PART 3

“Sixty-five years ago,” she continued, “I came up here with my husband. This was all bush then and he had to clear every inch of this farm.”

“And did you help him?”

“Oh, yes,” she laughed. “I’ve chopped down a tree.”

“I suppose there were plenty of deer in those days?”

“My husband,” said she, “could go out almost any morning and get one in the grain fields, a few hundred yards from the house. It wasn’t for a good many years that we actually went what you would call hunting.”

Shoots ’Em In The Water

As long as the deer were around the barnyard like chickens she had not bothered with them. When they were further afield and a sport, she went after them.

“I suppose,” she said, “I’ve been hunting without a break for more than forty years now. And there never was a fall that I didn’t get a deer. I don’t see why folks should be raising such a fuss about this one.”

“Did you get him still hunting or did you stand on a runway and have the dogs drive him to you?”

“I’m not much of a one for walking now-a-days,” said she. “I got him in a boat on the water. The men in my party were out on the hills with the dogs and the deer ran into the lake.”

“I had my daughter and granddaughter with me,” she went on. “My daughter had got a deer and I really wanted my granddaughter to get this one. But she was handling the outboard motor and neither my daughter nor I could run it. So I had to shoot the deer myself. Otherwise it would have got away.”

“Is it hard to shoot a deer in the water?”

“Not so hard when you get close,” said she, “but even the head is not such a big mark. A deer can turn very fast and if he gets between you and the shore he may fool you.”

“With an outboard motor,” I remarked, “you’ve got much more speed than a deer.”

“Yes,” she admitted, “but I’ve rowed them down myself. In fact once, without suspecting it, I rowed right over a deer. If I had been in a canoe I’d probably have upset.”

There was a paradox about her hunt this year. Though she got her deer, she lost it.

“There were two men in a rowboat nearby. They were chasing the deer and it was getting away from them. So we stepped in. Then they claimed that as their dogs had put the deer into the water it was their deer. So I let them have it.”

Talk about stealing the coppers from your grandmother’s dead eyes! What is that to robbing Diana of 83 of the trophy that fell to her trusty .30-30?

They were slipping over what is termed “a fast one,” for it turned out that they had no dogs.

“The men in our party,” said she, “when they came back to camp were very indignant. They crossed over the lake and those fellows didn’t have a hound in their camp. Our gang, however, let them keep the deer and gave me another.”

I saw it in the outhouse all neatly cut up into loins, quarters and shoulders. When Grandma Barragar goes hunting she runs the whole gamut of it, including the cleaning and butchering. She indignantly denied any masculine assistance in what may seem the unpleasant and unfeminine part of the sport.

“We women,” said she, “dressed our deer ourselves. There were men on the lake whom we knew but our party was a party by ourselves. I don’t need a man along when I go hunting.”

PART 4

Diana does not need a man along when she goes hunting. Neither does she when she goes fishing.

“I troll for the salmon trout by myself,” said she. “I’m out soon after daybreak. I find it the best time.”

Though she does not like walking she will trudge half a mile to a creek in which she keeps her rowboat. And it is nothing then to row half a mile down to the lake. Thousands of men would like to know a guide who can be guaranteed to lead them to deer. From what I have heard I can confidently recommend Mrs. Barragar of Salmon Lake.

“The lake is still pretty good for them,” said she. “I’ve always had good luck back there. Years ago before the settlers came it must have been a great deer resort. All along the shore you found sharpened stones with which the Indians once skinned deer. That must have been a long time ago. There were only a few Indians here when I came and there are none now.”

Deer constitute only a small chapter in her hunting history. “I have shot bear,” said she, “and they are still plentiful here. Who knows that I won’t get another one this winter?”

She recalled the last bruin she had laid low. “I had set a trap for him and when I came back I found he had broken the chain and dragged the trap away with him. I followed his trail and when he stood up to growl I put a bullet in him.”

“Weren’t you afraid?” I asked.

“Afraid,” exclaimed the old lady. ‘What was there to be afraid of? It was only a bear.”

Has Always Hunted in Skirts

For many years she ran a trap line and caught mink and marten, raccoon and muskrat and an occasional bear. She has dressed deer leather and tanned hides. “I’ll probably have a few traps out this winter,” said she.

I thought of winter in a one storey cabin on the bank of lonely Salmon Lake and shivered. I could hear the north wind howling and could see the snow drifts covering the wood pile and obscuring the windows.

“What,” said I. “You don’t mean to say you spend winter here alone? And you don’t go out and chop wood when it’s a way below zero?”

“I’m not alone,” she replied. “I’ve got my granddaughter with me. She’s sixteen and going to St. Ola school. As for chopping wood when it’s zero I’ve got a way of beating that.”

With great pride she showed me how she had built a small shed alongside the kitchen door. As the wood was split she threw it under cover.

“You see when it’s cold,” said she, “I don’t have to go into the snowdrifts to get wood for the fire.”

I picked up her rifle. It was like a feather.

“Yes,” she said, “It is light, but it is heavy enough for deer. You don’t have to shoot a mile. That, in fact, is the first gun I ever owned. I’ve handled a shot gun but I never had one myself.”

I remarked, “I suppose this gun has won many a Thanksgiving Day turkey?”

“The gun has,” she remarked, “but I haven’t. I’ve often lent it, but I’ve never taken part in any of these shoots myself.”

The practical way in which she handled that gun and the way she squinted down the barrel made me confident that she could give a good account of herself at the target. If she ever went to a shoot she might walk off with the turkey and allow Mr. James Fries to add to his humans of Birdseye Centre the chagrin of the male Nimrod at being beaten by an 83-year-old grandmother. TBC.