Campfire Stories

Campfire stories are entertaining and educational.  Bring yours and share them with us and fellow travelers. 

a bear story | a wolf story | a caribou story | a moose story | a sheep story
a survival story | a fishing story

A Bear Story

It was a 10-day backpack trip into the headwaters country of the Arctic Red River. We knew prior to going in that the area had lots of bears and travel would have to be ever cautious of an encounter.

It was late August and the alpine area was beginning to blush with the colours of autumn. By the fourth day, we had seen quite a large number of Dalls sheep, some mountain caribou, a wolverine, some falcons, quite a number of ptarmigan and four grizzly bears.

The first of the four bear encounters involved a young, blonde sow that surprised us completely at about 30 yards. Her surprise was every bit equal to ours and she quickly fled the area, a response that we were grateful for. The next three bear encounters were distant sightings of more than 400 yards which we felt very comfortable with and thoroughly enjoyed. In each instance, the bears were not aware of our presence and we had relaxing opportunities to get up close and personal with binoculars and spotting scope.

It was the fifth bear on day five that provided the excitement. We were descending the north side of a draw in the latter part of the afternoon when a sow grizzly appeared suddenly on an elevated ridge to the south about 100 yards from us. “Bear!” focused both our attentions to the situation at hand and caught her attention as well. Up she came on her hind legs, her nose working the air and her hearing focused in our direction. There’s no way she could smell us for positive identification, but she had heard us and there’s no doubt that her limited sense of sight had picked up on our movement.

It was a very beautiful scene – a splendid representative of the grizzly bear family standing on a grassy slope highlighted with caribou moss, ground squirrel excavations, alpine flowers and bearberry. The low sun cast a peaceful ambience and highlighted her honey red fur.

She stood there for a bit, entranced with what we might be before her curiosity decided a closer look was in order. She dropped to all fours and down the slope she came in a ground gobbling gait.

We were standing on the uphill side of a huge slab of rock that had calved off the steep bluffs above many, many years before. The rubble that had come with it had filled the area on the upside of the rock, creating a sort of ramp that allowed very easy access to the top of this behemoth rock slab.

“She’s coming for a look! Get to the top of this rock.”

We had no more than thirty feet to cover and she had about one hundred yards, but she arrived at the base of the rock at the same we had reached its peak.

I had dropped my pack and chambered a round in my .45-70, a cartridge I had purposely chosen specifically for bear protection. I used to pack bear/pepper spray, but its many limitations (distance, volume and wind deflection) had me skeptical of its effectiveness in varied situations. As a guide, responsible for the safety of clients, my thinking is that I should provide the best protection possible. I also realize, however, that a firearm in the hands of someone who is uncomfortable and unfamiliar with the firearm, is likely to create more problems than it solves. One needs a controlled calmness, an understanding of bear behaviour, a surety of accuracy and an understanding of where a charging bear has to be hit.

Although she covered ground very quickly coming to us, curiosity was her motivation. She was not charging. She did not feel a threat to herself, she had no cubs and she was not protecting a meat cache. Furthermore, her ears weren’t laid back, she wasn’t bristling, growling, woofing, chomping and salivating; all symptoms of a bear feeling threatened.

I had no reason to shoot this bear.

Twenty-two feet below me, at the base of the rock stood the bear. She was looking up at me with an inquisitive stare. My rifle was shouldered and the sights were steady.

“You get the hell out of here. There’s more trouble here than you want.”

Her look changed from one of inquisitiveness to one of understanding. She wheeled and headed west at full gallop stopping a couple of times to look back before she disappeared into heavy timber about eight hundred yards from us.

The guy I was hiking with got the close interaction and her exit on video. It was an exhilarating experience for both us; a memory that never fades from year to year.

Bears can be talked to and they will listen in most situations.

And in most situations, bears are predictable. But the only thing you can predict about a bear with 100% accuracy is that they are unpredictable.

