by Farley Mowat
Unscathed, the flock of Huns flew straight down the road towards me. As they passed overhead, I recognized them for as pretty a bevy of meadowlarks as ever I saw.
Angus came back to the car after a while and we drove on. He steered with one hand while picking thistles out of his face with the other. Not much was said between us.
Nevertheless, our first day afield was not without some success. Towards evening we saw a covey of Huns in a stubble field and Angus managed to kill two of them.
We were a proud pair when we drove home. As we were unloading the car in front of our house, Angus observed the approach of one of our neighbours and held up our brace of birds to be admired. The neighbour, a sportkiller of experience, seemed impressed. At any rate he came running towards us—but only to snatch the birds out of my father’s hand and splutter, “For God’s sake, hide them damn things! The prairie chicken season don’t open for another week!”
DESPITE THIS INAUSPICIOUS beginning, Angus rapidly learned the ropes. He bought a second-hand shotgun and went hunting almost every Saturday with newly acquired sportkiller friends. He learned the trick of stubble hunting—shooting ducks as they fed on grain left behind by the threshers, and where to find upland birds, as well as how to tell the difference between prairie chicken, Hungarian partridge, and meadowlarks.
When the bird season ended for the year, he remained hotly engaged with his new passion. That winter he spent an inordinate amount of time in his cellar workshop building a set of two dozen mallard decoys. These were works of art, made of laminated pine planks with their centres hollowed out for better flotation, meticulously shaped and painted to imitate the famous Greenhead mallard and his mate. Yet not even this could quiet his compulsive ardour for the hunt and so he took his shotgun apart and carved a new and elegant stock and forend out of walnut imported from Ontario. Thereafter, at home or at the office, he could often be found lovingly polishing the gleaming wood with a mixture of linseed oil and vinegar. Not yet content, he had the library buy several books dealing with the ancient Arabic skill of “blueing” steel and, after much arcane experimenting, re-blued the barrels of his gun. This esoteric exercise earned him considerable kudos from others of the hunting fraternity.
Helen observed all this dedication to Nimrod with tolerance but some petulance.
“It’s a fixation,” she said. “He could have built the dining-room table and chairs we need in half the time it took to make his silly ducks.”
I continued to accompany him on some of his hunting forays but my enthusiasm was waning. I had begun to take as much or more pleasure in watching the ducks and upland birds in life as in shooting at them. A poem I wrote at this time indicates that the killing was making me uncomfortable.
SPORT
A flash of flame that flickers there,
A rain of lead that hisses by,
A deafening crash that rends the air,
A wreath of smoke floats in the sky.
A bark from the dog as it gallops past,
A laugh from the man who holds the gun,
The flutter of birds that seek to fly,
The words: “Good work!” when the deed is done.
A ring of feathers scattered round
A quivering pulp of flesh and bone.
A pool of blood on the autumn ground.
A life has passed to the great unknown.
Although I did not show Angus this poem, I think he had begun to realize that the admiring son of the huntsman father was becoming disillusioned with the game. In an attempt to rekindle my enthusiasm, he bought me a twenty-gauge shotgun of my own. I was grateful but would have been more so had he instead chosen to buy me a decent pair of binoculars.
Near the end of November, Angus made a major effort to bring me back into the fold.
The travelling library he had organized had made him acquainted with a number of people scattered about the province. One of these was a Ukrainian immigrant named Paul Sawchuk. Paul owned three-quarters of a section18 on the shores of an immense slough known as Middle Lake, well to the east of Saskatoon. One Thursday toward the end of the duck and goose season, Paul phoned my father to advise him that huge flocks of Canada geese were massing on the lake at night and feeding in his stubble fields at dawn.
Angus and I had never hunted Canada geese, which are the ultimate target and supreme trophy of the water-fowler. I am sure he concluded that if we went goose hunting together we could recapture the mutual excitement and camaraderie of our first hunting trips. So he arranged for me to take Friday off from school and we set out to try our luck.
