ECKERMAN VII
Bear Bait

05 June 2006

Well, the wait is over. Ever since Don Zipp got his Bear I’ve been trying to get a permit to get one of my own. This morning I checked out the list and I’m on it! As soon as it’s legal to do so, I’ll be making weekly trips up to Eckerman to add to the bait pile, and get my hunting site all scoped out. As the process continues, I’ll be posting it here… Wish me luck!

06-06-06

Word has it that today is the end of the world, and I suppose it will be to some people. Unless the terrorists pick the East Jordan Iron Works as the economic capital of the world, I should be here tomorrow.

The first thing this morning I dug out my Cabella’s catalog and put it in the magazine rack in the upstairs bathroom. Normally that’s where I keep the latest editions of Astronomy and Maxim but until I finish my list of “Things to get” for bear hunting they’ll have to wait. I guess it’s time to get serious about hunting gear. Up until now, I used a large garbage bag for rain gear, an old AWOL bag for carrying supplies, and whatever ammo I had for deer hunting. Hopefully, the guys will help me out with what all I’m going to need.

I can’t start baiting until August 10th, but I’m going to go by the restaurants today and see if I can get a line on absconding with all their used grease. I talked to Don last night and he and I will be going up sometime this summer to get a spot all picked out for the pile and the assassination spot. When he asked me how far away I wanted to be from the pile I told him a half mile, but it’ll probably be closer than that.

In the mean time, I’ll order my ammo, and then sight my Woodsmaster into that distance. For some reason, I think it’s going to take more than one shot to kill this animal so I have to practice the “double tap” method at a rifle range. It’s amazing sometimes how much your imagination can get the better of you, and I have to keep that to a minimum. I awoke this morning with visions of a bear standing straight up after the first shot and coming right at me. Whether it was prescience or just my imagination I’m not sure, but I live by the code; “Hope for the best, and plan for the worst”. Only time will tell.

23 June 2006

For all of you who keep reminding me how nice it is “down there” during the winter months, it’s 68 with 35% relative humidity. Hardly a cloud in the deep blue sky and it’s going down into the 30’s tonight. Excellent enjoying weather, followed by even better sleeping weather.

I stopped by Jan’s Corner Cafe’ this afternoon and picked up my first 5 gallon jug of grease for my soon-to-be trophy bear. Mark and I went up to K-Mart today and bought a 10 man walled tent, which will be more than enough for what I have planned for it. All I need now is a couple nice comfortable cots to sleep on.

12 July 2006

I went over to Gaylord two days ago to see another doctor with the V.A., and again the people there were very accommodating. While I was in the Navy, I ended up in a psychiatric ward and they wanted to see how I’d progressed I guess. I don’t know if I’m better or worse than then, but she let me leave the building so I can’t be too bad off. Now I have to see a Psychologist for pretty much the same reason. After that I see a nurse about my Coumadin levels in my blood, and then probably a trip down to Saginaw to see all those doctors. It sounds like a lot of hassle, but they’re trying to be thorough and there’s nothing wrong with that.

I talked to Doug and Don yesterday about this years’ Eckerman trip and we’re going to be going up and getting a place picked out for the hunting site. The talk around town up there is of a three hundred pound (at least) bruin that’s been seen crossing the road near Don’s place, so the imagination is starting to soar on me. I’ll have to keep that under control or I’ll be a wreck by the time I start the hunting.

It’s been suggested I find a nice spot high in a tree to both hide my scent and give me a better view of the area. Doug and I talked about the tent I just got, and what we’re going to do to have it set up right. It looks as though my brother won’t be able to come up this trip, so we’ll have room for a basketball court too. Something else that was mentioned is what to do with the hide and the meat I’m going to end up with. The hide I’ll bring down to a taxidermist right away, but the meat’s another problem. The freezer I have is big enough to hold ice cubes and the bottle of single malt whiskey I own so I’m going to have to find a place to keep the meat. Anyone out there with an empty freezer?

Today, I’m taking my son Mark up to Petoskey and see the people at Social Security about his disability coverage. When this all goes through, I’ll have him set up, no matter what happens to me. The number one mission in my life is to see to the betterment of my offspring and after today, I’ll have accomplished it. My house now belongs to two of my sons, all my bills are paid, and with having V.A. coverage, my medical bills will be taken care of. All I have to do now is enjoy where I am, who I’m with, and what I do. It’s a wonderful feeling. I heard a song a couple days ago about “Live like you were dying”.  Everyone should live that way.

21 July ‘06

Today is my younger brother’s 45th birthday, Happy Birthday Jimi! And congratulations to my son-in-law John, who received his commercial flying license today!

I got a phone call from Don Zipp yesterday looking for some assistance, Eckerman almost got blown off the map last week. His Mom and Dad went up to just hang out for awhile and couldn’t even get into the driveway. At first Don was going to call FEMA but he doesn’t want a little trailer to live in, he just wants to get rid of a bunch of trees. He’s going up early tomorrow morning, and if I can get a ride for Jan, Doug and I will be going up later in the morning. At first we were going to go up to get the blind ready for bear season, but we may have some work to do before we can even think of heading back into the bush. From the sound of it, there are a lot of trees in the yard, and we should have plenty enough for camp fires in September.

Tuesday I went back over to the V.A. clinic in Gaylord for some blood work. The V.A. will be paying for some medication that prevents clotting, so I had to get that squared away. Next Tuesday I go back to see a Social Worker, and then after that back to see the Shrink again. It’s almost done. Next Thursday I take Mark back to the Orthopedic Surgeon to see if he can get along without his splint. Everything seems to be healing up very nicely and he’s getting around a lot better than I thought he would.

I find myself thinking about the bear hunt more and more. Where I’ll sit, which direction the bear will be coming from, what the bullet trajectory will be from an elevation. Where I’ll set up the tent, and how I’ll place the tarps over the top of it. The food, the clothing and the gear. It’s like this every year about this time, and Jan’s already started asking me why I keep staring off into space. Fortunately, Jan and Mark'll be going down to Arkansas while I’m in Eckerman, so they’ll be getting as excited as I get as things get closer.

24 July 2006

Doug and I went up to Eckerman Saturday to decide on a location for me and the bait pile. Don was already there along with his parents and some cousins. They were up to clear out the wind damage that occurred the Wednesday before. The cabin itself wasn’t damaged, but there were some large trees on the property that were quickly being converted into fire wood. It didn’t look nearly as bad in the yard as it did back in the bush. There are some spots back there where the wind leveled an acre or more of timber and that took some work to get through. Dave took his chainsaw along and as Don led the way, he opened it up.

We’re using a location that had been used last year, so the tree and the bait pit were already there. After August 10th I can start bringing in the bait and get an idea of what will be coming in to eat it. We saw one set of prints near there that were larger than Don’s hand, and I think that one would do just fine. After we finished working on that, Doug and I headed over to Highbanks and did a little fishing. Don warned us that it would be hotter’n hell, and he was right, so we went over to Frenchman’s lake and tried that. Over there, the perch were biting hard, and the shade helped, but they were pretty small, so we headed on back home. There will be many more trips up with bait, and a couple of these times, I’m going to bring a boat. It’s only 2 1/2 hours to get there, so I can take Jan to work, bait the pile, do some fishing and still get back in time to pick her up. I can see why so many people that live around here have their cabins there.

26 July ‘06

I went to the V.A. again yesterday, and saw a psychologist this time. I don’t know whether the psychiatrist asked for it, or if it’s just another doctor checking things out, but he let me go home too. I’ve done some time in one of those "looney bins" and I was in no hurry to get back. A nice thing about psychiatric wards is you learn who’s having trouble, and who’s friggin’ nuts. It’s good to know the difference. Not only did he let me go, he complimented me on how well I’m doing, considering my situation.

Doug called this morning, and told me he’s found another “bear bar”. There’s a bakery in Boyne City that’s selling the stuff for $25, for a huge bag. The next time I go through Petoskey, I’ll stop at that one and see if there’s a difference. For the first time in a while, I went down to the river and did some fishing this morning. We’ve been getting some rain here so the water was turbid, but that didn’t seem to bother them any. I lost one nice sized one and three smaller ones, so it didn’t take too long to go through a dozen crawlers. It looked to me like they were all salmon too. It’s easy to tell a rainbow in the Jordan, their red stripe is quiet visible, and these seemed to be pure silver. The D.N.R. hasn’t operated the weir in two years now, so the salmon can run up to the headwaters and spawn. There is going to be one HELLUVA salmon run here in a couple more years.

