canada

Bobcat Takes Down Mule Deer

Joe_Cermele — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:00:54 -0500

Check out these photos we found on MonsterMuleys.com--one of our favorite sites. These were apparently taken on the "North Highway," although we're not entirely sure where that is. Neither were many people who commented on the photos. Whether the attacker is a lynx or bobcat is also up for debate. What do you think?

The Land of a Million Ducks

fieldandstream-editor — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 12:00:00 -0400

Trip Report: Trophy Pike in Manitoba

fieldandstream-editor — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 07:00:00 -0400

Saskatchewan's Giant Lake Trout

fieldandstream-editor — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 05:00:00 -0400

Walleyes Gone Wild: A Field & Stream Adventure

fieldandstream-editor — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 05:10:00 -0400

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE BONUS PHOTOS

I catch the first fish at Deadwood Portage. It's a nice 3-pounder that takes a curly-tailed jig bounced through a short, rocky rapid. The walleye flashes its signature gold-green flanks. Dinner fish, I think and thread it on a blue nylon stringer: metal tip through the bottom of the lip, then through the O-ring to snug it down. For just a moment I wonder about the satisfying act of putting a fish on a stringer. How many times have I done this without a single second of reflection about how fortunate I am to be able to catch, clean, cook, and eat my own fish? I slip the stringer into the water and the introspection goes down with it.

From here we have 4 more miles of river to paddle, another portage, and a stiff Class II rapid to run with fully loaded canoes. Already we've come far: Last night a train dropped us off in the middle of black-dark nowhere for a rough bivvy by the Canadian National Railway tracks. We slept off a 20-hour travel day until midmorning, then pushed the boats through Peterbell Marsh to the Missinaibi River, a languid, amber-colored waterway hemmed in with spiky grasses. Bleary-eyed and saddle sore before our first canoe stroke, we paddled north. Now we have more paddling ahead of us, wood to gather, a fire to build, fish to fry, and tents to pitch, and the sun is dropping fast. So far, I'm getting exactly what I'd hoped for.

River Runners
When most people think of walleye fishing, they think of big lakes, big outboards, downriggers, lead-core trolling lines, and crankbaits running so deep the fish need eyeballs the size of gumdrops.

But we had a different idea. My friend Peter DeJong and I knew that not all walleyes hang out in white-capped lakes. We figured there were wilderness fish far up in the northlands, walleyes that rarely saw a hook, never heard a motor, and shared waters with pike, moose, and sandhill cranes. DeJong is a big, burly, bearded Canadian, the kind of guy who wears wool plaid when it's 90 degrees and still uses a tumpline. Together, we hatched a big, burly, river trip in the voyageur style. We'd run whitewater rapids, cross empty lakes, hump our gear through bogs and woods, and fish our way through boreal Ontario. And we'd do it along one of the most historic fur-trading routes in the land of the maple leaf: the Missinaibi-Moose River corridor.

The shortest route between Lake Superior and James Bay, the Missinaibi pours through a 265-mile-long corridor of boreal forest and Canadian Shield rock. In deep time, nomadic bands of Algonquin-speaking natives paddled the river, marking passage with pictographs on exposed cliff faces. (Missinaibi translates to "pictured waters," after the reflections of these paintings.) Later, Ojibway and Cree plied the river. And from 1740 to 1880, it was a key trading route for trappers from the Hudson's Bay Co. and North West Co., both of which built trading posts along its banks.

It's empty country. The stretch of the river from Peterbell to Moose River is classified as "advanced, with difficult portages and remoteness." David Morin, whose company is one of a handful to outfit trips on the Missinaibi, says few of those who run the river also fish.

"They'll make a couple of casts one night and think that's all there is to it. It seems that hardcore paddlers just don't care about fishing. And hardcore fishermen aren't too interested in dealing with rapids."

But we were. DeJong and I wanted it all, every totem and clichÂ¿Â¿ of boreal Canada, all rolled into one week in the woods, with paddles and rods in hand. We added to our party photographer Dusan Smetana and Ontario native Lee Bremer, currently doing hard time in e Manhattan financial district. Soon enough, we stood by the CNR tracks in the dark and watched the train's lights slowly disappear in the distance.

