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Speaker 1: Welcome to this Country Life. I’m your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trotlining and just in general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented by Case Knives from the store More Studio on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I’ve got some stores to share on the Loose for Moose Part one, Who doggies have I got a tail for y’all this week. I’m sure some of you have seen on my social media pages that I was up in the Land of Hockey chasing moose, the state bird of Canada. Well, let me tell you I had more fun up there than a monkey could and an acre of grapevines. It’s a long story and one that’s gonna take me a while to tell because it was so impactful to me. I’ll go ahead and tell you now that we ain’t even gonna see a moose on the show this week, but I think you’ll like the story that hopefully we’ll paint the picture of what’s to come. We got a lot to talk about. So let’s get to it. Brent. What’s your dream hunt? That question was posed to me by my boss, Garrett Long. I sat back in my chair and kind of laughed a little to myself and I said, I’d like to kill a moose in Canada with a boat. His response was the exact opposite of what I expected. He said, Okay, who you want to hunt with? Sir, who would you like to hunt with? You got to have a guide in Canada. I was staring in displine at my phone. My eyeballs was pegged out of my head on stems like a cartoon character, and I’m like, really. He said, yeah, man, start looking for an outfitter. Let’s meet back in a week and discuss what you come up with. I said, already know. I want to hunt with Craig McCarthy in Manitoba. That was the morning of May thirty first, twenty twenty four. That meeting begat another meeting, which begat another meeting, so on and so forth until the morning of Friday, September the twenty sixth, twenty twenty five. I stepped on a commercial jet in a little rock bound for Northern Manitoba. My first dot would be in Chicago with a short layover and then on to Winnipeg, Canada. Going through customs was a breeze into Canada. The agents were beyond helpful and welcoming to me and the few others that I saw who were visiting their country shopping for the inside of animals to bring back to the States to eat. One agent I talked to as a friend who lives in Arkansas, what a small world we live in, and believe it or not, it was going to get even smaller before this trip was over. My friend Dave Gardner met me out front and helped me load all my gear into our rental that he’d already stacked cases of gear in to film this Canadian Moose Excursion to be released sometime next year. I see in Dave, who I’ve been on several media to shoots with starting back a few years ago, kind of brought the reality of what we were doing home. This hunt, my first big solo project, would depend a lot on me. It was a task I hadn’t taken lightly at any juncture of the meticulous planning and attention to detail that goes into a hunt of this scale, but the talking and the planning was over. From here on out, we would be reacting to whatever came our way. It’s hard to script anything past decide and what the hunt will be. We can only control so much. I’d practiced my bow the final couple of weeks to the point of being very comfortable at shooting anything out to forty five yards. I hadn’t have all the confidence in the world that I could make a good shot and ethically punch a hole in a moose. I spoke with Craig and I asked him how the bulls were, how they were reacting, and if I was being wise to choosing, you know, to bow hunt instead of bringing a rifle. He was confident that either was a good possibility, but I was. I was starting to feel the added pressure of all the things that can go sideways, like what happened on my bear hunt a couple of weeks ago. Now, I’m not going to take an unethical shot or take any chance that would prevent me from coming home with all the parts the moose that tasted good or would look good in my new office, my freezer was my first concern, and since this was my first moose hunt, my first big solo project, I opted to go with my rifle, and as fate would have it, I chose wisely with I rented suv loaded from Moose, Dave and I headed north from the provincial capital of Manitoba. We had almost five hundred miles which I’m pretty sure equations around six million kilometers to go before we’d bed down for the night to rest for the early morning flight the next morning. Our jumping off spot would be a city called Thompson, but it was still hours away when we stopped in the community of Grand Rapids for gas. Grand Rapids that’s about halfway from Winnipeg to Thompson, and according to the interwebs, two hundred and twelve folks call it home. There was also a lot of new looking it out back in the day. Anytime the Hudson Bay Company and Northwest Company got in the close proximity of each other, both fur companies wanted to control the territory, and violence ensued. On more than one occasion. Way back in the early eighteen hundreds, Dave was pumping gas and I walked in to pay for it, and walking back outside, I was reminded of that small world thing as I walked by a young man who smiled and asked me if I was Brent Reeves. His name was Riyler, and I was surprised to hear my name, but I just assumed he was just another cat like me from the States who was up there shopping in the meat section of the Great White North. Alas he wasn’t. Royler lives there and just happens to listen to the podcast. He recognized yours truly and introduced himself. I introduced him to Dave and the three of us had a great visit, just appreciating all the wild things Canada has to offer. And it’s always nice to meet others who appreciate the same things as you. I’ve said it a million times, and a half million of them were on this show. But regardless of where we live and call home, there’s more of us out there with things in common, and realizing how we act and the things we do say more about who we are than