30 July ‘06

Severe Thunderstorm Warning’s in the area. 68 degrees and there isn’t a breath of air moving. As the morning has progress, it’s gotten darker and it would be a great day to be camping. I enjoy the sound of rain falling on a tarp, the feel of the thunder as it passes by you, and the jolt of electricity as God tells you what a stupid idea it is to camp in the rain.

Doug was by yesterday and we talked about the camp site some. He’s got an electric rotisserie with a hood, that’ll hold a couple chickens or even a big bear roast. I volunteered to bring it up. I’m going up the 21st, right after I drop Jan and Mark off at the Airport in Traverse City, and I plan on coming right back home to pack the truck. I don’t mind roughing it, but I think I’m old enough to decide what’s rough. I had thought about bringing up my own bed, but that might be just pushing it a little. If the guys looked in there and saw that, there’d be no end to the harassment.

While we were up there setting up the hunting site, we looked around the yard to see where we’re going to set the tent. Yesterday we decided to have it on the high ground looking west. It’s out of the way, it’s close to the outhouse, and there’s a tree line behind us we can tie the tarp off to. On the other side of where the fire pit is, I’m going to put up another tarp where we can sit while it’s pouring. We’ve decided to do the bear hunting in the afternoon, the fishing after dark, and sleep in every morning.

10 Aug ‘06

Baiting for bear starts today and it looks as though I’ll be going up next Wednesday to start. Ralph and I are going up right after I drop Jan off at work, and we’ll take Ralph’s boat along with us. After we drop off the bait, he and I are going over to a lake near there to do some trout fishing. Don and I are going up next Friday afternoon to bait some more and then come back on Saturday afternoon. That way we can check the pile the next morning and see if there’s been any activity.

Time seems to be slowing down and speeding up at the same time. I look to see how much I’ve still to get done, and it speeds up, I think about that week, and it slows way down. I keep reminding myself that there’s only 24 hours in each day and those hours are going to progress like they have since the inception of time itself.

Doug called me a couple days ago, and told me that he was going to be heading up for the hunt on the same day as Don, B.B. and myself, so it looks like the party’s going to be starting early this year.

14 Aug ‘06

36 days and counting. Doug stopped by today for a cup of coffee and an injection of “Eckerman fever”. I get excited enough as it is, and when one of the guys comes by, it compounds the excitement. From the looks of it, there’s a bunch of guys going up the 21st along with me so there won’t be any reflecting going on before the hunt begins. That’s ok; I can reflect all I want during the winter months when they’re needed the most.

I’m going up this Wednesday for a day run along with Ralph to take some bait up. I’ll put my name tag on the platform I’ll be hunting from and drop some bait while I’m there. Each time I go up, I’ll take along my video camera to record anything that might be of interest around the pile.

My daughter Katrina and her husband, John, are celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary today, and I send them both my congratulations and my love.

My cousin-in-law Kathy is being re-born today, and I congratulate her on a life well lived, and I’m sure she’ll find the eternal life she’s about to start, to be everything she’s hoped and dreamed. To my cousin John, my condolences and I hope he sees the betterment in it all.

17 August ‘06

Ralph and I went up to Eckerman yesterday to start my bait pile, and do a little fishing. Events didn’t go as well as we’d hoped, but not a failure. We stopped at the day old bakery that’s a little north of Petoskey to find that there weren’t any deals for Bear Baiters. In years past, someone could buy a large quantity of old bread and doughnuts for a minimal sum, but that’s no more. The lady told us that they don’t get the large amounts of material like the use to, and there were a lot more people trying to get what was left. The store that’s similar to that one had closed in Alpena, so there were the East side hunters, and even several hunters from Canada trying too.

I ended up buying 16 loaves of day old bread and 5 packages of hamburger buns for only $12.00, so that wasn’t too bad. I had taken along a couple 5 gallon pails so we stuffed those in there along with a couple gallons of cooking oil, and a quart or so of molasses. I dropped all the stuff in the hole and covered it up as much as I could with the available logs and we were on our way.

Don’s cabin has gone through some renovations and it’s really looking like a first rate dwelling now! Over the 7 years I’ve been going up there, the Zipp family has continued to improve the place, but I think this is the best work yet. It’s gotten to the point now where the guys’ll wipe their feet before entering and maybe going outside before they pass out.

I was going to take some video of the place, but when I tried to get the thing to work, all I got was some fuzzies on the view screen. Not sure what the deal is, but the days of “Candid Camera” during the Eckerman hunts are but a memory now. Just as well I think.

Ralph and I then went over to Highbanks and did a little fishing with his johnboat. The lake looked like a sheet of glass except for where the fish were jumping and it was nice to be out there again. We used spoons (cleos) and caught a couple small ones, but our time was limited as was our catch. We did find where they hang out and how to get them, so it’s just a matter of time. It turned out to be a great day, and I’m looking forward to next week when I take up another load. Next time, I’m taking Jan and Mark along so they can see why I enjoy going up there so much.

22 August ‘06

Any doubts about Mark’s injuries causing any problems with his golf game were dispelled yesterday after he beat me by 10 strokes at the Mallard. The last two games we had played were both won by me, and he was even talking about giving the game up altogether. His first smack off the tee might have changed his thinking a little bit as the ball went 250 yards, and then after he was on the green in two, he gained a little more confidence. As the game wore on, he kept hitting it harder and with even more accuracy and I knew I was pretty much doomed. Now it’s back to the old days when he’d trounce me hole after hole and it’s nice to see a smile on his face again.

I talked to Doug yesterday and E.J., one of the Carpenters I use to work with, has donated a load of bear bait. He’s giving me a load of frozen bread and fish! He also gave me some ideas for other baits I can use too. He said that bear love dry dog food, and sunflower seeds, mixed in grease and poured on the pile. So tomorrow, on the way through Petoskey, we’ll stop at Wal-Mart and get the dog food and seeds to add to what he’s given me. I’m glad I’m taking Mark along with me tomorrow, ’cause I’m going to need a lot of help carrying all this stuff back in there.

Last night while we were visiting some friends camping at the tourist park, we met one of the engineers who are working of the road construction here in town. He said that the road is going to be built using a new method. Instead of the conventional method, this one will be ‘floating’. There will be a layer of geotextile fabric laid and then filled with cinders, and then sealed in with another layer of fabric. He said the soil that’s there now, is stuff that’s been put down over sawdust and marle and not the best stuff to have under concrete. He’s never seen it used before, but has been assured this is the way to go. Time will tell…

Second baiting

Jan, Mark and I got to Eckerman around 11am and introduced ourselves to Randy and Lisa Zipp, Randy is Don’s younger brother. They’d been up for the last couple of days working on the cabin, and they were just on their way out. Randy had put up some trim around a window, and Lisa mudded in the rest of the cultured stone they have behind the wood stove. That cabin is looking really civilized, and it’s easy to tell the two brothers have women in their lives.

Anyway, when we got back to the bait pile, it looked like it had taken a direct hit from a bomb. There were logs thrown everywhere, and some of them are pretty good sized. I didn’t see any tracks, but Randy had told me that it had rained two inches in three hours two days before, so I wasn’t expecting to see any. I didn’t see any trail cutting through the bracken fern so it may have walked down the same trail as we did. I didn’t see any trees in the area that had claw marks up the trunks a ways, but I may have missed that. From the looks of the debris around the bait pile, I’d rather NOT see how far up those claw marks are going to be. I’ll keep a watch though, and pass it on if I see any.

We carried in: 4, 5gallon pails of bread; 2, 5 gallon jugs of oil; 2, 5 gallon pails of smoked fish, 1/2 gallon of Maple syrup, 1 package of dried cranberries, one jar of raspberry jelly, and 1/2 gallon of molasses. Next time, I’ll be taking up 50 pounds of dry dog food, another 5 gallons of oil, and anything else anyone wants to bring by. If I don’t shoot this thing, it’s going to die of hardening of the arteries, and I’d feel bad about that.

Four weeks from today…

It’ll be 10:45am and I’ll be half-way between the corner of I-75 and Moran, on the way to Eckerman. Jan and Mark will be on their way to Arkansas, and Albert will have already started to wonder when his dinner will be put out.