The Tuke
For a day and a half we paddle, float, and fish through gorgeous stretches of river-long, languid pools where mergansers and river otters swim away at our approach. Because the Missinaibi is one of 39 waterways in the Canadian Heritage Rivers System, its banks are protected from logging and development. The result: hundreds of miles of shoreline where ancient trees tumble in water clean enough to drink. Once Smetana reels in a 4-pound walleye near the riverbank. Its flanks shimmer with color. He holds the fish up. "At home in Montana," he says, "the walleyes are silvery. A little dull. Nothing like this. Such a gorgeous fish."

We dredge the water for its kin. To get to the bottom of things, I'm tossing an Arctic Fox deep-running spinner and, alternatively, a standard-issue chartreuse leadhead jig. DeJong fires off a Shad Rap, and Smetana swears by his "magic lure," a Storm Hot 'N Tot in silver and blue that he picked up at the last minute at a Timmons, Ontario, Wal-Mart. Each time he ties into a fish he sings out in his Slovakian accent, sounding like an Old World peddler, "Lure for sale! Magic lure for sale!" He's onto something, and he knows it.

I, however, am not. Maybe it's my Southern nature, my inexperience with any bottom-dwelling fish other than a channel cat. But I'm having trouble with walleyes. Smetana takes a look at my retrieve and sidles over for some quick advice.

"Are you feeling the tuke?" he asks.

"The took?"

"No, no. The tuke." He sounds out the word; it rhymes with puke. "You must retrieve so slowly that you feel a little tuke. Not a took. It is as if a rock has eaten your lure. Except it is a walleye."

I give it a whirl. Casting across a current seam, I let the spinner fall to the bottom. I start the retrieve, slowly bump-bumping the lure across the boulders. I feel it drag across a ledge and then the line goes slack as uplifted currents boil off the river bottom, lifting the lure like a leaf in a whirlwind. It drops again, the line slightly taut as the spinner falls, and then tuke! I set the hook and the rod comes to life.

I know just enough about walleye fishing to know that there are a lot of ways to catch them that don't involve canoes and white-knuckled rapids runs and long days in wild country. But I'm pretty sure there are none better.

Incident at Greenhill
Our first significant challenge-other than finding fish-comes during our second day on the river. Greenhill Rapids is a Â¿Â¿-mile-long cauldron across the backbone of an esker, one of those weird rock formations created by the dragging fingers of a receding glacier. There's a dogleg turn in the middle and canoe-swamping pillow rocks all the way down. At low water it's too low, at high water it's crazy, and when the water is just right it is not to be taken lightly. We play it safe, portaging every bag, pack, and rod for a mile across hill and bog. Then Bremer and Smetana slip into the river. DeJong and I give them a half hour to make it through the rapids, then we push off. When I lick my lips, my tongue is dry as toast.

We run the big upper drops cleanly, bashing through high rollers, then eddy out behind a midstream boulder. From here on out there are drops, rocks, and souse holes aplenty, but a straightforward line through the melee beckons. "A walk in the park," DeJong figures, nervously, as we guzzle a quart of water and congratulate ourselves on a textbook start. That's when the wheels come off. I give the boat a strong forward stroke to reenter a hard current line but misjudge my downstream lean. The canoe responds by jerking violently to starboard. As I'm going over I get a glance at DeJong, high-bracing from the bow, but he knows the goose is cooked. In half a second we're both in the water, the boat between us, out of control.

For a couple of minutes it seems like no big deal. We roller-coaster for 300 yards, but then bigger boulders and nasty ledge drops appear. Our canoe lurches to a stop, pinned against a truck-size rock. The current washes me past the canoe as I make a desperate grab for a gunwale. Upstream, DeJong slips over a ledge and bobs to the surface. My OK sign lets him know I'm unhurt, and he returns it with a grin.

Just then he slams into a subsurface boulder. He hits it hard, the kind of hard in which bones end up on the outside of skin and rescue operations commence. His grin morphs instantly into an O of pain. He slides over a hump of foaming water and comes to an instant stop, his body downstream, right leg pointing upcurrent. The look on DeJong's face is as alarming as his posture, one foot trapped between rocks on the river bottom as the Missinaibi pours over his shoulders.

