Texas Hunting Network

We were up about 5 a.m. that Saturday morning, ate an exceptional breakfast, then got ready to leave camp.

Unlike deer hunting in Texas or Elk hunting, for caribou and moose, especially considering the areas where these animals are hunted, hunters don't leave camp until it is light enough to shoot, as animals may be encountered fairly close to camp.

My guide and I were assigned to hunt the area northwest of camp that first day.

While some Outfitters/Guides in Canada and other parts of the world, use airplanes, horses, ATV's and other methods to get their clients into the areas where the game is, the outfitter I booked with and his guides believed that there was only one way to hunt, and that was by walking many miles and seeing lots of country.

I The outfitter arranged to pick me up at the cabins where Lora and Tina and I were staying on the day we were to go in to camp.

 To get back into the camp, the outfitter used J5 track machines, for any of those that served in the military during the "Cold War" and during the old "Dew Line" days, another name for these machines, is "Weasles".

Newfoundland is a remarkable place, it is about 43000 square miles in size, roughly triangular shaped, and at the time we were there had a human population of slightly over 1 million and a moose population of slightly over 125,000.

Any of you that watch much programming on PBS have probably seen a show about the Vikings landing on Newfoundland in 1050 A.D., or approximately 500 years before Columbus made it to the New World.

After stopping by the home of the outfitter I would be hunting with, we proceeded on to the town of Codroy and located the Guest Cabins that we would be renting during our stay on the island.

After leaving Grey Rapids Lodge in New Brunswick, we worked our way south east toward the province of Nova Scotia.

Saw lots of really interesting and neat scenery, did how ever miss out on stopping of along the Bay of Fundy,  it is most famous for having some of the highest, if not the highest tidal surges in the world, but as with Niagra Falls, we just did not have the extra time.

We arrived late in the afternoon at North Sydney and checked in to a hotel. After freshening up a little, we went down to the restaraunt at the hotel for supper.

After leaving the Dudley's and New York state, we drove across Vermont and New Hampshire and in to Maine.

Maine was the first place we ran into the situation that you had to ask for ice for tea or soda pops.

We were going to cross into the province of New Brunswick at Houlton Maine.

Our second day on the road was the start of the really eventful parts of the trip to Canada.

In fact, unlike our second trip to Canada in 2000, our return trip from the first trip was fairly uneventful.

Upon deciding on a motel and place to eat somewhere in northeastern Oklahoma, we discovered that I had left $4200.00 worth of Travelers Cheques laying on the dining room table at home in Fort Worth.

Now this whole incident was started by my Mother-In-Law a couple of years after Lora and I were married.

We were over at my Mother-in-Laws house in Irving Texas. I do not rmemeber what the occasion was, but some how we all got to looking at old family pictures and discussing them.

 Lora's Dad had been in the Navy and the family had lived all over the globe almost. Looking at some of the pictures and discussing places the family had lived, Lora's Mom looked at her and asked, "You remember the Moose don't you"?

Many of us grew up in families that hunted, so it was something that just came naturally to us.

In my case, no one in my immediate family hunted, but we had neighbors and friends that did. For some reason that I have never quite gotten a handle on I was attracted to animals and hunting from my earliest memories.

My first hunting experiences were of my Dad taking me to dove hunt and going duck hunting with friends from school.

I'm such a lucky person to be able to hunt every year. I'm not the most experienced hunter out there, no, far from it. I don't have the ability to spend an incredible amount of time each year hunting, but I am grateful for the time I do get, and that time is rapidly approaching again.

This by far, is my most favorite time of year. Even more so that than the last week of December when just about everything is in season. You see, the Universe aligns itself perfectly right about now. For me, the hottest days are over in Texas, even though there are probably another month or two of hot and humid to come, I'm used to it, so it's not such a big issue.

I have to think a higher power aligned football season and hunting season. There just can't be another explanation. Training camp starts for the Dallas Cowboys of whom I was predispositioned to be a fan, ever since the 70's when my father would leave the room after the Redskins beat up on us in what some would consider a fluke game here and there.