I talked to Don yesterday and filled him in on what the situation was at the bait pile, and he gave me some instructions on what to do next. He said that from the sound of it, the bear is probably the dominant male that’s been spotted in the neighborhood. By “the neighborhood” I mean a conglomeration of buildings, ranging from tar paper huts to one establishment that dispenses “liquid sandwich’s” and jalapeño poppers; and word had it that he is a very large animal. So, I have a chance at shooting one weighing between 350 and 400 hundred pounds.

The next couple of trips, I’ll be taking a smaller amount of bait, and will start training him to my feeding habits. Every time I go in there now, I’ll bang on the sides of the 5 gallon pails on my way out. When it comes time for hunting, I’ll ask an extra guy to walk in with us, and then bang on the pail on the way out. These animals may be dumb, but they’re not stupid. Instead of using bread, I’m going to start using bags of dog food. For as much rain as the U.P. gets this time of year, the water will swell up those little nuggets and it’ll turn into a nice meal. Along with the dog food, I’ll take up a couple bags of sugar and maybe some more molasses. I’ve still got a lot of that yet, ’cause I don’t use a whole lot at one time. Don told me to take it easy on that stuff, ’cause he’d see video’s of what happens to a bear that’s had too much. Then, after we start hunting, we’ll load it up big, on a daily basis, and see what happens.

Along those lines, Doug is going to bring up his video camera this year. Mine took a dump, and I’d really like to get this all on tape. I’ve got two of my deer shots on tape and they’re neat to watch. They’re nice to take to parties too when you’ve got a load of tree huggers over for dinner. It really gets the conversation’s going!

I checked out the spot where I was going to put up the tent, and it’s too small. I’ll put it over on the other side of where Sally’s buried. It’s a little further from the outhouse, but then again, sometimes that’s a good thing.

In more important news; Pluto is no longer a planet. This is going to cost the publishing industries millions! And what’s Disney going to do? That poor dog is out of a job! See? That’s how these cut-backs have hit a new low, we can’t even afford 9 planets anymore….

28 Aug ‘06

23 days and a wake-up, and it’s getting worse. Just a few minutes ago, I was sitting on my front porch watching the finches feed and I saw a black bear cub walk out of the bracken from the right. This little critter was just a ball of fun and he was enjoying everything about him. Not ten seconds behind him, another came out, and behind him, the Mom. As the cubs climbed in and out of the tangle of limbs, the mom kept looking back over her back, the way she’d come. Her ears perked up and then her nose went way in the air and she huffed. When I looked back down at the cubs, they were gone. The big female gave one of those logs a lick and she ambled on after her cubs. A few minutes after they left, another bear, half again as big came up to the pile. This one started pulling that pile apart. Most of the work, it did with it’s nose, but when something needed a little extra it just reached down and gave it a fling. Grease all over it’s nose and as far back as its ears, started chowing down on the goodies at the bottom. All I could see was its ass, when I heard a crack, back the way all these bears had come. The one in the hole bolted and my heart started into Arrhythmias. This is the one I’ve been waiting for, the one that’s going to give me the story of a lifetime. I looked back to the right, and there’s some finches feeding off the thistle feeder...

That’s pretty much how my days have been going.

30 Aug ‘06

This trip to the bait pile didn’t turn out so good, there weren’t any tracks around the pile, and only three logs had been moved off of it. I could still see a LOAD of smoked fish skins, but the bread seems to be gone so I’m thinking that maybe it was the red squirrels. That doesn’t account for the three moved logs, but maybe a couple of them are on steroids. I dropped in 50 pounds of dog food and 5 gallons of grease and hopefully, Doug will see some results when he goes up this weekend. There’s some interesting doin’s going on across the street.

The Elliots have a new outhouse, and it’s a beauty. The architecture is late 20th/early 21st Century, and combined with the view, it’s a nice addition to the neighborhood. I might even head over there one morning to test it out. I still think Zipp’s two seater is the most ’stylish’ of them all, but hey, I’m just an old guy with memories of a time long lost.

For all of you who are heading across the bridge for the Labor Day weekend, you’d better pack up and get on the road tonight. It took me three hours to get up there today, and only two to get back, so be forewarned.

31 Aug ‘06

“21 days now.” That’s the first thing Jan said to me when I got up this morning. I noticed yesterday on the way to Eckerman that the trees up there are turning a little faster than they are here. In the seven years I’ve been going up there, the color was at its peak while we were there. It looks like it’s going to be that way this year.

I got an email from Don this morning that told me not to worry about the bears not showing up at the pile. The year he got one, he had very little activity for three weeks running, so I won’t take it too seriously. It might be better this way anyway, maybe now I can get through a day without some scenario running through my head.

06 Sep ‘06

14 and a wakeup.  I’m not going to bait the pile this week. The dog owners are running their animals this week, so it probably wouldn’t do much good. I’ll save the gas money and buy extra “come eat me” for when I go up.

I got an email from my uncle this morning that may do a lot of good. In it, it gives the address for the ACLU, which is doing it’s best to get rid of Christmas. I understand the basic reason for having the ACLU, but I often wonder when enough is enough. Anyway, it suggests that we ALL send them a nice spiritual, religious Christmas card and thank them all for their work. If you’re interested, write:

ACLU

125 Broad St.

18th Floor

New York, N.Y. 10004

For all of you people south of the 45th, you should know that there isn’t enough sunlight here to support the flowering of the annuals. I had some impatiens growing under my Maple tree out front that was looking pretty good during mid-summer, but they gave it up for lack of support. Yesterday, I pulled them all out. They, like the fudgies, are gone for the duration, and I look forward to their return.

11 Sep ‘06

I’d rather not get into the historical account of this day, but rather I’d like to say; all those who died on this date are now in the arms of God, and they’ve forgiven those who got them there. Forgiving is the way Jesus wanted it, but he never said anything about forgetting.

10 Days and counting. Doug and I are going up to Eckerman on Wednesday to feed the pile one more time. The time after that, I’ll be sitting in that pine tree to see what show’s up.

12 Sep ‘06

9 days..single digits. I checked out a couple taxidermists today and made some inquiries about the prices of bear rugs. I know it’s not good to count your chickens before they’re hatched, but I wanted all this taken care of before I hunted rather than AFTER. It’s going to cost between eight and nine hundred dollars for a full rug and I’ve set up payment plans with both of them just in case.

Mark had a little accident with a bottle of Hoppe’s #9 and Albert, our cat. We have the exhaust fan sucking air out of his room, and Albert’s still a little bitchy about the whole thing. I believe Mark will be a lot more careful with that stuff and I have no idea how Albert’s going to deal with it.

Don called today and told me that the people who own the cabin next to him are baiting across the street and I needed to “step it up a notch”. Today when I stop to pick up Jan, I’ll go in and get a bottle of Vanilla extract to spray around the area. He’s had some pretty good results with it, and some friends of his who just returned from Canada did as well. Tomorrow when Doug and I go up to re-fill the bait pile, I’ll spray some around and give the pile a little something extra.

13 Sep ‘06

Doug and I went up to Eckerman today to re-fill the bait pile and we got some good news and bad. The good news is I’ll probably get a bear. The group that owns the cabin next door had seven hunters staying there and all but one has filled their license. Two were killed on opening day and they’ve been having some pretty good luck ever since. They were also kind enough to give me some of their bait, and permission to “get it as I need it”. They have quite the collection of chocolates so I think it should work out pretty good. The bad news came in the form of a photo, two of them in fact. One of the guys has a camera that attaches to a tree and is set off with a motion detector. In the photos is a bear that looks to be over 300 pounds, just a munchin’ away at all these chocolate covered cherries and ground up candy bars. Also on the photo is the time it was taken. 0130. It seems that if these bear live through its first two years, it learns that humans try and kill them when the sun is shining, but when it isn’t, we don’t. Just like the deer, the smart ones sleep through the day and do all of their feeding at night.

So, if by chance, albeit a small one, that bruin comes to my bait pile, I have a chance at it. Chances are much larger though, for an ignorant one to come up, and that’s what I’ll end up shooting. Am I going to sit there for 11 days on the off chance that the big one walks up and let a smaller one go by? Not likely. Of the 6 bears that were taken by these guys not one of them was over 150 pounds, so they feel the same way I do. Maybe if all I was up there for was to shoot this bear, I might let a smaller one go by, but there are many lakes I want to fish, and numerous Oak stands just full of squirrels awaiting me.