It was a cold journey. Snow already lay upon the ground and the north wind was bitter. We arrived at Middle Lake in the early evening and found a frozen wasteland. Not a tree pierced a bleak void heavy with the threat of approaching snow. The roads had become frozen gumbo tracks that seemed to meander without hope across a lunar landscape. The search for Paul’s farm proved long and frigid.
His house, when we found it, was a clay-plastered, whitewashed, log shanty perched like a wart on the face of a frozen plain. It had only three rooms, each with one tiny window, yet it held Paul, his wife, his wife’s parents, Paul’s seven children, and two cousins who had been recruited to help him with the pigs, which were his main stock in trade.
Paul greeted us as if we were lords of the realm and took us into the bosom of his family. Mutt, who by this time had become a bird dog of some considerable pretensions, refused to be taken. Having sniffed the piggy air about the cabin with ill-concealed disgust, he refused even to leave the car. He sat on the seat, his nose dripping, saying “Faugh!” at intervals. It was not until utter darkness had brought with it the brittle breath of winter and the wailing of coyotes close at hand that he came scratching at the cabin door.
We slept on the floor, as did most of Paul’s ménage since there appeared to be only one proper bed. The floor offered some advantages because the air at the lower levels contained more oxygen. At that there was none too much and, since the windows could not be opened, the trickle of fresh air which found its way under the door was soon lost in a swirl of other nameless gases. The wood stove remained volcanic throughout the night, and our lungs worked overtime and we sweated profusely.
At 4:00 a.m. Mrs. Sawchuk cooked our breakfast, which seemed to consist of barley gruel with unnameable bits of pig floating fatly in it. Shortly thereafter, storm lantern in hand, Paul guided us down to the soggy shores of the unseen lake and out onto a low mud spit.
He had earlier dug two foxholes for us at the tip of the spit but now there was ice-encrusted water in the holes. There was also a savage wind out of the north-east and, although it was still too dark to see, we could feel the sharp flick of snow driving into our faces. Paul departed and we three settled down in our holes to await the dawn.
I cannot recall ever having felt so cold. We had found a sack for Mutt to lie on but it did him little good. He began to shiver extravagantly and finally his teeth began to chatter. Angus and I were surprised by this. Neither of us had previously heard a dog’s teeth chatter but before long all three of us were chattering in unison.
The dawn, when it came at last, was grey and sombre. The sky lightened so imperceptibly that we could hardly detect the coming of the morning. We strained our eyes into swirling snow squalls. Then, abruptly, we heard the sound of wings—of great wings beating. Cold was forgotten. We crouched lower and flexed numb fingers in our shooting gloves.
My father saw them first. He nudged me sharply and I half-turned my head to behold a spectacle of incomparable grandeur. Out of the storm scud, like ghostly ships, a hundred whistling swans bore down upon us on stately wings. They passed directly overhead not half a gunshot from us. I was transported beyond time and space by this vision of unparalleled majesty and mystery. For one fleeting instant I felt that somehow they and I were one. Then they were gone and snow eddies obscured
my straining vision.
After that it would not have mattered to me if we had seen no other living thing that day, but the swans were only the forerunners of multitudes. The windy silence was soon pierced by the sonorous cries of seemingly endless flocks of geese that drifted, wraith-like, overhead. They were flying low and we could see them clearly. Snow geese, startlingly white of breast but with jet-black wing tips, beat past while flocks of piebald wavies seemed to keep station on their flanks. An immense V of Canadas came close behind.
As the rush of air through their great pinions sounded in our ears, we jumped up and, in what was more of a conditioned reflex than a conscious act, raised our guns. The honkers veered directly over us and we both fired. The sound of the shots seemed puny, lost in the immensity of wind and singing wings.
It had to have been pure mischance that one of the great geese was hit for, as we later admitted to each other, neither of us had aimed. Nevertheless one fell, appearing gigantic in the tenuous light as it spiralled sharply downward. It struck the water a hundred feet from shore and I saw with sick dismay that it had been winged. It swam off into the growing storm, its neck outstretched, calling… calling… calling after the vanished flock.
