Hunting in Canada

To our north in the Canadian Province of British Columbia, there is some great open country with bountiful wildlife.  The BC government is more than happy to allow citizens of their neighbor to the south come hunting there, however in order to garner maximum economic benefit from their resource, they require that all non BC residents hunt with a licensed outfitter.  Outfitters each have their own hunting territory with an associated quota of animals that their customers are allowed to take.

Three years ago Caitlin and I met Darrell and Lynn Collins at the Safari Club International NW Chapter's annual banquet.  Darrell has been guiding in BC for around ten years now and at the time, Lynn had just quit her job to take over running the hunting camps including cooking.  Darrell has his own territory near Williams Lake, and also guided on a territory further north near Prince George. That night the Collins had donated a parent-child black bear hunt for the following Spring.  Caitlin and I were the high bidders!  Since Caitlin was only nine at the time of the hunt and hadn't yet passed hunter education when we booked it, the plan was that we would hunt together, but I'd do the shooting.  Caitlin soon passed the hunter education class, so this was to be the last trip we'd take with that arrangement.

To Quesnel

Our good friends the Broadlick's would be joining us on the trip, but Jim and William (10) were driving up separately.  The trip took us across the boarder at Sumas, East past Chilliwack, and then we turned north leaving the populace lower BC and entering the Frasier river canyon at the town of Hope.  We would be hunting well beyond Hope. 

The drive along the Frasier is truly spectacular.  Steep canyon walls, bridges across roaring tributaries, and tunnels laboriously built in the early twentieth century where no other alternative existed.  The building of this highway critical to opening up development of the north is a fascinating bit of history.  Having made the trip half a dozen times now, I am still awed anew each time. 

A railway line follows along the river as well.  In many places it runs substantially closer to the river than the road.  There is no longer passenger service along this line which is really too bad because it must have been a truly impressive ride.

Beyond the Frasier Canyon the road levels out to mostly dry rolling ranch land.  100 Mile House, Williams Lake and the many smaller communities are repeat with horse trailers, cowboy hats, and rodeo grounds.

We arrived in Quesnel a half day early in order to check out some of the famous rainbow trout fishing at Dragon Lake.  The fish we saw in the shallows by the boat launch were huge, but not particularly interested in the spoons we threw at them.  Without a boat to explore the rest of the lake in, we contented ourselves with annoying the few fish near shore seeing if we could get any of them mad enough to bite - no luck.

To Camp

The following morning we met up with the other hunters, Jim and Will Broadlick, our friend John Leckey, and soon to be friend Roy Schultz who would be hunting his bear with archery gear.  We followed the Collins another three hours north through Prince George and out to camp.  When we arrived in camp, there was a major transition taking place to present a kid friendly camp in the wake of the late nights and hard pace of the sports writers and sporting good manufacturer representatives that had been there the previous week.  I'm pretty sure we were a bit of a letdown after the Jim Zumbo, Wayne Van Zoll etc. gang, but everyone was nice and assured us that they were ready for a quiet week and were really glad to have kids in camp for a change.

Camp wasn't much aesthetically, but functionally it was great!  Caitlin and I had our own wall tent with "cots" and a woodstove.  A generator provided electricity when we were awake, and the main cooking and gathering tent was roomy and comfortable.  Darrel has since upgraded to staying on the ranch of the outfitter which is really a first class setup, but in some ways I miss the adventure of the tent camp.  I'm pretty sure Lynne doesn't though.

Caitlin and William took to life in the Collins' camp like fish to water.  They took over morning wake-up duties (with hot coffee in hand) keeping the tent fires stoked, and whatever practical jokes they could think of.  For some reason Darrell tries to avoid packing animals out of difficult terrain.  His six wheeled amphibious Argo is a big part of his strategy to keep the pack boards tucked away in the trailer.  It can go just about anywhere, and where it can't go, it can probably be winched across.  This week there were no difficult animal recoveries so the Argo served primarily as camp entertainment.

Perfect conditions for a spring black bear hunt like this are cool days with warm sunshine.  This concentrates the bears on open south facing slopes where the snow will melt first and the spring shoots start to grow.  When the conditions are right it is not unusual to see ten or twenty bears in a day (I'm told).  This year was far from perfect with the snow melting off at about the same rate almost everywhere making it a lot more work to find the bears.  Luckily this country has lots of bears and we were able to see quite a few of them.

Hunting consisted mainly of a lot of driving around looking up onto hillsides and clear cuts trying to spot bears.  Occasionally we hike out and glass hillsides as we went.  Once a bear is spotted there are a few things that we needed to determine: first, is it a Grizzley?  For some reason Darrell doesn't see the sport in sneaking up on Grizzley bears.  We saw three Grizzlies this week. Next, does it have cubs?  It is only legal to shoot lone bears in BC, if they have company you have to assume it is a sow with cubs.  Finally, if it is a black bear and it is alone, how big is it?  Black bears are known to be one of the most difficult game animals to size in the field and it takes a lot of practice.  Once you've found a "shooter" the trick is to stalk within range and shoot it.  It sounds easy and it should be, however this particular week it wasn't for me.  In the first half of the week Darrell's longtime guide Lloyd found me two nice bears, the first I missed cleanly and the second I shot at an odd angle and wounded it in the shoulder while apparently missing the vitals.  It got up and ran off and we were never able to recover it despite many many hours of searching.  Ultimately we lost the blood trail and could not pick it back up, the woods were filled with so many fresh tracks that there was no way to know which belonged to the wounded animal.  Of all the emotions of hunting, the feeling of not recovering a wounded animal is far my least favorite.  Hopefully he lived and healed.

Finally on the last day hunting with Darrell we spotted a decent bear on a clear-cut hillside, snuck to one hundred yards and I was able to kill him cleanly with my .270.  Caitlin nicknamed the bear tumble, tumble, drop because that's what she said he did in reaction to the shot.  The bear was a mature Boar but not a monster.  He's now a rug in our bedroom and a great reminder all the fun we had that week and the great experience of taking my daughter on her first and definitely not last hunting trip.

I've since hunted with Darrell and Lynne for more times twice for Mule Deer and twice for moose and I hope to be joining them for a Grizzley hunt in the spring of '04.