It was about 35 years ago when Hawk and I were going to go on a back country hunting trip with our longbows in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
It was a crisp late fall day but the sun was shining bright as we headed into the deep back country with our back packs heavy with gear. We didn’t take a tent because we planned on making a debris shelter.
Oh it seemed so good to be away from all the hassle and frustration of our jobs and the air seemed so clean and fresh. We would stop every once in a while and chew down a couple chunks of jerky.
Hawk found an old apple tree that still had some apples on it and they weren’t too bad, just a few spots that had frost damage. Well this seemed like as good a place as any to setup camp. At least if our hunting skills were not good enough to keep us in food, we still had apples to carry us over.
That night we both slept fairly well, even thou Hawk sawed enough wood to build a cabin the next day.
Now this adventure took place before GPS was available and if you don’t know, there’s lots of iron ore in most of the central part of the UP of Michigan. So a magnetic compass is about worthless, and neither of us knew that at the time. The bad part of that was, we both had a fairly good sense of direction so we hadn’t even looked at a compass the whole first day.
The morning was very nice and had warmed up to where the frost was gone and Hawk decided to try and get us some fish while I went off to find a rabbit or some squirrels or whatever.
We both got back to camp a few hours later and Hawk had a couple of brook trout and I had two snowshoe rabbits. Now that was a feast, we pigged out and all that was left was the bones.
Later that afternoon we headed out together just to scout around a bit. We found good trail signs for deer and several nice areas with grouse. The trouble with grouse is they are usually in very thick cover and they are hard enough to hit with a shotgun let alone a bow and arrow. We would flush one up and try as we may, our bow tip or the arrow would get caught in some brush or something.
Finally Hawk motioned for me to hold still, he drew back and let fly. The grouse that was sitting on a lower branch flopped a few seconds and we had a little something for dinner.
It was just a little while later that I nailed another snowshoe and that took the pressure off. Well I must admit we both didn’t look like we had missed too many meals and we did like our eats.
We dug up some burdock roots and we found some wild rice so we were all set again. So back to camp we went.
As we were heading back, it started to get overcast with clouds, but it really didn’t look like it was about to rain, but it did darken the sky a little and we couldn’t tell where the sun was. No problem, we were on a deer run that went right past our camp.
When we returned to camp it was all torn up and turned over. We found bear tracks that were wider than my hand. Oh crap, we didn’t burn up the bones from earlier and it was dug up where we buried the hides and entrails.
The next thing we seen was two bear cubs up in a tall white pine that was next to the old apple tree. Ah…… where’s mama?
We both started turning slowly searching every spot we could see. Nothing, not a bear in sight, where was that mama bear?
We decided that it would be a good time to depart and seeing that both our packs were destroyed, there was no sense even worrying about them. So we started heading back to where the truck was parked. We hadn’t walked more than a minute when we heard a woofing sound and teeth snapping together. It was off to our left side, but we still couldn’t see anything.
Then came the big shock, it was a big boar black bear and he was coming straight at us! Then there was a loud crashing off to our right!...... Here comes the biggest sow bear we had ever seen and she was charging straight at us!
We didn’t have a clue what to do but she practically ran us over and slammed into that boar full speed. The two of them were rolling and bighting each other very violently. At which point I looked at Hawk and said “Shall we go now?“
We ran out of there as fast as we could, hearing the fighting going on behind us slowly fade out of ear shot. Then we slowed to a walk but kept on going. And Hawk asked me “You got any ides where the truck is?”
Well I was sure that there was a main East West road to the South of us. Got my compass out and I thought it was broken because it didn’t point to where I thought north was. Hawks compass was pointing the same way, so we figured that we must have just gotten turned around in the excitement.
So off we went, walking south, as far as we knew.
Something just didn’t feel right, it was getting darker and I decided to check the compass again. North!? How can this be? I was sure that we weren’t circling, but, north?
Now it started to rain, and Hawk had walked ahead of me a ways and checked his compass. East?
He yelled to me to point east and I pointed east. He was pointing east as well, and it was about 90 degrees off from me.
That’s it, time to make a shelter and try again tomorrow and hopefully we could get our baring’s after sunup.
We made a quick debris hut but by now we were both soaked to the bone, but we were at least getting warmed up in the leaves that we had packed in our hut. But we were hungry and had no jerky or apples and in our excitement back at the old campsite, we had lost the game we had.
Not to worry, tomorrow we can start over, find some food, get our baring’s and all will be fine.
I don’t think either of us slept very well. I didn’t hear Hawk snore all night and we both were uneasy about the bear encounter.
Upon coming out of the debris hut the next morning, we discovered that it was extremely foggy and we could only see about fifty feet or so. What with the compass not working and no sun, we couldn’t even pick a spot in the distance and walk to it, just to stay on a straight line.
Well, guess we need to make a fire and scrounge for something to eat.
Now Hawk was an Airborne Ranger in the army and I was an Eagle Scout, so we have had some survival training. But Hawk, much more so. He had told me of outings where they would live off the land and some of the stories were quite interesting to say the least. Eating bugs, and different things like acorns that had to be boiled and dump the water off a couple times, just to get the bitter taste off, and earth worms. Yeah, I don’t think so.
We decided to one at a time wander around looking for food while the other one would stay in camp. We would whistle to each other so as to know how to get back. We made several trips, I found some burdock roots but we had no way to boil them, so next to the fire to dry them out and then we could pound them into meal.
Hawk came back this one time and; to my horror he pulled several handfuls of NIGHT CRAWLERS out of his jacket pockets. No way, you must be joking, tell me you found something good and you’re just pulling my leg. He also had some plastic sandwich bags that he had filled with water from a depression in a large rock.
We had found a decent sized flat rock that would work well in the fire to cook on and a hollowed out chunk of wood that we could fill with water and drop red hot rocks in to boil the burdock roots.
Hawk proceeded to tell me that the trick with the night crawlers is, make them so you can’t see what they are, such as cut into tiny pieces. He then asked me to trust him. He would do the cooking.
He started rock boiling the roots and put the worm mush on the flat rock. After the roots were soft, he took the worm patty and smashed them together, added a little salt and pepper that he always carried with him and; bon apatite, breakfast was served.
They say that hunger is the best seasoning, but I had to admit, it really wasn’t as bad as I was thinking it would be. I won’t describe how it was, but it did give us some energy, and we decided to just wait until the fog lifted before we tried to figure our way out of our predicament.
It was coming up to mid-day before we could see very far and we noticed something in the distance that was reflecting sunlight, so we decided to go check it out and find out what it was.
We didn’t have to walk more than a half mile to get to whatever it was and we were hoping it was a building or a vehicle or something man made.
Now Hawk had a bit of a sense of humor that was sometimes bordering on distasteful at times, and he started to laugh out loud. He pointed at me and said “I got you to eat worms and we were within a half mile of your truck the whole time. “
Sure enough, it was my truck. We got in and I drove a couple miles, stopped at an old country diner and made him buy lunch. Yep, I ordered steak and eggs. And it was even better than the breakfast Hawk made me earlier in the day.
That was the last time we ever did that kind of hunting trip, but we still did lots of short day trips closer to home.
Yeah, it’s nice to have a good friend that will stick with you no matter what.
Topic: A story from days gone by . (Read 556 times)