The bait pile was torn totally apart when we got there, but with all the rain’s they’ve had, there weren’t any prints evident. I loaded the pile with the usual bread and buns, and added some coffee cakes, molasses, and a dash of vanilla extract. We also sprayed the area with the extract and when I return next Thursday, I suspect that everything it was sprayed on will be gone.

The leaves are turning at a pretty fast rate now, so by next week it should be absolutely glorious.

18 Sep ‘06

Three and a wake-up. I shouldn’t count today, but since it’s only 5am, this one hasn’t really started yet. I’ve been waking up at 3:45 for the past week now, but I won’t have to do that much longer. I’m almost afraid that when Thursday morning gets here, I’ll sleep in until 7 and really screw things up. Nah, not much chance of that. Mark, Jan, and I all have alarm clocks so I doubt very much that anyone will be late. At 9 this morning, I’ll call Northwest Airlines to make sure everything’s hunkey-dorey with those guys, and then again on Wednesday, just to make sure. This morning, Jan’s still sleeping, but she’s been going through the same malady that I have. It doesn’t seem to be bothering Mark much, but come Thursday, I’m sure he’ll be ready to go. Mark and I packed our clothes yesterday and since Jan doesn’t go to work until 4 today, she’ll do hers too.

The list of who’s going and who isn’t changes almost daily but as long as I’m on the list of the “is’s”, I don’t see a problem with it. It would be really nice to see all the guys sitting around that campfire, like the old days, but times change. As near as I can tell, it’ll be Don, Doug, B.B., Brian (with Hunter) and me in camp this year. None of them will be there the entire time I will, but those guys still work for a living. I don’t think there will be any periods when I’m alone, which is fine with me.

20 Sep ‘06

Last day and then a wake up. After I drop Jan off at work today, I’ll go over my list one more time and then take everything I’ve packed down to the Laundry room. If it has quit raining by the time I pick her up, I’ll load as much as I can into the truck. I’d load it all, but I have to save room for their stuff that’s going to Arkansas with them. Doug’s going to be here when I get back from Traverse City and he can help me load the rest. As I understand it, (at 5am) Don’ll be in Charlevoix waiting for us at his house and we’ll be on our way. I’m going to make one more stop at the day old bakery, to load on as much bear bait as I’ve got room for. The three of us should be in camp by noon with the tent set up, and a fire going.

Since I got a good night’s sleep last night, I may be in good enough shape to hunt tomorrow afternoon. The weather guesser’s predict partly sunny skies tomorrow, but after that, a week’s worth of rain, so I’d better make good use of it. From what I hear, bear like to move in the rain so that’s not a problem for them, but still…. In years past, our best fishing has been done in the rain, so this could turn out to be a banner year. I’ll be calling my daughter nightly to give her the tally of what was killed or caught that day, and she’ll post it on here. I’m taking along my word processor this year, so it may not take as long to get the full story, with pictures, posted in ECKERMAN 7, as yet untitled. Wish me luck ya’ll and take care…

02 Oct ‘06

It’s been a very interesting and enlightening 11 days, and I’m happy as hell to be back. I’m sitting here in my BVDs and slippers with warmth all about. I don’t smell bad anymore and I can go to the can without looking for porcupines, and if you give me 24 hours to do my laundry and get some more bait and ammo, I’d be ready to go back. I kept a lot of notes on what I saw and how I felt at the time and I’ll convey them all here over the next couple of weeks. Instead of just posting the whole thing at once under the Eckerman category, I’m going to post them in the blog and when I’m done, Katrina can put it all into the story section.

21 Sep. ‘06

I got up at 1am Thursday morning, and not long after, Jan did too. We’d both been looking forward to this for a long time, and finally it was the day to go. Mark got up a short time later and after a cup of coffee, we headed for the Cherryland Airport. Their flight was to leave at 7:30 so we got there at 6 and they got checked in right away. Originally, I was going to wait until the plane left before I headed back to East Jordan but when Jan told me to go, I did. If it hadn’t been for the threat of hitting a few dozen deer, I would have made it home in 30 minutes, instead of the hour it took. As I was coming in the door, Doug was calling asking how I was doing, and I told him I was already an hour ahead of schedule. I loaded up the truck, did one more walk-around to insure I had everything and met Doug at Fleet Landing here in E.J. We met up with Don north of Petoskey, at the day old bakery, and we finally had nothing left to do but get the hell out of Dodge. Don led, Doug was in the middle and I came up behind. If it had been the other way around all three of us would have gotten speeding tickets, but as it was, we didn’t and I saved about $15.00 in gas.

It also gave me the time to think about how the next week was going to go and what I’d hoped to accomplish. As thick as those bear were in that neighborhood, I figured on getting my bear either the next day or Saturday at the latest. Since the taxidermist was closed on Sunday’s I’d spend that day fishing and come back early Monday morning with the hide and then spend the rest of that day hunting squirrels. Sitting up against a huge Oak snipping those little critters was something I’d wanted to do since the very first trip. This year I had my very own truck so I wouldn’t have to talk someone else into going with me and I dreamed of reading a good book and waiting for those little rodents to start clucking.

On one of the days, or maybe two, I wanted to head out to Seney to reconnoiter a couple lakes I use to fish 30 years ago. A year or two before I saw them, they had been stocked with a brook trout developed (or found, not sure which) in Canada that grew to 20”+. When I fished Lost Lake, they were only about 14” and too small to keep. In all honesty, we kept and ate them on the spot. We didn’t know about the restrictions, or even the name of the lake for that matter. I’d been up there “two tracking” with a buddy and we happened across it while we were lost. We weren’t actually LOST, just temporarily misinformed. (You’re not lost until you pull into a gas station and ask directions, and we were 20 miles from one of those). Anyway, I wanted to get back to Lost and Dutch Fred Lakes to see how much they’d grown, or if there were any left.

I thought about getting back to Highbanks and trolling for those rainbows through the night, and over to Frenchman’s Lake and fish for Walleye under a Coleman lantern. I figured it was a pretty ambitious schedule, but I had 11 days to work with, and looked forward to doing it all.

We all got to the cabin at 11am and everything was pretty much set up by 1. Doug helped me set up my tent, which is 14' squared, and when we got done it looked like a combination office/hotel room. I’d brought along my word processor, and that was in the corner, we had a table between our two cots with a lamp and a two burner stove on that. On the stove sat my coffee pot, and behind that was my CD player. Whenever I do my writing I listen to the Monks chant Gregorian hymns, so I thought I’d bring it along to inspire those heathens I was with.

Just as we sat down to relax a bit, we had a character pull in to visit with Don. “Trout” is a fella that has been through some very hard times, but it doesn’t seem to have bothered him much. He doesn’t have a larynx or a plug in his throat where the tracheotomy was installed, but he still has a sense of humor. He carries around a little microphone that he puts to his throat to communicate, and he sounds remarkably like Stephen Hawkins but that’s all those two have in common. Trout is a native of Charlevoix but I’ll bet there are a lot more people who’ve heard of him than there are of those who’ve met him. As it turns out, there were a couple guys who came along later who did want to meet him, but he was gone by then. I’ll bet that happens a lot in his life. Right after Trout left, Don made up a breakfast of bacon and beans with a little onion mixed in. It really set in the notion that we were back were we all belonged. I asked him if I could put the recipe in this accounting and he said, “No fuc in’ way.  If anyone wants to know how to make this stuff, is going to have to come across the bridge and watch.”

Fair enough I guess, but I was there, and I still don’t know how to make it.

After we ate, we started working on the camp fire. Some trees had been blown down a month or so before and all that wood was there, but it was green, and wet. We took a ride up to North Rd, which is just a little north of us, but goes east. I wondered if they had a road up there somewhere named West, that went south…

Anyway, Doug had brought along a chain saw and it didn’t take long to get a truck load of good wood. When we got back, we started on getting a real serious fire going. We don’t have any kindling with us so I use my little Burnz O matic torch which works even better. Usually, there’s a hellava wind blowing in that area, but on this day there wasn’t.

I went back into the tent and brought out my mattress inflator and turned that on it. Instantly, you’ve got a hundred mile an hour draft to help it along. I was never a boy scout, but I’m always prepared. While we were doing that, Mrs. Paul pulled in next door to do some pruning and yard cleaning. She had brought along her sister from down state to do that, and to plant some Hosta along the little creek there. When Doug mentioned that deer loved the stuff, she said she’d been coming up there for years and never even SAW a deer, let alone see some damage done. Personally, I think she’s a little lacking in her “animal recognition skills” but I could be wrong. Near as I could tell, there had been a couple deer who’d walked through her back yard the day before. I’d seen some tracks back there, but maybe it was from a deformed red squirrel. The hosta may last the season, if none of them “squirrels” get a case of the munchies.

