Turning Point
Seven beavers and a muskrat hauled in a few days after the story.
The evening was calm, with only bird song, the crackle of the fire and the low hiss of pork ribs simmering in their own fat in the roasting pan. My dad and I sat quietly in the backyard of my cabin, watching the flames of the open fire pit and smelling the cooking meat wafting through the air. My stomach groaned at the scent.
"Still about an hour to go." My dad said, patting down the tinfoil covering with a stick where he had lifted it. The scene was picture perfect, but underneath it was a nervous, unspoken tension that rippled through the air and robbed us of our share of the serenity all around.
It was late May and we were beaver trapping - the latest I had ever trapped. My practice in previous years was always to get my quota(a government mandated minimum harvest) during the fall. At most I would leave a handful to be caught through the winter ice for the experience and the enjoyment of working with fur in full prime. This year, due to a bout with a mysterious, debilitating illness I had yet to catch any - and time was running out.
The trapping season ended on the fifteenth(only a few days away) and we were dangerously short of fur. To make matters worse, the day before we had gone to set multiple areas that I had known to be full of beaver, only to be stopped in our tracks by bad ice or empty swamps - nature's furred engineers had pulled a Houdini. This day had been better, with thirteen 330 conibear traps set on two lakes and a creek, but our spirits and expectations were low. The elements and the beavers had reduced us to just our hopes and prayers. Neither of us wanted to voice our fear. What if we didn't get the quota?
The MNR does give grace if a trapper is in ill health or if their is some sort of emergency that prevents the trapper from catching his quota - but this is a black mark against his name. At the end of the day, the numbers have to be there without excuse or he/she can be replaced. Anything that would put possession of my trapline in jeopardy was something to be avoided at all costs.
It was in this place of mental quagmire that we were brooding when we were interrupted by a series of sharp, panicked barks. It was my husky, Nanook. Something was wrong.
Nanook is a quiet dog. He rarely makes any kind of sound, even when running down game. Bears, birds or squirrels, he just pursues relentless and silent. An annoying trait when I lose his trail. If he was barking like that, there was some sort of trouble.
"Was that at the point or down by the boat?!" I asked and leapt up from my chair to listen.
"Definitely by the boat." My dad replied.
He didn't bark again, so I went with my dad's word and ran down the trail to the bay where I kept my aluminum boat.
I was angry as I made my way down the hill. Just the night before Nanook had wakened me in the middle of the night, behaving like he needed to get outside to be sick. He was at my bedside panting his rotten breath in my face. I grumbled something half-affectionate, half curse before I fumbled my headlamp on and led him out the door. I didn't have a moment to react - he ripped passed my legs, leapt from the porch and was on it. There was a skunk.
He had his jaws firmly around it's stomach as he snarled and shook his head, but when the skunk sunk its own teeth into the soft pink of Nanook's nose he yelped bloody murder, dropped it and was promptly dowsed with a noxious, green cloud. The skunk ran off into the bush and left Nanook coughing, spitting his own blood and dry heaving in the dirt. The whole camp reeked. I didn't know whether to laugh or scream. In the end I mostly just gagged.
The lack of sleep, the exhaustion of bushwhacking for days on end with little reward, the stench of the skunk and the stress of the beaver quota were all coming to a head as I came down the hill. I don't take my anger out on my dog but I have imaginarily kicked his ass more times than I can count.
As I reached the bottom of the hill I saw him, far out in the middle of the bay, swimming in a circle as a beaver swam a wider one around him. Although this might seem harmless enough to those not experienced with life in the northern bush - I knew different. My heart was in my throat.
Beavers are powerful animals(I regularly catch them in excess of 60-70 pounds) and can be extremely territorial. Any animal looking for an easy prey would do well to look elsewhere, especially when they're in the water. A common strategy of the beaver is to lure wolves and their domesticated cousins out into deep water, tiring them before swimming below and disembowelling them from under the water. I had heard plenty of tragic stories from other northerners in my time on the trapline.
"Nanook! Come!" I yelled in vain as I quickly untied my twelve foot aluminum boat, slid it into the black waters of the bay and leapt into the back to fire the motor. He didn't appear to hear me in his state of ecstatic bloodlust. He really couldn't help himself. Like me, beaver was his favourite meal.
Spinning the boat around, I throttled it to it's limit and raced across the bay. The beaver, frightened by the boat, dove and reappeared further away to watch us in safety. Nanook looked exhausted, he may have been swimming like that for ten or fifteen minutes. I idled the boat down and grabbed him by the scruff and his collar as I drifted past and hauled him, sodden fur and all into the back of the boat. He shook once and staggered into the front to watch his quarry as we made our way back to the shoreline. He looked haggard.
"What was it?" My dad shouted as we crested the hill on our way back to the cabin.
"Beaver. I'm gonna try and shoot it."
Although I said it matter-of-factly, the truth was I had never shot a beaver from a boat before. The gun I was used to hunting with (a lever-action Henry chambered in .22 rimfire) wasn't going to cut it with its open sights and poor groupings past 30 yards. Which left my scoped Savage .17 HMR that hadn't been fired in nearly a year. I hoped it was still sighted in.
