A HUNT CAMP STORY
Tight tongues loosen with time. Consider the latest item to come via the moccasin telegraph. These hunters frequent Crown land in Cashel Township. Mostly they are railroad workers. Like so many it wasn’t about THE HUNT but the experience that appealed to them. The relaxed change of pace kept them coming back. Seldom did they hit the trail before 10:00 a.m.
Visit any Bancroft food store just before THE HUNT and you’ll see hunters shopping for vitals. You can’t miss them. They’re the ones all decked out in the official fluorescent mandatory hunting outfits. And that long sheet of paper that resembles a computer printout? That’s their grocery list. These guys are not prepared to live off the land. They love to eat.
Well, one morning, our railway hunt camp was about to sit down to their regular breakfast feast of ham’n eggs, toast, pancakes and real maple syrup when the door burst open. Standing in the doorway was a little furry creature armed to the teeth. Fearing for their lives the guys sat paralyzed while the little bear like creature devoured their food, shot up the camp, injuring noone, and ran off.
“What was that?” they all asked spontaneously.
Well one of the guys eventually discovered the identity of the furry little bear-like creature while doing some research in his Encyclopedia Britannica. Obviously this was pre-internet.
In their Hunt Camp Newsletter he wrote:
“The intruder was a Koala Bear.” Quoting, the source: “Koala Bear – a furry little bear-like creature that eats shoots and leaves.”
Then there is the Kangaroo that was seen during deer season near Peterboro, Ontario.
Friend Gord took his wife Helen on her first deer hunt. He placed her on a stand near a deer runway and said that he would be just down the trail and over the hill if she needed him.
It wasn’t all that long before a deer came into view and Helen got all excited. Of course she forgot that she had a rifle and was supposed to shoot the deer. Instead she called out: “Gord, Gord – there’s a kangaroo!” That is non-fiction!