Around 4pm, Don and I went out to climb that White Pine for some afternoon bear killing. We’d been out there earlier to bait the pile and put all the logs back, but since then there hadn’t been any activity. I got into the spot I’d tried out in the tree, but I’d made a HUGE mistake in choosing it. When I’d checked out the seat before, I hadn’t sit there for more than a couple minutes, and didn’t realize how uncomfortable it was going to get. Back in the day when my ass was 20 years old, I could sit in all kinds of contorted positions without any problem. 20 years old was 36 years ago! I wasn’t there 20 minutes before my ass started to object to what I was asking of it. Someone had attached a couple of 2 x 6’s over a couple limbs with zip-strips and I’d figured on using that for the next week. In recent years when I’ve been hunting, it was from a nice heated blind with a lawn chair, and now I was sitting on a board with pine boughs as cover. Stupid, stupid me. Don had been sitting on the other side of the tree, and I’m sure he could feel me jostling around too much. At times Don would reach a hand around the trunk and pat it once to get my attention, and then give me a little pep talk. It worked for a while. We had been hoping to hunt until dark, giving it our best try right off the bat, but my back and my ass just wasn’t up to it. Between that and me continually falling asleep then waking up instantly, I decided to get out of that tree. I sat on the end of the ladder for awhile, but it was too late by then to help much.

Don motioned for a conversation, and he told me that there were three bears off to our right moving around to the front. It was a sow and two cubs, and the two cubs were of age to be on their own. It really didn’t matter though, because I never got a full view of them. I could tell where they were by areas between leaves turning black, then light again, but I never had a clear shot. There just wasn’t any way I was going to shoot for hide just to see what happened, and hope for a better shot. I don’t hunt that way, but it sure was exciting to listen to them animals occasionally stepping on limbs and have them go Scrunch.

Don also saw a doe working her way off to our left but she never got involved with the bait pile, so I never saw her. About 45 minutes before dark, I decided that I’d had enough and headed back to camp. The day had started at 1am and I’d figured that that was plenty enough, given that I still had 10 more days to go. We all turned in around 9:30 hoping to get a good nights sleep and then have at it again, first thing in the morning. “First thing in the morning” started a whole lot earlier than anticipated though.

22 Sep. ‘06

Friday morning started a little earlier than we’d planned. Neither Doug nor I had been sleeping very well that night because it had got down to 30º. When I got up at 1:30 to take a whiz, I could see the constellation Cygnus flying down the path of the Milky Way, and the same white was all over the grass. It was even colder at 4:30 when Doug and I sat straight up in our bunks, and found ourselves staring at each other and wondering why. It didn’t take long to find out either. A few seconds later, we heard a Whfuuufff right outside our tent. Our eyes grew wider and a few seconds later, another, and then another, this one louder and even closer. Doug’s shotgun and my rifle were on the other side of the tent, and we were both sure that bastard was about to tear itself through the wall and take a walk inside. From the sound it was making, it didn’t at all like the smell of either of us nor the bear hound that was locked up in the truck next to us. Don had brought along Maggie, his Black and Tan in case I wounded a bear; we could use her to find the animal instead of us. Doug and I also figured that if a bear came in the yard, she would raise holy hell once she got a snort of it, and would scare it off. Maybe if she were on her leash, she would have but she was locked up in her hutch in the back of Don’s pickup. All we got out of her was a little whimpering and the sound of her chain dragging around in circles.

In that instant, I remembered a conversation I had with my brother Jim about a hunt he was on in Africa. They slept in tents made entirely out of mosquito netting and he was told that a lion would never break through that screen. He’d be there at night and watch those cats circle his tent, with him kneeling behind his cot with a .300 Winchester hoping his guide was right. I was not only hoping his guide was right, I was hoping it pertained to bears as well. That animal made one more resounding snort and walked away.

Doug looked at me and said; “Maybe we should put a pot of coffee on now Mike.”

Not long after that Don woke up and turned on the light in the cabin. As soon as we saw that we headed in to the relatively warm kitchen and took the coffees with us. We filled him in on what happened, and he mentioned that the cabin was broke into once, because there was food in it. Luckily, we didn’t have anything to eat in the tent and I whole heartedly recommend that none of you ever keep any in one.

We decided to head over to Highbanks Lake to catch us some breakfast and not long after, we were there. The lake was as smooth as glass with steam rising off of it to remind us it was truly a lake. The lake is lined with Sugar Maple, Oak, and White Pine and the combination of colors reflected off the surface was astounding. Every year I take a couple pictures of the colors and I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s more than capturing the colors but the feelings that went with it. The three of us spread out along the beach and watched the rod tips while we talked about the preceding years and the fish we’ve caught there. It wasn’t long before Doug’s pole almost bent into a “U” and a huge swirl appeared out in the lake. It took him a few minutes to finally get it in, but when he finally had it beached we knew it was a new group record. The old record was 18”, caught by B.B. a year or two ago but this one beat it by 2”. I took his picture just in time to have Don get one on, but Don’s was only 12”, and things calmed down a little bit. Doug ended up with two, Don caught two and I got one keeper. We also got a few sub-legal but we don’t count those.

We could see from the gathering clouds that we were about to get dumped on again, so we headed back to the camp. In years past, we set up a tarp between some trees to provide ourselves with some cover, but this year we had a nice canopy. Carolyn, Don’s significant other, bought it for their new daughter but we were using it for an entirely different reason. Only twice in the seven years we’d been holding this event, did the sun shine hot. Mostly it came out furtively in-between rain storms and this year was no different. Lake Superior makes its own weather, and it likes the rain part more than the sunny. Don told us explicitly that nothing bad could happen to it, so we were careful, and after a downpour or two, with a little gale thrown in, we took it back down.

Don and I went back out to the tree stand around 4, for another bout with the bears. Normally, I don’t think people take friends along on their bear hunt, but I’ve got a somewhat iffy condition with my heart. The problem is when I become excited, my heart rate goes up, when the rate goes up, it goes into an arrhythmia, or an irregular heart beat. If that should continue for any amount of time, it fibrillates, or quivers. Now, when that happens I have an automatic defibrillator in my chest that fires, giving me a 750v DC charge into my heart to get it right again. When THAT happens I jump straight into the air and probably out of the tree. So what I needed was someone to drag my body out of the woods and Don and Doug were kind enough to help me out, and that’s why they were with me. It takes a lot of self control to keep that thing pumping right, and frankly, I wasn’t sure if I could do that or not. In any case, I was back in the tree, and this time I brought along a boat cushion to put on those boards. Doug was kind enough to loan me one of his camo jackets and a camo cover for my head. For all intents and purposes I was invisible. So invisible in fact, that I had a Kestrel hawk sit down on the same branch as me and watched the same bait pile. I was looking for bear, he was looking for chipmunks. About 20 minutes later, I finally moved and scared the living daylights out of the poor thing and he took off.

As we sat there, I saw an ermine visit the pile, three red squirrels and a couple chipmunks. Just before we left there were a couple Whiskey Jacks that came around and started feeding off the ground up granola bars, but not a bear in sight. When the leg cramps started up again, and I started having trouble staying conscious, I called it a day and we headed back to the camp. By the time we got back to camp, it was pouring again. We gave up trying to keep the fire going and called it a night about 10pm. This time there weren’t any bears but my snoring kept Doug up all night.

23 Sep

Everyone got up at 4:30 today and we found it to be much warmer than yesterday. Rain was always a pain in the butt, but when it rained, it stayed warmer. Don had to head down to Charlevoix to coach his little league football team, and while he was down there, he was going to buy some bug bombs. For the past couple of days we’d been killing hornets as they came into the cabin through an overhead light. We had gone outside and looked at the peak and could see where they were coming into the cabin, so we knew the problem was in the crawl space. As soon as Don took off, Doug and I headed over to Highbanks for some fishing.