I’ve had many enjoyable, adrenaline-charged close encounters with bears and only one that ended regrettably. But, had it not ended that way, I wouldn’t be here writing this story.

Suggested Viewing: Staying Safe in Bear Country (a video) purchasable at www.bearbiology.com/stayingsafefront.html

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A Wolf Story

“Listen!”

We were setting up our camp in the last remaining light of day. It was mid-October, the leaves were gone, the ground surface was froze and ice had formed in sloughs and slack water along the river. The air was very still and the skies clear and cold which greatly enhanced the movement of sound.

There was a melodious muttering of quacks and honks from a raft of ducks and geese in a near slough and teal were whirring over the river surface. A squirrel gave a good night chatter from the far side of the river.

But, that’s not what Jared had heard when he had commanded us to listen.

There it was, the long, mournful howl of a wolf a long ways down stream. Once. Twice.

I waited a bit in anticipation of other wolves answering, before lifting my chin to the stars and howling an answer. Immediately, the wolf responded with another howl. And I called again. And we played that way for a couple minutes.

It was now inky black beneath the new moon and camp was still requiring our attention, so I quit calling and we set to our evening chores. The wolf continued with another half dozen calls, then remained silent.

We hadn’t prepared ourselves an evening meal, but we had made a pot of tea and raided the grub box of some bread, cheese and sausage. We sat in silence to eat and drink, listening to the sounds of night, looking to the stars and watching an ebb and flow of iridescent green Northern Lights.

It was perhaps half an hour since we had last heard the wolf and the next call took us completely by surprise. A wolf howl split the icy night air across the river from us. At that distance, which I estimated at two hundred yards, it saturated the night air and hung off the hills, sending shivers of excitement down our spines and standing hairs on our necks and arms.

What that must do to prey species can only be imagined. It has to strike immense fear into their hearts.

The night went completely silent. Every living thing that had been making noise or was capable of sound, froze. Not one living creature was willing to give its position away. Not a rustle, not a stir, not a peep.

I howled in return which got an immediate response. And we howled, each in turn a dozen times or more. I had no idea what this conversation was about, but I got a sense it was loneliness – possibly a subordinate wolf separated from the pack and looking for company. This was fun, but it was bedtime for us. We were hunting moose and wanted a pre-dawn start the next day, so we retired to our tent.

As we lay in our sleeping bags, the wolf continued to serenade us, his repetitive howls the last thing each of us remembers hearing as we lapsed into sleep.

Suggested Reading: Out Among the Wolves, edited by John A. Murray

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A Caribou Story

Caribou are often referred as being curious and/or stupid. For example, hunters have lured caribou within rifle range by some of the most improbable means. What could a man doing jumping jacks possibly suggest to a caribou? It’s definitely not a hunting strategy that would be successful with any other member of the deer family.

I was on the Dempster Highway a number of years ago to witness the migration of the Porcupine caribou herd. There were thousands of caribou along the Ogilvie River that we were viewing and taking photos of when a group of eighty or so animals decided to climb a nearby hill. The hill was very steep - certainly greater than forty-five degrees – free of trees and covered with dwarf birch, stunted alder, Labrador tea, bearberry and a few rock outcrops. Up they went, six hundred yards or more, to huddle and look around for five to ten minutes before they came back down and went back to feeding along the river. Why? It’s a question often asked of caribou behavior for which there is only one answer – Because they’re caribou, that’s why.

Their senses are highly defined. They have no deficiencies in hearing, smelling or sight like other members of the deer family often do. They are the oldest species of the deer family, dating back to the ice age, so they’ve proven to be adaptable and possess very strong survival instincts.

However, despite their proven adaptability and strong instincts, caribou have the inability to adapt to the encroachment of man in the form of habitat degradation and the proliferation of roads. Caribou are very linear – their migrations from calving grounds to breeding grounds or seasonal ranges are very predictable and very easily upset. The Porcupine caribou, for instance, have migrated across the Dempster Highway twice a year since the highway construction began in the early 1960s. And even yet, the highway is an obstruction they are very hesitant to step across, often congregating in huge herds on one side. Eventually, one will make the decision to cross and the rest will inevitably follow. Highways, seismic lines, pipelines and fence lines have all proven disastrous to healthy populations of caribou.

