hunt.
"Where did you hear about this place?'' I asked.
"I heard about it from Albert. Albert said there are plenty of goats. And I know how we can get there."
"Albert? Albert who?"
"The prospector. You know him. He's Bill Richardson's friend and used to prospect in his younger years. Albert knows every mountain in B.C., before prospecting he worked in bridge construction, for the railway. Yesterday he told me everything we need to know." Rudy grinned as if he had won the Irish Sweepstake. "Hey! Are you listening?"
I most certainly was listening. I knew Albert — a nice fellow, a real gentleman. And Bill Richardson had made my brand-new 30-06 Mauser for me. He was a reputable sort and quite well known in hunter circles.
"There's no road into the mountains Albert told me about, but there is a little-known rail line," said Rudy. "It's called the Kettle Valley Line. Belongs to the C.P.R. We can go hunting by train. What do you think? Wanna go this coming weekend?"
"And Albert told you exactly how to get there?"
"Sure did. He said we could shoot the goats right off the railway tracks, no problem."
Rudy's story sounded too good to be true but I couldn’t turn down this trip. So I started planning too. Both of us had seen goats before, but only from a distance. Each time we began a hunt, the goats were on top of some awfully tall mountains, and you could only reach them with field glasses. I had some theoretical knowledge about goats. I knew they weren’t related to the domestic goat, but rather to the antelope. According to Game Department figures, B.C. contained about 100,000 of them, scattered about the mountain ranges of the province. From the U.S. border to the Yukon, goats can be found. But whether a hunter was lucky enough to bag one would depend on a few trifling facts, such as his own physical condition, determination, ability to shoot well, and lastly, his ration of luck.
I had also read some goat literature by the late Grancel Fitz of Boone and Crocket Club fame, in which he expressed the view that Rocky Mountain goats are probably the most dangerous game. He wrote that a big ‘billy’ could, under the right conditions, fight a grizzly and win. I have since met folks who claim to have witnessed such a duel and maintain that they saw a ‘billy’ push a bear right off a cliff. I am still skeptical about this particular story, but my subsequent experience confirmed that Grancel Fitz knew a lot about goats and the dangerous mountain environment they inhabit. The hunter has only to slip once, just as a good friend of mine did — George Hoy of Richmond, B.C. — to meet a tragic end.
The day Rudy and I outfitted ourselves to hunt the goats of the Coquihalla Pass we had no real idea of the dangers that lay ahead of us. But while we were complete greenhorns, I would take any bet that the Canadian Pacific Railway and the majestic mountains along the Coquihalla River never saw more dedicated hunters. Needless to say, we didn't stay ‘green’ for long — at the end of our adventure we were black and blue from the bumps and bruises of experience.
The following weekend we packed our gear into my old Ford sedan and drove to the C.P.R. station in downtown Vancouver to take the train to Iago. Iago was the magic place we were told. A section crew was stationed there and the crew members would show us where the goats were. Maybe we just daydreamed too long on our drive to the train station or outright miscalculated our travel time, but we got stuck in heavy weekend traffic and missed the train.
"That's alright," said the ever optimistic Rudy. "We can just drive the car to Hope and catch the train there. It's only 100 miles to Hope- we can catch that train if you step on it." Knowing that there was only one passenger train a day making the Kettle Valley trip, I agreed to Rudy's plan.
We drove off in pursuit of that train. Luckily, we weren’t caught for speeding. But when we arrived in Hope we saw only the tail lights of the train. It was gone.
We were standing outside the station building discussing what to do with our weekend, when a railway worker who had overheard our conversation recommended that we drive to the next station.
"It's called Othello. The train has to travel up a fairly steep grade with lots of curves, but the road up there isn't too bad. And it's only six miles. I'm sure you can make it." Into the car and away we went. It was obviously not the intelligent thing to do - racing a train along a strange gravel road in the dark- and we knew it. But we were, as I've said, dedicated and determined and perhaps a bit nuts to boot.
Just as we reached the station the three heavy diesels crawled into view. Rudy grabbed the stop flag from the station building, stood on the tracks and waved according to the instructions posted on the station wall. The train stopped. "All we need to do now is to outsmart those goats," I crowed. Two minutes later the train pulled out again - and left us standing there. No one had opened a door for us.
A superstitious person would have quit that goat hunt right then. We, however, were not superstitious. We just wanted to go hunting and nothing else would do. But first, Rudy planned to return to Hope and make a formal complaint to the C.P.R.
"Schweinerei!" he yelled in his Swiss-German dialect.
"Too lazy to open the doors for fare-paying passengers. That conductor must’ve been sleeping already. I'll let them know how I feel about the way they run their railroad!"
When we arrived back in Hope the station building was empty but the waiting room was open. "Okay," Rudy said, "guess we'll just camp right here until the station master comes back. Give me a hand with our gear so we can cook a good supper. I’m starving.
At about 6 a.m. when the station master showed up again, ready to throw us out. "What do you think this is… a gypsy camp? Out you go!"