On one of the bait runs I’d made earlier in the season, Ralph Lemieur and I had come over to the lake and try some trolling. As a kid, I used to troll for rainbows in a lake I grew up on and wanted to try it on this one. A couple of the guys had tried it on earlier trips but I thought they were doing it too slow so we kicked it up a couple notches. Ralph and I weren’t on the lake ten minutes when we had our first hit, so Doug and I gave it a try. Using Cleo’s and Crocodiles, we trolled about 4mph and really hit ‘em hard. From the feel of it, the fish would come up behind and slam them with their snouts and if they got a reaction, they’d attack it. Some of the fish had the trebles embedded in the sides of their heads but most of them were hooked dead square in the mouth with all three hooks. Besides crawdads and flies, the only thing that had to eat was each other, and they seemed to do it with gusto. From first light until about 11am, we caught 17 fish, of which 2 were the legal 12″ size. We believe that if we could have gotten the lures down below the little ones, we might have had better luck with the keepers. Next year, we’ll try the bottom bouncers and see if that works.

We also got to watch an Osprey that considered the lake to be its dining room. Our backs got to hurting so much we decided to set on the beach and try it that way. While we were there, we watched that Osprey fly up the lake from the other end and picked up a small trout that was stupid enough to swim near the surface. As it was flying about 20′ over our heads, it was adjusting the fish from broadside to head on. By the time I thought about grabbing the camera, it had continued on over the tree line. On the way back to the cabin though, things went a little better. As we traveled down the fire-break/power-line/road, we could see the bird flying ahead of us. I reached into the back seat and retrieved my camera, putting on the telephoto lens and started clicking. I kept taking pictures as Doug kept creeping up on it and before long, we were right under it. (When this blog gets transferred onto the story page, there’ll be pictures of it). It was almost as if this bird wanted to have it’s picture taken as it tore that fish apart. I’m not sure how often Nature Photographers get such co-operation from their subjects, but I’m grateful for the opportunity.

Around 1pm, Doug and I took a walk back to the bait pile with a load of the “come eat me” in a couple buckets, and a spritz bottle full of vanilla extract. After a couple trips back there, I felt confident enough to try it on my own and Doug headed back to the cabin. On his way, he banged together the two buckets making all kinds of racket in the hopes of fooling the bears. It did work to some degree, or I think it did. About 20 minutes after he left, I could hear a couple red squirrels raising hell off to my right. Not long after that, I could hear branch’s snapping and limbs thunking. My heart rate took a jump in speed but I kept it under control and knew I could handle it. A few minutes after that, I heard another red squirrel off to my left start to sound the alarm. Soon, that animal started rambling around making a ruckus. THEN of all things, a red squirrel in MY tree started raising hell. I was invisible enough to fool a Kestrel hawk the day before, but this little bastard was having none of it. I only moved my eyes off to my right and I could see him, staring at me, his rear legs just a jumpin’ up and down and his tail twitching back and forth. I figured moving wasn’t going to help any, so I just froze there and waited him out. Then a hornet comes flying up to me and lands on my glasses. He tried climbing in behind them but the camo netting I had on my head prevented that from happening. He started sounding like he was getting real pissed, so I held my breath and eventually he flew away.

Everything was real quite for a few minutes and then I could see things back in the bracken ferns that probably weren’t there. It’s amazing what your eyes can do if they need something to see. I’d look away from a spot, and then back to see if it had moved and sometimes it didn’t, sometimes it did. Around this time the arrhythmias started back up, my head would get light from the lack of circulation and I’d start losing consciousness again. I suppose it would have been a good idea to have one of those safety straps that bow hunters wear for just that reason, but it was too late for that. I would try and stretch my limbs and my torso to get things moving again, but when I did that, my little red buddy off at the end of my branch would start his chattering again. All the while these two critters off to each side are trying to decide who’s going to come into the pile first. They’d start to move, the squirrels would start to bitch, and the little bastard in my tree would take his turn. The hornet would come back, getting even more agitated and circle around behind me. One of the times this happened, my cell phone, (which I had on vibrate) went off, and I almost jumped out of the tree. This went on for 90 minutes or so when God took over.

Behind me a quarter of a mile, a lightening bolt hit a tree and I said out loud; “OK, I quit,” and got out of that damned tree and went back to the camp. Oh, and to add insult to injury, when I unloaded my rifle before getting out of the tree, I discovered that I hadn’t chambered a round after I got up there.

Not long after I got back, Dan Cox and Kent Seymore stopped on their way over to Shingleton for their hunt. They had some dogs with them and their season was going to start on Monday. By then Don had returned from his football game, (which his team won by beating East Jordan) and we all headed across the street to do some shooting with Bob Elliot. Bob is Pat’s dad, and Pat used to be one of my boss’s back when I worked for a living. The two of them purchased a piece of property across from Don’s and have done some extraordinary work on cleaning up what used to be a town dump. We tried some “Eckerman trap shooting” but we weren’t up to the task, and we all flunked the exam.

After returning from that, Don set off three bug bombs in the attic and soon the place was full of pissed off, dieing hornets. I don’t think I’ve ever seen three guys haul ass so fast getting out of that cabin. About two hours later it was all over, and the floor was littered with hornet carcasses. For some reason it didn’t have the same effect with the flies, but by the next morning they were laying all about also. By 10:30, I’d had about enough and went off to bed.

24 Sep

Doug and I woke up about 5am to the sound of Maggie whimpering and moving around in circles again, but without the snorts. I don’t know if the bear was actually in the camp or not, but from the sound of Maggie, it wasn’t far off. Doug had received a phone call from his mom the night before telling him that they had to go down to Flint the next day to take care of some family business. It seems that every year, Doug’s stay in camp is shortened for one reason or another, and I don’t think he’s been there for the entire event since Eckerman 1. He had packed all his supplies and gear by 6:30 and I was disappointed that he wasn’t able to see all this through. Every year, we spend a lot of time conversing about the next year’s trip and we look forward to all the things we want to accomplish, and every year he gets screwed out of it. I think if I had to put up with as much crap as he does, I’d find something else to do during this week.

After he left, I put on my CD of “Gregorian Chants” and wrote up my notes until 8, when Don got up. Don had made bacon and beans for dinner the night before, so he got that out along with some corned beef hash, a dozen or so eggs and some cheese and made a skillet breakfast. Talk about a heavy duty “get ‘er done” breakfast! My cardiologist would have had a conniption if he saw what I was eating, but if he’d been there, I’da been fighting him over who got seconds.

It had been raining on and off all night so our plans on doing some stream fishing was out of the question. Normally at this time of year, the brookies travel up the rivers and creeks for their spawn run, but with the rain’s, there wasn’t any chance of getting to them. I’d been hoping to get over to Pat’s fishing hole across the street but I guess it just wasn’t meant to be. Instead, we grabbed our brooms and started sweeping out all the hornet and fly carcasses that littered the floor.

Around 1pm, Don walked back with me to bait the pile and then to make a commotion on the way out again. The day before when I got back there, the bait pile had been torn to shreds but on this day there wasn’t any sign anything had been around. This time I moved around to the right side of the tree and see if I could find a comfortable spot, stay out of the way of that damned hornet and maybe fool the red squirrel. The limbs were all in a more convenient location and I figured I’d finally get some time in hunting. Within a couple of hours, my age and medical condition started being a factor again. It was amazingly quiet out there that day and I could hear things that I’d never heard before. There was a family of ravens that would fly by to see if the bear had tore up the pile yet. If it had, they’d swoop down and see what was good to eat along with the chipmunks, red squirrels, and whiskey jacks. The ravens stared making a sound that resembled that of doves; one of them started cooing, like they do. I saw a couple what I think were warblers and two types of birds I haven’t found in the book yet. My little buddy, the red squirrel, didn’t show up, but the Kestrel hawk did and I got to watch him take out one of the chipmunks from the bait pile.

I came down out of the tree around 5 and Don had some fish chowder ready he’d made for dinner. He said he used salmon for the fish, and I think it’s about the only way those fish could be used for something good to eat. I catch them here in the Jordan River, when they’re 12″ long and then they’re pretty good. But when they get huge all they’re good for is fertilizer.

After dinner Don took me for a ride to Hulbert. We drove up 123 to the East/West road and headed east, then South on Hulbert road to 28, and then 28 back to 123 and the cabin. I think Don was disappointed in me for not staying there until after dark and wanted to show me how much activity there was at sundown. We saw more than a dozen deer, two wolves, and all sorts of little critters crossing the roads. He made his point that there were all sorts of things going on, but that didn’t make me neither younger nor healthier. I went to bed that night in the hopes that things would improve, in both the hunting and my stamina.

