Free Facing the Hunter by David Adams Richards Page B

on one.
    I was more out of place in Fredericton in 1987 than I was in the wilds of New Brunswick, for the city was still filled with British and American professors, most of whom did not want to be in Fredericton and complained to theirfriends in larger centres that their immense talents were being wasted teaching rural barbarians.
    The woods was a good place for me to go whenever I got the chance, for many of them frowned on the woods, and on our identification with it.
    So going back to it took my mind away from the literary world.
    I left in my jeep for the Miramichi waters, and it was a warm afternoon. I dropped in on Peter McGrath and had a cup of tea. He was loading his three-wheeler in his truck to go to his camp. There were two licences there that year, and he and his friend Les Druet would guide. (One year Les carried a disabled gentleman on his back for three days moose hunting—I am not sure if this was the year or not.) I wished Peter good luck on the hunt and went across the river, to Chatham. I got to David’s house at about four o’clock and soon saw the company truck coming up the road.
    “Warm,” he said.
    “I know,” I answered.
    Our first order of business was to decide which one of the three places scouted we should go. David liked the Gum Road, but he worried that there would be too many hunters in along that part of the Bartibog River.
    “I think we should stay on this side of the river for the time being,” he said, meaning the Miramichi. “Check out that road near Black River—there are still a lot of moose signs there.”
    “That’s fine by me,” I said. Though I did not know thatarea well—certainly not as well as I knew the Bartibog region—David Savage did.
    That night we went to my place on the south shore, just at the mouth of the Miramichi Bay, and barbecued some deer steak, and listened to late-run salmon flip a hundred yards out from the breakwater. We were hoping for cooler temperatures, and listened by radio to a weather report that said it would be sunny and warm in the morning. With that, we went to bed.
    The first day of the moose hunt was indeed warm, with temperatures at noon up to about 72 degrees Fahrenheit. I saw a robin hopping along the muddy road near my truck when I took my gun and backpack out in the morning. It was not the best temperature to hunt moose in.
    We arrived at the road just about dawn and moved up toward a small, enclosed field in a back wetland about a hundred yards in circumference, where moose had been seen earlier. There were tracks of a large bull there that might have been two or three days old. The grass in this back pasture was about two and a half feet high. The moose, if we were lucky, would enter it with us downwind on the far side.
    All that day we waited, and called—both of us calling at various intervals during the day. It was a tedious wait, for there was absolutely no response or sound. Small birds now and again flitted in the row of alders as we ate our lunch of lobster meat and warm tea. Two o’clock gave way to three, and then four. Since we were still on daylight saving time, the extra hour went by very slowly. Finally shadows began to creep through the lonesome wood, and we picked up our calling.
    Later in the day David took a walk down toward another side road, to see if he could spot how the moose were travelling. Unfortunately the signs he saw were well over a week old. We called, though, until almost dark. Then I pocketed my bullets and we walked back to the truck in the dark, my hands sweaty—which is never a good sign for hunting.
    Out on Highway 11, just before I turned down to my place along the bay, we saw a truck coming back across the main Miramichi with a large bull. I wondered if it was a Bartibog moose. The Bartibog moose were actually quite famous, because of certain guides, like John Connell, and woodsmen who had operated camps there a century or so before. I had heard of the Bartibog as being a place to hunt