anything. Now. I could have stayed there all day talking to Riyler, and forgive me for barring a little Robert Frost here, but David and I had miles to go before we could sleep. That evening, we rolled into Thompson, a city sport in fifteen thousand residents who, if they followed the suggestions of the road signs we saw on the edge of town, all had winter emergency gear in their vehicles. I’m not sure what that emergency kit looks like, but if I live there, I’d get me one because it gets CLD cold there and the last place you’d want to spend the night would be on the side of the road. When the temperature disps below I can’t fill my toes for about six months. Thompson has a high school that offers classes in English, French, and Cree. Now how cool is that they also have two airports, one made from concrete and the other one mostly out of water. That was the one that David and I had a rendezvous with Destiny the following morning. Sleep would be sporadic that night, and I was going over and over my checklist for the trip, trying to anticipate everything we’d need to document the hunt, while Dave did the same thing. And man, there was a lot riding on the outcome of this experience. After all, we weren’t just hunting. We were telling a story with a camera about a hunt. They’re two totally different things, but each very enjoyable. If you can separate the two been on the other side of that camera, I think helps me keep the line between the two clearly visible. I know that it was gonna be my honor to shoot the moose, should the opportunity arise, but I admit to being a little jealous of Dave running the camera. That’s the role I played for so long, and I loved it. I swear though, I always felt more pressure behind the camera than in front of it. After all, we were there to film the event, and the old saying goes, if it didn’t happen on camera, it didn’t happen. That’s the pressure cooker of filming a hunt. And normally on shoots like this, we’d have two cameras rolling. But due to the limited space and logistics of the floatplane flying us and others into separately isolated camps, it was all gonna fall on Dave’s shoulders. Now, that’s a yoke that he wears well. And we’ve been running together through the mountains, the prairies or river bottoms and the rolling hills of the US of A for five years now and he always pulls has waited more. But this would be a true test for both of us. We were up way before breakfast the day we were to fly out, and after a pot of Tim Horton’s finest, we headed out to meet the float plane. Now, if you’re not familiar with that name, allow me to tell you what that is, just briefly. It’s coffee, and it’s good coffee. And I was introduced to it by a couple of Yankee boys on a Kansas deer hunt ten years ago. It is my favorite, and for some reason, it’s not to be found in the Land of Cotton with any frequency. For the love of humanity, could someone please tell mister Horton that we’d welcome his company down here. Anyway. It was cool that morning, like in the forties cool, and a quick check of my weather app showed it to be twice that back in Arkansas. That’s a shame everyone back there. That is our chariot was a de Haveveluan Cauntada d h C three otter single engine airplane that was floating alongside a dock that jutted out into the water. It had six windows running down each side of the white fuselage and was painted brilliant white. It would be hauling five passengers for a total of six souls on board, counting the pilot, plus all the gear we were all toting. I learned a lot on this trip as far as what you need to take with you on on an eight day hunt. I brought too many clothes. Here’s what I would take as far as clothes go on my next adventure like this with similarly predicted weather now one good raincoat and breeches, one cold weather jacket, three pairs of hunting breeches, two pairs of long John’s, two long sleeve cold weather shirts, one long sleeve warm weather shirt, four T shirts, four pairs of socks, and just let your conscience be your guide on drawers. Unless you want to take a bath in the lake with water as cold as a still wedge, you’re allowable to get a little spicy before you get back to running water. Now, I highly recommend the shower type wipes that you can buy. They work great, and we’ll keep your cabinty mates from dragging you down to the edge of the water, loading you onto a hastily built wooden raft, and sending you off in Viking funeral style for stinking up the place. I also took a pair of hip boots, knee boots, and regular hunting boots. Now, I could have left the hip boots at home on this trip, but there are times in that ecosystem when you’re gonna need them. Just never know. I didn’t take any crocs camp shoes, and I really wished I had. That was the only item I didn’t take that I miss lesson learn Anything else you take will depend on what you’re hunting and you know how you’re hunting. And I hope that helps anyone who might be heading out on their first one like I did. This would be my second floatplane trip. I flew on a much smaller one once several years ago in Alaska. I would see my first moose on that trip. It was a cow feeding and a grass flat across a big lake, and nothing struck me about the size of the moose because there was nothing to compare it to. There was just a long legged horse for all I knew, and I could make it out with my eye and that it was a moose and confirmed it with a pair of binoculars. That’s how far away it was. I didn’t know it yet, but I was about to get a lot closer on this trip. And estimating the size of a Canadian moose wouldn’t be a problem at all. Two other camps would be joining us on this flight, and it would take a couple of hours for us to get dropped off. At all our different locations. We were the first to load all our gear, but would be the last to get off at the end of the circuit. The whole left side of the interior of that airplane was reserved for gear, along with the rear storage compartment. The right side had a single row of four forward facing seats