The .17 HMR is a tack-driver. With its small bullet at nearly double the velocity of the .22 there's virtually no bullet drop out to 100 yards or so. Coupled with the Savage Accutrigger that I had dialed down to it's most sensitive setting, the gun shot like a laserbeam. It would all be down to the scope and my aim in the boat. With Nanook secured in the cabin I raced back down to the water, trying to control the rising adrenaline that comes before an attempt to make a kill.
I slid the boat back into the water, hopped in and fired the engine. Once I had drifted out enough to make the turn away from shore, I eased the throttle and felt the boat lurch as the engine popped into gear. I let it idle its way into the center of the bay, killed the engine, unslung the rifle from my shoulder and waited.
The beaver broke the surface about forty yards to the right and started swimming in a figure eight while he watched to see what I would do. Slipping to my knee I eased the barrel of the gun against the gunwale of the boat, clamping it down with my left hand while I laid my cheek against the stock to peer through the scope.
The reality of the difficulty of what I was about to attempt hit me as soon as I was looking through the glass at the ceaseless movement of the beaver. Not only was the beaver swimming around at odd angles, constantly in motion, but the boat too was drifting, and not only drifting but bobbing up and down - the small motion of it magnified tenfold through the vision of the scope. Considering that the area I had to put the bullet was the size of a golfball(a brain shot being the only guarantee of keeping the beaver from diving to grip the bottom of the lake) and that it and the boat were in odd angles of constant motion - I had zero margin of error.
My heart dropped. It seemed an impossible shot. I had little experience shooting from a boat, but I had committed to try and so, doing my best to let the waves of adrenaline roll past and keep my heart and breathing calm and steady, I took aim. I needed to catch the beaver when he was moving parallel to boat, when I had the best view of his ear, which was centered on his brain-box. If he was moving directly away from me I couldn't lead him properly and would have almost no chance of a clean shot. I decided to follow him with the scope as he swam his elliptical pattern and try and get a feel for the rhythm of both the boat and the movement of the beaver. Three times I followed him until I felt locked into his movements and knew when to expect him to turn away and repeat it. My moment was seconds away - I would try and take him on the fourth pass.
The boat bobbed rhythmically as the beaver made his turn away from me, swam across and turned again until he was swimming parallel to the the motion of my drift. I emptied my mind of thoughts, exhaled and let the barrel of the gun match the pace of his swimming. I had the black crosshairs leading on the whiskers just back of the small black nose when I gently squeezed the trigger.
CRAAAACK!
The rifle barked its sharp sound as the bullet left the muzzle at nearly three thousand feet per second and made a spray of mist where the sonic wave touched the water. All took place in exponential fractions of a second. The mist cleared. The beaver slumped forward and was still. I could hardly believe it. I had done it.
I reckoned him to be about 50lbs as I hauled him in by the tail and hind leg - a nice sized beaver. The incredulous feeling of somehow making the shot slowly began to give way to an ear to ear grin. I knew it was a gift. I knew I shouldn't have been able to make that shot, I let out a small prayer of thanks and felt the warmth of a great cosmic grin matching my own. I couldn't wait to come over the hill to camp and show my dad.
As I crested the rise - beaver in hand - he could hardly believe it. When I had set off down the hill with my rifle my dad had been envisioning how difficult it would be to make the shot, and like me didn't have much hope that I'd actually get it. It wasn't until he heard the shot - and just the one - that he let himself hope that maybe I had actually done it. His smile was priceless as I walked by him with my trophy to hang it in the fur shed.
I was eager to tell the story as I joined him by the fire and helped myself to a plate piled with steaming, smoky ribs. He took to calling me Davy Crockett for the rest of the evening and even got my mother on the phone to brag about the shot. Though I tried not to show it, feeling his pride lifted my heart to a place that had it soaring. It was also somewhere in the midst of the laughter, the meal and the telling and retelling of how it all happened that we both realized the spectre of fear had vanished. We knew we'd get the quota. Somehow, that one beaver - the dog finding it, the impossible shot, the gift of it - was the turning point of the whole season.
Three days later I had the quota plus two.
We did it.
I hope you enjoyed the read. These small stories, blogs - whatever they are - come from my heart; I share them out of a passion to create and see others inspired to make their own connection with the Wilderness. If you found value in your time here, and are inclined to do so, you can help keep me writing by buying me a coffee!
About The Author
A bounty of fish from a solo canoe trip down the Makobe River, Temagami.
For Clint Zold, the pursuit of authentic Wilderness experiences has led him across landscapes both far and wide. Whether paddling the ancient Nastawgan of mystic Temagami, hiking the lonely mountains of the West, or snowshoeing the hunting grounds of his trapping territory in the Arctic Watershed of Northern Ontario - Clint is truly at home in the wild.
Living off-grid on the banks of the Mattagami River; the canoe, axe and snowshoe have become his daily companions in a semi-subsistence lifestyle where food, warmth and water come from the land around him. His passion for Wilderness is only equaled by his desire to share it with others