Free Facing the Hunter by David Adams Richards

spoke of strategy. A chop-down was a good place to hunt, but neither David nor I was completely comfortable hunting there for three days.
    “This might be okay in a month, it might be great, but—I am thinking if we go down toward the Gum Road and check it out,” David said. The Gum Road, named because of the spruce gum woodsmen collected for their kids years before, ran parallel to the Bartibog River up past my wife’s ancestral lands, and old-growth forest and swamp still hugged its shores.
    That was fine with me. I had seen two moose along the Gum Road the fall before, when I’d gone snowshoeing just after deer season had ended, and it had always been a good place for moose. As we spoke, a small weasel walked onto the birch fall where we were sitting and watched us with happy curiosity, while osprey circled above us in the blue, blue sky. We went toward the Gum Road and checked certain spots, and that afternoon I sighted in my rifle at the gravel pit. I had just bought a scope, and this would be my first time using it. I was not sure if I could get used to it. Added to my concern was the pressure of taking the mandatory shooting test, scheduled for Fredericton the next week. There was added pressure, of course, because people told you how easy it was, and a blind man should be able to pass it with no trouble. The trouble was, at that time my vision was still pretty good. If I failed it I would certainly be a laughingstock. I had always been a fairly good shot (with a few notable exceptions—once when I encountered a whole flock of partridge and missed each and every one). But I was not going to look past the test right now. I told David not to either. I told him I had hunted deer and birds,and took my young hunter’s test at fourteen with three bull’s eyes, but that still did not matter.
    “You’ll pass that,” he said, to encourage himself as much as me. “I’ve seen you shoot before—if you can shoot well enough to sight in the rifle you can pass that test.” He did, however, tell me of certain men he knew about who had failed the test, regardless of the fact that they were also fine shots.
    The next week, when I was back in Fredericton, David went every night after work to the Chatham side of the river and looked at spots he knew in and about the Napan area. I was unfamiliar with this region. The world of the deep woods, to me, was always on my side of the river. But David told me that he knew where moose were, along an old Black River road that he had hunted deer on some few years back. In fact, on three occasions there in the late fall he’d seen huge moose. And as he said, “If you are uncomfortable there we won’t go. I find it better to hunt an area you like.”
    “We need to look over a few places, to be sure,” I said. “There always should be a backup area.”
    I felt most comfortable on the Bartibog, though. It seemed more my territory, and I felt I knew it well enough not to be an interloper upon it.
    An interloper is someone who believes a territory is as much his as anyone’s. In some respects he or she is right and should be accorded civility, according to the law. But in actual fact, reality does not work that way, for humans are, well, human. If you have hunted on a tract of land close to your own house for years, and have made long journeys in November weather to track deer, you havesome reason to think this land is yours. You might not be very civil to someone you view as a stranger on your land.
    Nor did I feel comfortable on a land I did not know, because I was always aware that others did, and a man who does not know a piece of land might end up stumbling upon and spoiling another’s hunt.
    I paced the floor that night because of the mandatory test. Of course I had tried to get out of it by saying I had had my moose licence before (no go), I had already been in on a moose kill (no go), I had hunted since I was two years old (no go).
    The test was on the north side of