I remember a time in the MacKenzie Mountains when I was working as a hunting guide. I had spotted a large group of five hundred mountain caribou six miles from our camp, so we got an early start on the next day to see if we couldn’t get a trophy bull. The first part of our stalk was easy – reduce the six miles down to a thousand yards. The next challenge was to get within effective rifle range – in this case one hundred yards.

The best we could do was about four hundred yards because there was no ground cover to hide our approach. The caribou were herded on a gently sloping plain that was growing thick with caribou moss, their major diet.

What were we to do? We had only one choice (jumping jacks aside) and that was to stand up in full view and walk into the herd. As we walked in, a corridor opened before us in the herd, a kind of rolling-out-the-red-carpet treatment. We stopped near the middle and looked around us. In an arc of two hundred and seventy degrees, caribou surrounded us from as close as twenty yards to as far as eight hundred yards. The white manes, enormous racks, the calves, the curious onlookers, the injured, the dominance posturing of bulls, the grandeur of the setting – we were transfixed in complete awe.

We had ample opportunity to take an animal, but we didn’t. We just stood there until the sinking sun forced us on the trail back to camp.

It was possibly the most memorable moment of my outdoor life.

The caribou, in my mind, is the most majestic and beautiful animal in North America.

Suggested Reading: Caribou and the Barren-lands by George Calef

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A Moose Story

It is mid-September. The grey light of early morning uncovers a thick mist hanging over the river. The crisp, still air reveals the scents of high bush cranberry, composting leaves, slough grass and willow.

A cow moose rises from her deep grass bed along a dry slough twenty five yards from the river. She stands rigid as her ears meticulously scan the surroundings, moving forward and back, rotating in half circles, sometimes independent of one another and sometimes together. She recognizes the movement of a small rodent in the frosted grass, the soft touchdown of a leaf lazily letting go of its lofty perch atop an aspen, the head of an otter breaking the river’s surface. She is patient in her search.

Satisfied the world around her hides no immediate danger, she shakes herself and walks to the river. She wades into the water and drinks deeply. The statuesque pose is resumed and the ears once more carefully search the world around her. Then she breaks the morning silence with two calls. Eeeeeeough. Eeeeeeough. And listens.

She steps out of the water and urinates at its edge, her urine carrying the scent of her developing estrous.

A mature bull, three kilometers downstream, is rubbing his antlers on a willow clump. Hearing the call, he remains still for a long time, his ears tuned to the direction of the cow. Air currents following the flow of the river bring him her scent. Nostrils flare and he rocks his head from side to side, the palms of his antlers directing air currents towards his nose.

He softly utters a single grunt. Augh. And listens.

His direction is set towards the cow. His approach is patient, often taking the time to stop and listen. His stride is with purpose but not without caution as he remains ever aware of the possibility of predators. His step is soft and his coat brushes without noise against branches, but his aggression forces him to sometimes rake the willow and alder with his antlers.

This is the beginning of the moose rut.

For the next three to four weeks, the bull will work at gathering a harem of cows, breeding each one in turn as she hits the peak of her estrous cycle. Normally a shy, quiet animal, he becomes aggressive, serving notice of his territory by raking the brush with his antlers, calling to cows, challenging other bulls and building scrapes.

A scrape is built by turning up the ground with his front hooves, urinating in the fresh earth and then rolling in it. The strong aroma is a call to cows and a challenge to bulls. Challenges are most often dealt with through posturing and display of antlers. Whoever looks the biggest wins. If posturing and display does not settle the matter, then a fight ensues wherein one or both bulls can be injured.

During the rut, bull moose often incur rut related injuries such as gores, tears, broken tines and/or bones, blood blisters and bruises. Some injuries can be fatal. The bull does not feed during the rut. Couple this with the stresses of keeping his harem together and defending it, the rut is very exhaustive, making him more susceptible to predators.

