I well remember my first bear encounter when I was still a very young boy. The only bear I had ever seen prior to this encounter was a drawing in a childhood storybook in Holland. My family immigrated to Canada from Holland in the early fifties and moved to a remote hunting and fishing lodge on a lake in north-central British Columbia. My mother worked at this lodge and it was here that I was given my first job at the age of 10.
On a crisp fall morning last October, with the golden red leaves from the poplar trees reflecting on a calm, slightly misty lake, I took off for a four day fishing trip accompanied by a good friend, a master fly fisherman who has fished in many good streams around the world, and his nine year old son. We flew directly from Nimpo Lake, located in the Chilcotin, to Euchiniko Lake, which is part of Blackwater River system,
In the 45 years I have spent hiking and camping in the great outdoors, I have encountered many animals of various species. My father was a trapper in the early thirties and he taught me at an early age what to watch out for at different times of the year regarding the feeding habits and moods of animals in the wilds. So over the years I have developed a sixth sense as to when and what animal I’ll meet and which animal wants to have its picture taken and which one wants to be left alone.
I have had hypothermia a number of times in extreme circumstances and conditions, but the experience that stands out the most in my mind is a hiking/hunting trip I took some years ago with my oldest son Dean, when we went to a very remote area of northwestern British Columbia for a ten day hunt.
I love getting close to nature and enjoy hiking alone, or with my sons, going from one destination to another,
I have had lots of pets in my time, but never one as unique as Bo-Beep. Bo-Beep was a Spruce Grouse that flew into my life in the early Sixties, and came along with my on some of my adventures up in Northern B.C.
When I worked for the B.C. Ministry of Forests in the 1960’s, I would practice a technique that I now know is called “slipping”. With a piece of string and a shoelace,