A noisy and heated debate followed. There was, first of all, Rudy's "Schwyzer-deutsch." Then the Italian dialect of the railway man, finally my own mix of low German and English. When the dust finally settled, the poor railroader sat between us on a bench, drank a cup of our coffee and promised to put us aboard the next freight bound for Penticton.
"In two hours, fellows. It's a long train and will take all day to get you to the Coquihalla Pass, but if you want go hunting that badly - sure, you can have a ride. I just wish I could come along with you."
It was a wonderful arrangement all around. Who wouldn't jump at the chance to ride a big locomotive?
Once aboard we discovered that all of the 35 miles to Iago were uphill. We could almost have walked as fast as the train moved along the winding tracks above the Coquihalla River. There were tunnels galore and snow sheds and bridges that seemed as fragile as spider webs crossing deep gorges and valleys. Our train was like a caterpillar crawling up straight rock faces. I felt nauseated looking into the abyss of the deep canyon. On this stretch, the engineer said, the train had to climb from sea level to about 3,000 feet - - the steepest rail grade anywhere on the North American continent.
Towards evening, the train reached Iago. The engineer said it would be too much trouble to stop the train and get it started again so we just grabbed our few things and jumped off.
Iago consisted of one house containing a C.P.R. office, a few small sheds, a work train that stood on a siding, and a small private home that belonged to an elderly Chinese watchman, Mr. Wong.
It was a friendly place. The section crew even extended an invitation to camp in their train or in an empty boxcar, but we were happy to pitch our tent. After we rolled out the bedrolls and cooked dinner, Mr. Wong arrived to say hello.
He was extremely polite and seemed to enjoy a certain special status among the crew. Most of them were of Italian or Portuguese ancestry, with names like Antonio, Guiseppe, Alfredo, Fernando and Mario — names they casually bandied about in a chaos of dialects. But Mr. Wong was always Mister Wong.
For 30 years Mr. Wong had lived in Iago. He told us, as well as he could in his own version of English, that he had already "shot all goats dead."
"Goats gone. Grizzly all gone too." He grinned and added, "I shoot all."He showed us his rifle that had done the damage. It was a Savage.
We enjoyed trying to understand Mr. Wong. Someone told us that he had come to Canada as a young man and arrived in Iago directly from China. He had not had the opportunity to learn the English language as well as he might have, but he was a proud and successful hunter, eager to chat about his exploits.
Under any other circumstances we would have enjoyed this visit tremendously. But after we had come such a long way with so much difficulty, Mr. Wong's disclosures about rid ding the area of game did not raise our spirits. We looked at each other and shrugged.
"What now?" I asked.
Everyone we talked to in the section crew had a different opinion. Finally, the section boss came and said that he knew a spot where two American hunters had killed goats some time earlier.
"How far from here?" we asked.
"Four miles," said another fellow. He was a watchman and had to patrol the tracks ahead of the trains and ensure no trees, rocks or other avalanche material would cause accidents. His work took him over the four miles to Romeo.
"One of you can come with me tonight," he offered. "It's almost a full moon, so I can show you the area. We'll take the speeder."
Rudy was tired, but urged me to go check it out anyway. So, at 11 p.m. we set off. It was a long four miles. I soon discovered that my new "friend" hadn't asked me along out of kindness alone: he only had a hand-operated speeder and wanted someone to help him push the peculiar contraption uphill. So while my friend rode in the back seat, I pumped the driver-bar back and forth to move the speeder - which was far from fast.
In our hour's ride we crossed many bridges that didn’t even have planks between the tracks - an eerie experience that made me fear a rapid descent through the crystal clear atmosphere. We entered many tunnels where water dripped constantly from the black ceilings. The night was clear and warm. A pale moon climbed above the ridge on our right and the Coquihalla River glinted like solid silver in the moonlight. It was flowing far below us but we could still hear the rush of turbulent waters. From behind, my friend "entertained" me with stories of huge avalanches that would sometimes, without warning, thunder onto the racks and derail trains - and speeders, I assumed.
Near Romeo we reached the end of my guide's territory. We dismounted, lifted the speeder off the tracks and waited for the passenger train from Vancouver. By then it was midnight.
For light we had one old, smelly coal oil lantern that illuminated our immediate surroundings. After the passenger train rumbled past we moved the speeder back on the track, facing homeward.
Clickety-clack, clickety-clack. Without effort we began to roll, faster and faster. My friend let go of the driver-bar and the wooden beast that I had pushed up the mountain came alive. No train could have travelled at our speed - it would have jumped the rails for certain. I guessed that we were travelling faster than 30 miles per hour. The first tunnel came at us like the dark throat of a medieval dragon ready to swallow us forthwith. Instantly we were wet, as if someone had aimed a water hose at us. On the first curve I leaned toward the mountain side of the track, but our wheels squealed too much and my new friend called, "Lean the other way, eh. She goes faster."