The cow can bring big stresses onto the herd bull because she is always willing to draw in other bulls. Instinctively, her loyalty is to her species and her calf. Subsequently, she looks for the most dominant bull to breed her. When she is ready to accept breeding, she will become very aggressive towards other cows, often striking with hooves and biting, in an effort to keep them away from the bull.

This is perhaps the greatest opportunity of the year for people to view moose. Locate an area with water, look for sign like droppings, tracks and scrapes, use your sense of smell, listen for calls and antlers raking brush, try calling once every half hour or so while staying still in that area for two to three hours and make no human noises.

Listening and being absolutely quiet is an exercise that is rewarding in many ways: the swoop of the marsh hawk, the varied vocalizations of the raven, the distance trumpets of swans, geese and cranes, the murmur of flowing water, wind song in the aspen, the leaf rustle of a grouse and the countless chirps, cheeps, chatters and whistles of a variety of songbirds.

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A Sheep Story

I remember the first time I lay behind my spotting scope watching Dall sheep. We had climbed up from Kusawa Lake into a grassland cirque surrounded by rock spires on the west, a massive hill of shattered rock to the southeast and a rolling height of peaks to the north.

In the spires was a band of rams. Being a distance of no less than a kilometer, I didn’t feel the need for us to search for cover to avoid being detected, but as I lay there viewing these magnificent animals through the spotting scope, I couldn’t help but feel they were looking at me. In retrospect, I don’t doubt for a second they were.

There have been many claims regarding the highly developed sense of sight that sheep have. I doubt there is anybody with any amount of sheep experience that would deny sheep have an equal if not greater sighting ability than a person with 7X binoculars.

The sense has been highly developed to compliment their adaptation to living in an environment where views are often unobstructed for miles and miles.

Sheep have also adapted very well to the harsh environment of a world above treeline. Unlike most animals that seek the protection of timber when weather conditions become unbearable, sheep by necessity “weather the storm”. Sheep are grazers that have never adapted to pawing through snow to reach their food. Hence, during winter, sheep seek out windswept hills and ridges that wind maintains free of snow. Their beds are mere depressions that provide minimum comfort and no protection.

They are also highly adapted in their climbing and running ability. Although not as surefooted as a Rocky Mountain goat in that a sheep cannot climb in areas a goat can, sheep can often be spotted in terrain that is scary steep. And a sheep can run like a deer over the most fractured ground.

I remember spooking a ram out of his bed on a hillside that was a veritable obstacle course of busted rock varying in size from a fist to a vehicle. Like an exceptional fullback, he navigated that treacherous hillside in well under thirty seconds. It took us about twenty minutes to cross it.

Despite their somewhat fragile looking appearance – long, thin legs and sleek design – the sheep is a very tough animal with a very strong will to live. A wildlife technician with the territorial government showed me a sheep’s leg bone that had been submitted by a hunter. The leg between the knee and ankle had been broken at one time – a compound fracture – and had healed itself. The bones did not, however, heal butted together, but rather overlapped by about half an inch. The hunter had viewed this animal at great length before shooting it, but had not noticed anything wrong with the physical appearance of this animal in the way it walked or otherwise. He found the healed bone during the field dressing.

Another example of their perseverance, is a ram’s skull that was found with one of its horns growing through the nose. The horn, for whatever reason, did not grow back and down in the typical arch, but rather curled out, down and in, penetrating the nose entirely approximately half way between the eyes and the nostrils. According to the length and age of the horn (sheep horns have annuli – growth rings – that make age easy to determine), this ram had been living with this condition for no less than three years. And the abnormal growth of the horn, while possibly contributed to its death, was not the cause of death. It had died by natural predation.

Sheep are magnificent animals – strikingly beautiful, highly adapted, tough and resilient. There is much to be admired and respected of this occupant of the high country.