Driving back to Saskatoon that night I was filled with repugnance for what we had done. And I was experiencing an indefinable sense of loss. I felt, though I could not then have expressed it, as if I had glimpsed another, magical world—a world of Oneness—and had been denied entry into it through my own stupidity.
I never again hunted for sport, nor did my father ever try to lead me back to it. Although he continued to hunt, if in increasingly desultory fashion until we left Saskatoon for good, I believe his heart, too, was no longer in it.
17Any creature which is even suspected of preying on game animals or of competing with them for food or living space is considered vermin by sport killers, and treated accordingly.
18A section is one square mile.
14
DURING THE FINAL MONTHS OF 1935 and early 1936, I was the most assiduous young naturalist Saskatoon had even known or, I suspect, is ever likely to know. On Saturdays or Sundays (sometimes both) I trudged resolutely off into the countryside to look for birds. I would be gone almost every day during longer holiday periods. There were lapses, as when I was confined to bed by a bad bout of flu or when a raging blizzard shut me up at home. Otherwise I went on my self-appointed rounds with a degree of dedication which surely made me brother to the legendary postman.
Between September 22 and March 22 I made thirty-four bird hikes covering more than three hundred miles, much of that distance across the winter prairies in sub-zero weather. On January 28 I hiked all day at a temperature of –25°. I did the same at –45° on February 8, and –40° on February 21 and 23. This was cold stuff, but not cold enough to chill a passion which, in my sere and yellow years, seems almost incomprehensible.
Why did I do it? Did I really believe I was gathering priceless scientific lore about Saskatchewan birds? I hardly think so.
Was I trying to prove I was indestructible? If so, to whom? Apart from Murray Robb and Bruce Billings, one or the other of whom joined me on many of my hikes, none of my peers knew what I was doing. I took care that they didn’t find out either for they would have thought anyone who did what I was doing was out of his mind. A guy walks ten miles over the prairie at 40° below just to look for a bunch of birds?
If not madness, what was it that impelled me? Could it have been a subconscious yet compulsive urge to break through into the world of the Others, even under the most adverse of conditions?
I cannot tell. But I can describe what it was like.
Saturday, December 22nd
It’s the first day of the Christmas holidays and I can’t wait to get going. I’m up about six but can’t get Mutt up until I pull his rug right out from under him. He’s having troubles with his bladder these days so I hustle him outside right away and we both pee in the snow. It’s dark and cold—thermometer says ten below—and a dusting of snow still coming down after the big storm yesterday. Perfect for snowshoeing.
Nobody else is up so I make toast and marmalade and drink about a gallon of milk. Then I get the lunch Mum made for me last night. Then put on my heavy woollen jacket that comes down to my knees. I’m already wearing thick, wool britches and long underwear. Put on my toque with my leather helmet over it and the big mitts Mum got made by some Icelanders out at Meadow Lake.
I don’t bother to put on my snowshoes in town, so Mutt and I wade through the new snow to the street-car stop five blocks away. The first trolley along is the plow and it’s having trouble pushing its way through. A little later a passenger trolley comes along and none too soon because, as Dad would say, it’s cold as the mill-tail of Hell. We climb aboard and scrunch up close to the stove. Especially Mutt, who’s still only about half awake. There’s nobody on the car but us and a couple of Poles going home after clearing snow on the streets all night.
Dawn is coming by the time we get to the last stop, at the Exhibition Grounds. There’s a kind of smoky light because of all the clouds overhead that you can’t see but kind of feel pressing down. I strap on my snowshoes, pulling the lamp-wick bindings tight around the moosehide moccasins Dad got me from some trapper at Prince Albert. Mutt stands there waiting, lifting one foot after another to keep them warm, wishing he was back in the trolley.
Then we’re off, cutting kitty-corner across the City Golf Club out onto the prairie. My trail from last time is buried so deep I can’t see it. We tramp along for about an hour until we get to Brucie’s place. From half a mile away I can smell the foxes his dad raises. Brucie’s dog, Rex, hears us coming and sets up a racket. Mrs. Billings opens the door of their little old frame house and calls us in. Her Scotch accent is so thick I can’t make out what she’s saying but I know she’s got a hot breakfast waiting. Mr. Billings has already gone to the fox pens and Bruce comes out of his little back bedroom just as I take off my coat. His long, blond hair is hanging all over his face with just his long nose sticking out. We sit at the kitchen table, my back right up to the old wood stove, and stuff ourselves on fresh bread and Saskatoon-berry jam, slices of home-cured ham, and mugs of tea.