25 Sep

I got up Monday morning to the sound of rain falling on the tent roof. I don’t think there’s anything more soothing than the sound of a good downpour when you’re warm and dry inside. After listening to the Monks “gettin’ down” and some writing, I started on dinner. Last year I made some meatballs and had been thinking about those things ever since then. Instead of using gravy this time, I brought along some “Jack Daniels bourbon brand” and mixed it all up. Don had some “magic ingredients” in the kitchen so I threw a bunch of that in there, along with half a pint of some “Black Jack” that I’d bought in Strongs the day before. I’m not real sure if food tastes better up here because of where we are, or because we’re usually starved when we get around to eating, but it’s a fact that it is. Don and I finished off the skillet breakfast from the morning before and we headed over to High banks for a little morning fishing.

While we were there, the subject of bear hunting came up; whether it was better to hunt over a bait pile or with dogs. Actually it was the going argument of bait pile verses dogs. Hunters who use a bait pile look down on those who use dogs. They figure running hounds after those bruins is almost un-ethical, and those that use hounds figure that anyone who hunts over a pile, is just plain lazy. Personally, I think they’re both right, and wrong too. Ask any hunter who uses hounds how many times they’ve arrived at a tree with the dogs at the bottom and just the leaves at the top. This is after spending all that time and gas dragging roads and then looking for tracks the next morning. Once the tracks are seen, they release the hounds and listen to them as they howl off into the swamps. Once they can hear either the hounds stay in one spot, or see on their tracking devices that the dogs are stationary, they head into the bush. These guys aren’t running through the woods as we know them down-state, they’re heading through countryside that is almost impenetrable. While they’re trying to get through this crap, they’re worried about how many dogs have been maimed or killed during the chase, or if it’ll still be there once they arrive. Don told me of many instances where they’ve spent an entire day trying to get to the dogs only to find out the bear moved from one tree to another and then snuck off. He told me of one time where when they arrived, one of the dogs had been disemboweled, and how they washed and packed the intestines back into the dog and carried it out. He told me of one instance where they spent over 8 hours running after the pack to only end up 1/4 mile from where they started. They just never know how it’s going to turn out, but that’s the excitement of it. 

Guys like me though just can’t do that type of hunting. Hell, I was having a hard enough time just carrying the bait back there and then sitting in that pine! I spent about 6 weeks traveling 2 hours each way taking the bait up, and then scouting the area to see if there had been any activity. Once the hunt started, I had to devote 6 hours a day sitting in that tree listening to some damned red squirrel tell everything within a mile that I was there, and have an extra guy waiting in camp for that shot to ring out. But, if you walk into a bar or a restaurant and there are hunters there, the guys with dogs will be on one side of the room, and the guys who hunt over a bait pile will be on the other. I wish I could set in the middle and listen to them both, for they all have some great stories to hear and lessons to be learned. The other lesson I learned that day was that fish don’t always bite in the rain and Don and I only caught one small one each.

About 1 I headed back to the pile to see that nothing had even come close to eating that stuff. About an hour after getting into the tree I could hear the hounds baying off in the distance and began to wonder if the dogs were the reason there weren’t any bears around. Obviously the dogs didn’t bother that squirrel any, ’cause he was right there with me until 7:30 when I climbed out of the tree and headed back to the camp. With aches and pains I limped out of the bush, mumbling how I was “getting too old for this crap” and saw that B.B. had just arrived.

26 Sep

Tuesday morning Don, B.B. and I went over to Highbanks for some early morning fishing. We’d noticed that the earlier your there in the morning, the better the fishing was going to be. That, and Don had to head back home that afternoon to return to work the next day. Brian had brought up his johnboat and Don had decided to fish from shore, so Brian and I tried some trolling. I tied on my crocodile and B.B. used a green and chrome Cleo to see how that worked. After the luck Doug and I had, I was sure that we’d get into some good fishing again.

The lake was beautiful that morning, with the sun poking through the trees and casting beams of light through the mist that was rising off of the water. (I’m hoping to get a picture Brian took to use when this goes into the story section) We couldn’t see Don from the other end of the lake, but we had radios with us to keep in touch. After two or three passes through this hole we were fishing, Brian’s drag started to sing. Whether it’s Blue Marlin or just bluegills, any time that sound starts, it gets your attention. I reeled in my line as fast as I could, grabbed the net and watched the show. After taking twenty or thirty feet of line, Brian tightened up the drag and started to get it back to the boat. Its sides were still blood red when it broke the surface the first time, and after almost screwing up with the net, Brian led it into it. We let Don know we’d got one and he told us he’d been having some luck too, but they were undersized.

After catching and releasing a few more small ones, the action really dropped off and I started paying more attention to what was going on around us. That Osprey that I’d seen when fishing with Doug there was back and we saw it land in one of those huge White Pine that line the lake. Every time we’d troll by, he’d look down and watch us go by. Brian noticed that there was a hatch going on and decided to head back to shore and grab his fly rod. It felt good to get out of that little boat and stretch out some but before long we were back out there at it.

When we left, I took Don’s crawler rig with us and dropped it overboard when we were out about a hundred yards. We figured the water was deeper and maybe we could get it out of the weeds. We’d just got down to the other end of the lake when Don asked us to come back and do it again. That crawler wasn’t even wet yet and he had a fish on, and it was a beauty too. I had some luck with a crawler too but it wasn’t a fish that I got with it.

While we were at the beach, I decided to try trolling with a crawler harness. The one I used is chartreuse and it had floats on it, to keep it up out of the weeds. It had worked well for Walleye back on Lake Charlevoix, and they weren’t hitting on spoons so what the heck. You're supposed to put a small sinker on the rig to get it down, but far enough from the hooks to keep it up off the bottom. I forgot to use the sinker so it was traveling just under the surface of the lake. When we traveled by that huge pine with the Osprey in it, it was just too inviting for that bird to ignore. With the sound of a bowling ball hitting the water at 40 miles per hour, Brian and I jerked our heads back to see that bird heading back for altitude. Out of reflex, I’d set the hook but he’d let go of it by then, thank God. It was the only rod I had with me, and I’m pretty sure he’d have won that fight. Both fish were 16″, so they were both happy, and I got a hellava story to tell, so I was happy as well.

Don left early that afternoon, and Brian and I headed up to “Firewood be us” and gathered some firewood. This was the same spot we’d gone to the year before, but when we were there, they were still just cutting lanes into the forest. Now it was all clear cut and we weren’t sure if we were in the same neighborhood or not. All that was left were the tops, and not a lot of that. The guy that lives across the street from the entrance to this area sells firewood, and it was pretty easy to tell where he got it at. 15 years from now, that area is going to be FULL of woodcock and partridge and I’d like to invite all those ‘tree huggers’ back for some bird hunting with me. Me and B.B. ain’t as young as some of the guys who’ll be coming up soon, so we just cut enough to keep warm for a day or two and let it go at that.

Later that afternoon, B.B. and I went across the street and tried some woodcock hunting in an area that was ‘clear cut’ 15 years ago and we both scored one each. It was nice to see I could still hit something with that 16ga. side by each. We were both one for one, and both birds found! It started pouring again around 9:30, so after shooting the bull for awhile, Brian and I went to bed.

27 Sep 

When I got up for the 1am piss call it was pouring, when I got up again at 6:30 it was just raining. I was going to go back to bed and see if it would be just drizzling when I got up again, but I knew better. Lake Superior makes it’s own weather because of it’s size and the amount of water in it, but you’d think after a given amount of time, that damned lake would just dry up.

After doing all my “housebitch duties” in the cabin, I went back out to my tent, put on “The Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo De Silos” and cranked ‘er up. Boy, when those Monks get to jammin’, even the devil himself can feel the spirit. The only other CD I listen to for my ’spiritual enlightenment’ is “Exile on Main Street” by the Rolling Stones, but the Monks are the best. I wrote the first two days entries into this story, listening to those guys that morning. I had just finished up my writing when B.B. came in with a dead Hawk in his hands.

I had seen the bird earlier that morning as it flew down the highway looking for something to eat. It looked as though it and a vehicle had a tie in getting to the dining room. I took some pictures of it and Brian took it off into the bush to its final resting place. When I’d seen it before I remember thinking how nice it would be if he’d find that damned red squirrel, but now I knew it was going to be up to me.