Suggested Reading: Return of Royalty: Wild Sheep of North America by Dr. Dale E. Toweill and Dr. Valerius Geist

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A Survival Story

It may seem odd, and possibly even a bit unnerving, to the reader and potential client that Cedar and Canvas Adventures, offering professionally guided wilderness adventures, would be writing and talking about survival. Personally, I have never been in a situation that could be categorized as survival. Maybe I’m lucky, but there’s no doubt also that I take great preparation towards my sojourns into the wilderness and have very likely avoided “bad luck”. The following anecdotal information provides some insight into being unlucky and the importance of being prepared for any given situation.

In February 1963, Americans Ralph Flores and Helen Klaben were on their way from Alaska to New York in a light Howard aircraft. They stopped in Whitehorse for fuel and due to storm warnings, were advised not to proceed by the Federal Department of Transport. In those days, however, advice by the DOT to Americans was simply advice that either did not carry any regulatory teeth or was simply not enforced. So against better judgment, they flew out of Whitehorse with hopes of making it that day to Ft. St. John, British Columbia. Using the Alaska Highway as their guide, they flew into the face of a blinding snow storm, lost sight of the highway and inevitably crashed their light aircraft.

Helen Klaben suffered a crushed foot and a broken arm in the crash and Ralph Flores had a broken jaw and cracked ribs. Their radio was heavily damaged in the crash and inoperable. Their only survival tool was a hunting knife; they had no axe, no firearms, no sleeping bags and no survival kit. They built a crude shelter out of a small piece of tarpaulin and seat cushions salvaged from the wreckage. Their total food inventory consisted of four tins of sardines, two cans of tuna, some fruit cocktail and crackers. The only reason they survived was that Helen Klaben was a smoker and had matches; they were able to keep a fire to prevent them freezing to death and to melt snow – for the most part their only sustenance. The varying hare was at the peak of its cycle during that time and hares were everywhere. Ralph Flores stripped some electrical wiring from the plane wreckage to make snares. However, he had no snaring skills and caught nothing.

They survived 49 days in temperatures down to -40F before being rescued. It’s an amazing testament to the survival spirit of the human being. However, their mistakes are glaringly obvious – lack of judgment, no designated survival tools/materials, no survival rations, no bush skills.

In April of that year, another survival story surfaced in the Yukon. Twelve year old Andy Lutz was lost for five days in the wilderness of the Upper Liard area. He was hunting rabbits with his .22 rifle and got turned around. However, unlike the people in the previous story, Andy had some bush skills. He built himself a lean-to out of spruce boughs, kept a fire (he was not a smoker; he had matches designated for survival necessity), made himself a warm bed of fire coals covered with spruce boughs and shot and ate squirrels. “I wasn’t scared at all”, he was quoted as saying in the local newspaper. “I knew I could get out. I had lots of ammunition for my rifle” The Whitehorse Star. April 11, 1963. When rescuers found him, he had experienced some discomfort with frostbite, but was happy and self-assured.

I know of two guys that capsized their paddle canoe crossing a large lake. One made it to shore and survived; the other drowned. For the man on shore, he spent eight grueling, terrifying days alone before being rescued. The survivor had matches on his person, but never found them until day 5 or 6, likely due to his emotional state (grief, fear, hypothermia, etc.), but also influenced by the fact that during their planning of the trip, his buddy was made responsible for matches. Because of the latter, the survivor did not think he even had matches on his person.

Stories of survival situations are not limited just to the foolish and unprepared. However, it is the foolish and unprepared that often make the most sensational survival stories for their trials are usually the greatest.

Alex van Bibber, born in 1916 at Mica Creek on the Pelly River, Yukon has lived his whole life as a man of the wilderness – a subsistence lifestyle, a trapper, an outfitter and guide. His exploits and life adventures are very numerous, interesting and remarkable. He says the single greatest survival tool is matches – wooden, strike-anywhere matches in a waterproof case. A fire keeps you warm and dry, safe from wildlife and possibly most important, it keeps you company.