“Where we goin’ today?” Bruce asks.
“Depends on if it snows hard. If it does, I guess we better stick to the riverbank.”
“Och, ye’re a pair of daft dolts!” his mother says. “One day ye’ll get yersels lost and freeze as hard as they icicles.” But she’s smiling. She knows we won’t get lost, not with old Rex and Mutt along to find the way.
There’s not much snow falling now so we decide the heck with it, we’ll head out north-west away from the shelter of the river valley into the bluff country where we’ll be most likely to find birds. I start off breaking trail; then, after half a mile, Brucie takes over. It’s hard work. The snow is sure deep and the lazy dogs just saunter along in the path we make. Sometimes one of them gets too close and steps on the tail of someone’s snowshoe and trips him up, and then there’s Old Harry to pay.
Our breath makes white, fleecy puffs and freezes into hoarfrost around the edges of our helmets. There’s a bit of wind out on the open prairie so we have to stop every little while and take off our mitts and rub away the white spots on our noses and cheeks.
At last we get out of the wind in amongst the bluffs behind Henry’s place. First thing we flush about a dozen partridge out of a drift so close they nearly hit us with their wings. Rex takes after them but Mutt knows better. He sits with his tongue out, laughing, until Rex flounders back.
We’ve come to the right place. The storm must have brought a lot of animals into the bluffs looking for shelter. In the next hour we see flocks of redpolls, some pine siskins, some evening grosbeaks, a white weasel, a flock of Bohemian waxwings, and then a prairie falcon.
The falcon comes whistling out of a bluff right on
the tail of a grouse that crash-lands into a snowbank and just disappears. Smart grouse! The falcon flies off and I’ll bet he’s pretty mad. Rex has a run at the grouse as it flaps its way out of the drift.
“Come back, stupid!” Bruce yells.
About a mile more and we come to a bunch of coyote tracks. They’re so fresh the dogs take one sniff and start crowding us until we can hardly take a step without bumping into one of them. Brucie is calling them cowards when I see something up ahead on top of a rise. There’s some snow falling so I can’t see too clearly. We stop and stare until we make out four coyotes standing there staring right back at us.
Bruce lets out a holler. “Git outta there, you mangy bums!” He waves his arms and the coyotes just seem to melt away.
We snowshoe up the rise and right on top, where the wind has kept a patch of stubble clear, is a dead pony. We figure it’s a wild one off the ranch at Beaver Creek that got lost and froze to death. It’s just skin and bones. It must have been trying to paw out one last bit of stubble when it died.
Bruce says we should cut off the tail because you can sell horsehair to a guy in town who fixes furniture but I say we ought to leave it be.
“Well,” he argues, “coyotes’ll only tear it up anyhow.”
“They got more right to it than us,” I tell him. I don’t know if he agrees or not but it’s getting too cold standing around so we go on.
After a while we know it’s time for lunch. Neither of us has a watch but our bellies let us know. We pick a spot out of the wind in a thick little bluff and dig down about three feet through the drifts, using our snowshoes for shovels, until we reach the ground. Then we collect twigs and branches and some stubble straw and light a fire. The space we’ve cleared is just big enough for the fire and the dogs and us. I cut a couple of green branches with a “Y” at the end of each; push them butt-down into the snow and lay another stick between them and across the fire. Bruce hangs our tea billy from this stick. It’s an old five-pound jam can, black with soot. We keep putting snow into it until it’s mostly full of water, then we add a handful of tea and wait for it to boil. While that’s going on we hang pieces of buttered bannock and bread on sticks close to the fire and put a can of pork and beans with a hole punched in the top so it won’t explode, down among the coals. That’s lunch, except for frozen cake and biscuits.