Twenty yards downstream, I can do nothing but watch as he struggles to right himself and keep his head above water. If he loses purchase and his free leg slips, the current will sweep him downstream and break his leg, if it isn't broken already. DeJong strains against the river current, at times completely submerged as he tries to twist out of the snare.

Suddenly he wrenches himself loose. Grimacing, he works across the river, and I gather a rescue rope in case he stumbles again. He makes it to the overturned canoe wild-eyed and panting, soaked and starting to chill. "I'm all right," he says. For a full minute neither of us speaks. "Strange way to catch a walleye, eh?" he says. We laugh the nervous laugh of a couple of guys who know they've dodged a bullet.

After we flip and bail the boat we grind down Greenhill's boulder garden with no technique whatsoever. Later that night, we camp below St. Peter Rapids. And after dinner we sit back from the campfire, bellies stuffed with fried fish eaten with our fingers-no side dishes and none desired.

"We came awfully close to ending our trip with a very expensive helicopter tour of Ontario," I say. "Not to mention a week of hospital food."

"It's scary how quickly things can turn bad," DeJong says. "Just when you think you've got it figured out..." His voice trails off, drowned out in the roar of the Missinaibi. Cedar smoke curls up toward a red sky, and we turn silent again, until the mosquitoes drive us into the tents.

The Tao of Walleyes
After Greenhill, we fall into a soothing rhythm. We sleep until 7 a.m., when the mosquitoes retreat back to the dark woods. Coffee and breakfast, a half hour of fishing the nearest rapids, then we pack the gear and boats and push off. And the days are long ones. Making camp by six gives us just enough time to fish out the two-hour sunsets. Then it's a race to get td. In half a second we're both in the water, the boat between us, out of control.

"We came awfully close to ending our trip with a very expensive helicopter tour of Ontario," I say. "Not to mention a week of hospital food."

Death by Walleye: An exclusive gallery from photographer Dusan Smetana

fieldandstream-editor — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 10:00:00 -0400

The Land of the Giants

fieldandstream-editor — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 04:15:00 -0500

In November in Saskatchewan, where temperatures may soar to a sultry 15 degrees, I went to find a whitetail that would give me chills. Over the years I'd squandered too many hunts (as much as any hunt is ever squandered) in too many places by turning down adequate bucks, waiting for something extraordinary. The result has been, of course, broad swatches of vacant walls for all the heads I never got, and extra room in the freezer for the venison not taken. In Saskatchewan there are whitetails that live and die without ever catching so much as a scent of a human being. And some are big enough that no hunter has ever had to have a second thought about them. That was the kind of whitetail I needed-the no-questions-asked kind.

To hunt in Saskatchewan, though, a nonresident is restricted to the northern half of the province, in what is designated "provincial forest." It is in actuality an interminable hell of poplar and spruce where a hunter will get irretrievably turned around in 10 yards. (The standard admonition guides give their hunters is never to go into the bush alone, not even on the trail of a wounded deer.) Still-hunting borders on physically unfeasible, and to attempt spot-and-stalk hunting would be like trying to find Waldo in a satellite photo of Calcutta. As for drives-considering that they only propel deer into some equally impenetrable sector of the bush-bailing a boat with a net would be more productive. So in the hope of seeing at least one no-questions buck in my life, and in my sights, I dressed in layer upon layer of poly, wool, and down, covered it with a white suit, pulled polar-expedition boots onto my feet and mitts on my hands, and sat in a ground blind watching a small clearing marked with fresh scrapes and rubs.

{The Long Wait}
I sat all alone in the blind and waited quietly (no talking, no laughing-though after a while I was strangely tempted) from well before dawn till long after sunset. When you wait on whitetails in Saskatchewan, there are other things to see. On the rarest of occasions, a moose, elk, black bear, or wolf might wander by. NaÂ¿Â¿ve ruffed grouse also strolled about, easy and tasty pickings for the locals who lamented nature's oversight in not creating the 250-pound economy size. At intervals during the iron-cold day, ravens caw-clucked overhead, flying so low the grunts that came from them with each wingbeat were audible. Mostly for me, though, surrounded by the poplars and spruces, there was only the silence of the limbs as the waiting developed into something resembling a state of terminal ennui. Luckily, deer appeared just often enough for total psychological collapse to be narrowly averted.