Survival is a very interesting topic, but a highly undesirable experience. Being prepared will go a long ways to keeping it a topic.

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A Fishing Story

He was a shy, skinny kid with a dogged determined and patient personality that became most obvious when he was fishing.

Fishing entered his life early. Before celebrating his fourth birthday, he had caught a number of fish and become efficient at casting.

In his eighth year he caught what could accurately be described as his first big fish. It was a memorable day.

The tin boat banged and echoed like a big drum against the rough water and did nothing to insulate the anglers from the icy conditions. Nonetheless, they were going fishing and the youngster was happy. “We’ll troll first, so cast right out there at an angle behind the boat”, his dad told him.

Surely it was fate or maybe it was just his way of making his own decisions, but instead of his cast going back of the boat, it went straight out to the side. Bucking the wind gusts, the little silver spoon sailed with reckless abandon to splash into the frigid waters about twenty meters from the boat.

“Why did you cast out there?”

“I dunno,”

“Well, you better reel in the slack before your hook hits bottom and gets hung up.”
Holding the rod tip high, he began reeling in the slack line and watching the bail go round and round the spool.

The fish hit without warning as pike most often do; a vicious attack that wrenched the tip of the ultra light rod down to the water’s surface, searched the limits of the 1.8 kilogram test line and sent the tiny little reel into a screaming fit.

Free of the typical jerking reaction of most fish when hooked and coupled with the forward motion of the boat, the boy’s dad assessed the situation as a snag on bottom rather than a fish.

“Reel in buckshot - your brother’s hung up.”

The dad kept the motor in gear at a trolling speed to maintain directional control of the boat while the older boy began retrieving his hook. Meanwhile, the youngster held both hands tight to his fishing rod and the reel continued to sing. “Dad, I don’t have much line left,” the youngster said.

With the older boy’s line in, the dad turned his attention towards the boy with the singing reel and only then did he realize this snag just happened to be heading for deep water.

Little by little, the youngster began to get his line back as the boat crawled its way over the swells towards the fish.

With most of the line recovered, the motor was shut down and a back and forth battle between boy and fish began. With a smaller fish, the youngster would have been peering intently into the blackish water in hopes of spotting his catch, but with this fish all his energies were concentrated on hanging onto his rod and trying to gain line.

The big fish slowed and thoughts in the boat turned towards a successful landing when suddenly the fish swung and headed back to shallow water.

It was a mad, reel screaming run that threatened to find the knot that fastened the line to the spool. The boat followed the fish back in and the youngster again collected most of his line.

The big fish run parallel to the shore half a dozen times. The youngster hung onto his fishing rod with both hands as the reel sung and when the fish reversed its run, the youngster hurriedly fought to keep tension on the line.

Suddenly, the line went slack. The fish was gone.

“Reel! Reel as fast as you can! It’s swimming towards the boat!”

As fast as he could, the boy reeled. It was a race and he caught up to the big fish just as it torpedoed directly below him. The taut line did little to slow the big fish down and the little fishing rod arched its spine against the heavy strain until its tip was pulled beneath the boat.

As hard as he could, the youngster fought not the fish, but the thought of losing his fishing rod.

The motor was fired up, the boat was swung from over top of the line and the process of getting line back on the reel began again.

Back in deep water, the big fish pulled hard and steady down into the inky depths.
“Dad? Can you take my rod? My arm is getting real sore.”

His dad reached over and took a firm grip on the rod. The youngster released his grip, flexed his fingers and shook his arm to get the cramping out and the blood flow back in.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Ready to take it again?”

“Yeah.”

The fight of the fish took on a gradual sweeping arc back towards shallow water and yet again, the boat followed. The tactics of the fish changed to hugging the bottom and sweeping back and forth in short runs. It was tiring.

The boy pulled and gained line, pulled and gained line, never losing his concentration. The fish tried one more time to gain deep water, but this time the taut line pulled it back and the twenty pounder rolled on its side and broke the surface of the water next to the boat.

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