I clung tighter to my seat and prayed that we wouldn't jump the rails. Calick, calick, click, click, click, ratatatatatat. Over the bridge! Shush. Past the first waterfall. My eyes were squeezed shut, but I felt the cold breath and the fine spray of the water. I wondered what would happen if we jumped track on one of the bridges. Would anybody find us? "Wer reitet so schnell durch Nacht und Wind?"
"Who rides so fast through night and wind?" I thought about that famous poem "Erlkloenig" by Friederich Von Schiller.
Rudy was sleeping soundly when I crawled into my sleeping bag. I shivered like a frightened puppy dog. "Thank God," I thought. "I'll never have to do that again." Then I dreamt all night of a circus that featured me roller skating on a tightrope. When the section boss awoke us it was 5:30 a.m. and I was drenched with sweat. "Hey! You guys wanna ride to Romeo?" he asked.
"A ride? What kind of ride?" I asked.
He laughed. "Don't worry, we'll take the car and we won't go fast either. We'll have to check the tracks for loose ties and rails and replace nails."
I had to assume that my night watchman friend had told his boss of the fun he'd had with me. Right after breakfast we drove off. It was uncanny but in daylight the grade looked even more sinister. A half-hour later we got off to begin our hunt.
The crew boss pointed to the other side of the canyon, to a high mountain and said "There, that's the place." To reach the spot indicated we would have to descend into the canyon, cross the Coquihalla on a fallen log, and then climb.
While we fought our way through bushes and over boulders Rudy decided to share some of his goat "knowledge" and “expertise” with me. He'd read somewhere that a goat hunter must always approach his game from above, since goats can out climb anyone or anything. When goats detect danger they immediately move uphill. Rudy went on to explain that "when goats see a hunter above them, they'll come right to him."
In later years I learned that this was a theory only. I learned too, that a hunter should always be certain a goat is actually present before setting out to hunt. These days I refuse to climb through thorns, devil's club, alder thickets and thistles, or over still-moving rock slides for thousands of feet, if I haven’t already spotted a goat from below.
The day of our first goat hunt promised to be hot. The September sun burned down from a clear sky. By noon the rocks threw back heat. When we found a trickle of water in a ravine we were attacked by hordes of flies and mosquitoes.
They defended that water with their very lives, practically driving us the rest of the way uphill. At 3 p.m. we reached the summit plateau where a constant breeze kept the devils in check.
The spot we reached was above timberline and almost bare. There was some grass, low-stemmed juniper bushes and knee-high blueberry bushes. Two glass-clear ponds glistened in the sun. They were quite shallow and surrounded by a ten-foot wide strip of soft mud. There we found our first footprints.
Rudy studied these with considerable interest. Some prints were quite fresh but disappointed us all the same - deer tracks. We were surprised by the fact that deer would roam in what we thought was mountain goat country. I wondered how they could reach such a high plateau.
While Rudy poked about in the muck I opened our pack to help myself to some food. Then I had another surprise. Rudy had re-packed our gear while I was "scouting" the terrain with the night watchman. He had figured we would be back in Iago for supper and so had only packed a few sandwiches. But now we were at least seven miles from our well-filled grub box and I was hungry enough to chew on a live bear.
Suddenly, Rudy was running back to me and the rifle he had left laying beside the pack. He had followed the tracks halfway around the first pond. Now he grabbed his 7mm Brno and motioned for me to be quiet.
"Grizzly bear," he murmured. "Smoking-fresh tracks!" "Mr. Wong told us they were all dead," I replied as quietly.
"Maybe you saw black bear tracks."
"Not likely," he said. "Those tracks are as big as frying pans and there's a pile of droppings, still steaming." He insisted that I too view his find. Yes, indeed, Rudy was right. From then on we were quite careful. Our rifles remained loaded and ready to shoot at all times.
Meanwhile, the sun had travelled on a fair way towards setting time. Even though we did not speak about it, we were both resigned to spending the night on the mountain - we knew we had to if we wanted a chance at bagging a goat. Hard on the mountain's eastern side we found a small snowfield next to a huge juniper and a few broken remnants of scrub pine. The juniper was at least 30 feet in diameter and its branches could serve us as mattresses, the scrub would make good firewood. After we collected some wood and made our beds ready, we left the pack behind and went hunting.
Rudy, who liked to store all kinds of odds and ends in the pack, remarked that we'd be able to cook ourselves a goat liver in foil "complete with salt and pepper." Fresh liver certainly sounded good: I was eating handfuls of wild blueberries, but still couldn't seem to fill my stomach.
I thought a great deal about the saying, "A hungry hunter is a better hunter" and can now vouch for its validity. We searched the mountain systematically, looking behind every bush and every boulder. The field glasses were constantly in use.
"Goats." He had finally spotted them. Following Rudy's direction I saw a half-dozen in a bunch — but alas, they were on the neighbouring mountain to the west, across a deep canyon, at least two-thirds of a mile away and some 600 yards below us. Watching them now through powerful binoculars I arrived at the conclusion that we had climbed the wrong mountain. Our mountain didn't offer much in the way of goat habitat. If they ever came here it was probably only while migrating.