started behind the cockpit wall in the coppola it’s position. The seats were manufactured sometime between nineteen fifty one and nineteen sixty seven. When the airplane was they possessed all the engineered comfort of an electric chair, and both instances function came before form, and since we weren’t going to be in them that long, I assume mister de Havilin figured if we looked out the window, it would distract the passengers from the seat and he could put that money elsewhere, like ensuring all the engine noise was transferred to the interior of the aircraft. The headphones hanging by each window came in handy. Also, I suggest a course on lip reading and sign language if you want to communicate with any one While traveling the Friendly Skuis with Manitoba and an airplane named after a fur bear. We chugged out into the big part of the river, and the Canadian version of Charles Lindbergh showered down on the throttle, and after a few moments we shed the earthly bonds of gravity and took wing, heading everymore northward. The haveling was right. I forgot all about the season Roebuck catalog of the sea that I was roosted on, and stared out at the heart of the Canadian Shield, with its glacier formed lakes and woods made up of spruce, pine, fir, birch, popular and aspen trees contrasting shades of green and gold, looked like an inviting patchwork quilt wilderness, which in a way I guess it was. But it was also unforgiving and a desolate landscape of every day survival by its inhabitants. Moose, woodland, caribou, black bears, wolves, and even polar bears were on this range. According to the map overlay. I was just just perusing on the Internet. That’s doubtful. You’d see the polar bears where we were, because they eat seals, and there ain’t no seals there. But they’re also in a fence keeping them from slipping over from Hudson Bay to see what a moose tastes like. I wasn’t thinking about polar bears then. I wasn’t thinking about moose for felming a hunt. I wasn’t thinking about anything. I was hypnotized by the beauty I was staring at passing under me at one hundred and thirty miles per hour. I think that’s like six million and kilometers. Regardless, it was breathtaking and indescribable. It was a long long ways from the saline river bottoms of Cleveland County, Arkansas. I thought about that as we buzzed along at three thousand feet. I think that’s like six million meters. But I didn’t want to blink. I didn’t want to miss anything. And yet everything I was looking at looked the same unnamed lakes, rivers and streams that went on forever in every direction. My mind imagined how the First Nations people and the French explorers and trappers that roamed the land below me survived in that place, that would have looked exactly the same as it does now. It would rain, frost, and get colder before we left, and I would travel well over one hundred miles in a little over an hour in that country by air. Those folks were paddling and portaging all their belongings and then building themselves a hight out once they found a spot they wanted to stay. Being a frontier trapper was a childhood dream. I watched Jeremiah Johnson and the Mountain Men when I was just youngin and that, on top of hearing my brother Tim talk about and longed for that same kind of life, was what I thought about most. Whenever I figured out that dream was just a dream, I knew that whatever I grew up to be, there would always be a mountain man trapped inside of me. I was seemingly in the middle of running my imaginary trap line when I heard the otter’s engine slow down, and I saw we began to bank, descend and make a small half circle, lining up with the wind to land on a big stretch of water that was formed eons ago, And as it was when it appeared nameless, it remains the third of our passengers. We would drop off here along with all their gear. The hunters, coming out of the camp they were going into would fill the cargo spaces and seats they just emptied. The scene was repeated as we took off and flew to the second camp, dropping off hopeful hunters and all their belongings, and meeting their tired but talkative replacements, telling their tales of triumph or tribulation. After a week of chasing moose and fishing, we took off once again. The last leg would be a thirty minute flight to Mining Dave’s camp, and I watched out the window, lost in thought as we logged miles further and further into the vast Canadian wilderness. I couldn’t have been more excited or humbled to be there. It was eleven thirty. We’d have plenty of time to land, unpack and stow our gear, and be ready to hunt that the very afternoon. The familiar sound of the changing engine pitch and the slow left hand bank gave me a dose of adrelline, and I strained to contain my excitement. It wouldn’t be the last time that happened on this trip, but it’ll be the last time I talk about it today. Now, Now, Brent, that’s a dirty tree. You bumped your gums about anything and everything all along the way on this trip, and now we finally get to camp and you leave all these folks sitting on the edge of their seats. Well, at least that’s where I hope y’all are, And honestly, I didn’t plan it that way. I want to tell you the story of how we did and what we did that you can see your head as I describe it and see how it plays out next year and you see it with your eyes when the film is released. But fear not, next week, I’m gonna tell you the rest of this story. It’s a special one and I couldn’t have given it the justice it deserves by condensing it all into one episode. Don’t be mad at me. I promise you’re gonna like next week. Tickets for the Meat Either Live Tour Dip into the Motherland are going quickly. If you have any interest in seeing a show near where you live, I suggest getting a hold of them pretty soon. It’s gonna be a fun time and I look forward to seeing y’all out on the road. We’re gonna finish this moose hunt next week, and until then, this is Brent Reves signing off. Y’all be careful.
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