Almost always it was does that came. They materialized in the small clearing with wary gaits, heads bobbing apprehensively. The smaller does came first, to be driven off by larger ones that pressed back their ears and flailed with their front hooves. Even the largest does, though, were subjects of abuse, with magpies hopping onto their rumps. The deer wheeled in annoyance, flaring the black-and-white birds, which hopped right back on, until the does dematerialized, driven to distraction. At the very start of the Monday that was the first day of the hunt, the does came and went. Then at 9:30 A.M. the first buck showed up, and he was only the biggest I had ever seen and could have legally killed. He walked out like an inevitability, a 150-class 10-point, antlers burnished like the arms of an antique oak rocker. Seeing a buck like that, you begin to understand what a peculiar condition maleness is, especially during the rut. The buck wasn't drawn by any promise of food. He had come to find does, and if they weren't there, he might only lope through the clearing or hover tormentingly at the margin of the poplars before simply fading away.

He stood, though, in the open, right in front of me; and that should have been that. But once moree, unable to help myself, I thought about it. It was less than two hours into legal shooting time on the first day. Couldn't something bigger possibly come along? My answer was to watch him walk away, even as a tiny voice in my head was bawling, What have you done?

No more bucks came out that day, and after dark the guide arrived to get me. He asked what I'd seen. I told him.

"Monday buck," he said with a shake of the head, meaning that more than one hunter had lived to regret not taking that first-day's deer. Monday, Monday, can't trust that day; and after a full day Tuesday of sitting and seeing only one wee buck glide through the clearing, I was thinking that maybe I shouldn't be trusted, either, at least not when it came to making up my own mind.

{A Better Buck}
On Wednesday there was a doe in the clearing under the moon before shooting time, then an 8-point in the first gray light. Even he would have approached a personal best, but after Monday I'd established a benchmark. There was no giving in, and if I had to sit out the rest of the days on stand and go home, babbling, without a deer, that's how it would be. As absurd as it might sound, having seen one real deer, I had to see one even more real before I could pull the trigger.

The day went on with ravens, does, and magpies and lunch from a sack. I fought sleep. Every hour or so I checked my watch to see how much time remained. It was 4 P.M. when he filled up the gaps between the poplars.

He was already standing there when I sensed him, feeling him in my spine as much as seeing him. Ten-point antlers heavy as an elk's rack crowned his broad head. This was without a doubt the deer I'd passed up all the others for over the years, and now my mouth was dry and I kept telling myself to move slowly as I pulled off my mitt and brought up the .300 Winchester Magnum. There was absolutely nothing to think about, except whether he would come out of the trees.

The buck went on standing, looking into the clearing. He took a step back. He took another and turned to his left, the trees shielding him. Now that I didn't have to make up my mind, he was going to take away the decision anyway. He walked forward, moving off, going. Then he began to circle in toward the glade. I almost jumped.

He came out from behind a tall pine an inch at a time, first his muzzle with the tips of the black, wide main beams extending past his nose. His head and neck appeared, but I waited, and then I could see his shoulder, and after that his side. I didn't wait anymore.

I thumbed off the safety, held behind his shoulder, and fired. He spun and was gone. I left the blind and walked the 80 yards to where the buck had stood when I shot. I looked for blood and hair but could find none. I turned toward the poplars and spruces and remembered the guide's dire warnings. Still bundled in cold-weather gear, I stepped into the bush.

In the trees, a web of brown-leafed trails tangled through the snow. An hour of light was left. I looked back and made the tall pine my landmark and started down the first trail, pushing through the trees. After a few hundred feet I had cut nothing and turned back to try another trail. Twenty yards down the fourth I found one drop of blood, already frozen to a leaf. Ten feet farther was a second.

He lay big and yellow-brown 75 yards from the first blood. His almost perfectly symmetrical antlers were more like black walnut than oak, the flats of the beams wide as the palm of a hand, the eye guards long and thick. (Later, the antlers would green-score 1632/8.) I was safe in imagining I was the first person ever to see this buck, certainly the first hunter. I risked going stir-crazy for that privilege, and what I saw was a deer beyond doubt, at last. >

McIntyre hunted with Jim Shockey's Hunting Adventures, 250-748-6413; jimshockey.com.