Jamie Crandall came into camp around 3pm, pulling his trailer with a motor cycle and a quad runner on it, and his johnboat on top. I had heard that he might not be coming this year and was happy to see that he had. Jamie’s been coming up here long before I even knew Don and just couldn’t imagine what a year would be like without him. Every year, Jamie spends most of his time exploring new areas and if I don’t go along, I get to hear about them we he gets back. This year, I had a spot in mind that I wanted to see and I knew he was just the guy to get us there.

For a little bit there, on his way across the Mackinac Bridge, it was doubtful whether he’d make it or not. About half way across the bridge, one of the straps he used to secure his motorcycle came undone and he almost lost it over the side. When his trailer passed over one of the expansion joints he felt the jolt as the bike lost its footing and he could see it in his rear view mirror. Problem is, you CAN’T stop on the bridge. Ever since this 9 - 11 thing, the authorities get mighty upset when they see on their monitors someone coming to a dead stop anywhere on the bridge. I have no idea why the terrorists would waste their resources there, but the bridge authorities act as though they would. He limped along, taking it real easy and hoped it just wouldn’t fall over completely, and really screw things up. Once he got to the North side, he pulled over and after jostling the machine around, got it back into position. After he got that squared away, he came upon another issue that us ‘regular guys’ will have to deal with.

There was this guy handing out flyers at the rest area that bares a problem we’re having here in Michigan. Last year, or maybe two years ago, our governor passed a law allowing dove hunting in a couple counties in Southern Michigan. An affiliate of the National Humane Society is trying to revoke that law. The flyer showed a ‘white paper’ that the Humane Society has published, outlining a campaign to eliminate ALL hunting in Michigan. They feel that revoking the law would be a good start. Personally, I felt like wiping my ass with that ‘White paper’ and sending it on to that august organization, but decided that maybe I should just mention it here instead. In any case dear readers and voters, make sure you get to the polls this November and show them how you feel.

My back and my butt were hurting way too much to set in that tree that day, but I took the guys back with me to replenish the bait pile. There hadn’t been any activity so I didn’t feel quite so bad about not hunting the day before. When we got back to the cabin, Jamie started carrying wood into the cabin for its woodstove.

You can always tell when someone is heating their homes with wood up here. It’ll be 30 below zero with 30 mile per hour winds, and the windows and front door will be wide open. I know that for a fact, I used to be one. It always gave me a feeling of independence to be able to heat my own home, and the warmer it got in there, the better I felt. Unfortunately, with independence comes the price you have to pay for it and the price gets pretty hot sometimes. Anyway, before long Jamie had it up to 85º in there and rising. It was supposed to get down right cold that night, but I had more blankets in my truck and decided to go that route instead of sweating my butt off.

Late in the afternoon, Jamie and B.B. rode across the highway and down the trail a ways for some bird hunting, and I opted to try it closer to the cabin. Brian picked the right spot and I didn’t, ’cause he got one.

Later that night, I talked to the guys about heading West towards Seney and a couple lakes I use to fish 30 years ago. It was one of the things I really wanted to do this year, and after explaining where it was and why, they agreed to go. I went to bed that night happy with the thought that I’d finally get back to Lost Lake.

28 Sep

Believe it or not, it wasn’t raining out when I got up that morning. I had listened to the radio forecast transmitted by the National Weather Service from a tower in Newberry that said we were supposed to, so I was a bit surprised. Listening to that station and its computer generated voices is almost too funny. (Maybe by the time I get this story moved into the story section, I’ll have figured out a way to portray what those voices sound like.) Anyway, after listening to that for a while, and making some entries into the cabin journal, I decided it was time for Jamie to get up. So, around 8am, I got my CD of those crazy Monks and played it for Jamie. After two minutes of it, I hear “What the hell is that?” coming from the bedroom, and I told Jamie, “It’s your alarm clock, time to get up.” Not long after that B.B. came in from his trailer and we cooked up some breakfast. By 10 we were on our way to Sunken, Lost, and Dutch Fred Lake.

It had been 26 years since I’d been to two of those lakes and Dutch Fred I’d never been to. My brother Jim and I took my son Jon looking for that lake once when Jon was 5 or 6 years old. We didn’t have the advantage of having a GPS unit or even a county map book. We had a great time looking for it, even though I ended up sitting on my car frame in the middle of a pond, in the middle of nowhere. For years after that, Jon wouldn’t think he was having any fun unless we were axel deep in some hole. As the years went by I looked for ways to get back into that area, and when my settlement came in from Social Security, I figured I’d found it. Not long after that I got on the internet and had a topo map made just for that region and my hopes were born anew.

Now it was 10am and we were on our way towards Seney. Brian had brought along his GPS, I had my trusty county map book and Jamie was at the helm. Along with Jamie’s johnboat, Brian brought his shotgun, and I loaded on my .22, just in case I saw some squirrels. Just as I remembered it, the two track started about 4 1/2 miles from the intersection of M28 and M77. One of the things I’d been worried about was whether I’d be able to recognize the landmarks. From what I could tell from the areas around Don’s, the topography can change in a hurry and chances were pretty good that they’d have changed there as well.

When I went there the first time, back in ‘73, we didn’t have any map at all. A friend of mine and I were just up there "two trackin’" and taking it as it came. When we found Lost Lake, we were. It wasn’t until a few years later we found out the name of it, and where it was on the map. The next time we went up, we took along the map and would measure out by the squares provided on the map, how far it was between intersections. This time I did the same thing, and I figured along with Brian’s GPS, we had it made. I figured we were very close to the turn off to Sunken Lake and had Jamie make a left onto the two track we’d found. We’d traveled about a half-mile when I started having my doubts. Although the area looked the same as it did, I remembered it being closer to the turn off and we were still going. I let it go on for a little while later and then started voicing my doubts. Jamie asked me what condition I was in the last time I was there, and when I told him, he started calling me the “Peyote pilot”. “Maybe you need to get back into that condition Mike”, he said, but I told him maybe not, it wasn’t the 70’s anymore. We turned around and headed back the way we came, and not 50′ farther down that two track, we came to one I absolutely remembered. We made another left and just as I remembered it, the lake was only an eighth of a mile. Except for the opening near the water, it looked just as it did the last time I was there.

The only thing different was the bear camp someone had set up and they had all kinds of farm implements laying adjacent to the trail. These guys were serious about tearing up the roads. According to regulations, the only thing you can use to drag the roads were material lying alongside, naturally. Some branch’s, maybe a log or two, not something you’d use to plow, drag and plant 40 acres of corn. We’d noticed that some of the trails were tore up, but didn’t think these guys would go to such lengths to do it.

The lake looks as though it were formed by a meteor; it’s almost perfectly round and a steep hill completely surrounds it. It’s not as deep as I’d remembered it, but most of the lakes, along with the Great Lakes, have dropped significantly over the last 15 years or so. It’s full of bluegill and bass but what with those guys camping on it, we decided to give it a pass and move onto the next one.

As I remembered it, the two track intersected the main trail about 2 miles up from Lost Lake, and sure enough it was there. For some reason I recalled the forest the trail went through as almost primordial, and it wasn’t. It was a mature wood, but not virgin like I thought. (Once again, we must remember the “condition” I was in at the time). There was no mistaking the condition of the trail though. Then it was mostly impassable, we had to use the come-along three times to get down it, now it was in pretty good shape. When I started thinking I’d screwed up again, we passed an old bear hunting cabin that had some guys sitting out in front of it. I remembered thinking then how in hell they got back there to build it, and it looked about as decrepit as it did now. Not far from there, I could see blue peeking through the trees on the left side and I knew I’d found it.

The first time Mark Stevens and I saw this lake, it was in September, just like it was now, but it was sunnier and warmer. It was our habit when coming up to a lake, to put the canoe in, and if we caught some fish, we’d spend the night there. While we were taking the canoe off, I noticed a sign on a tree that said “This Lake has been poisoned of all fish”, but when we looked out over the lake, the surface was alive with motion. Whatever was still living in that lake ate bugs, and they were having a feast. The sign looked to be a couple years faded so we figured they’d killed off whatever was there and planted it with something else. We paddled out into the middle of it and threw a couple crawlers over the side to see what we could see. What we saw were 12″ to 14″ brook trout and they liked worms as much as the bugs. I thought I’d just died and gone to heaven. As quickly as we threw bait in, we caught ‘em so it didn’t take long to get four for dinner. Truly, it was UNBELIEVABLE.

The sun went down as we were eating so we thought we’d give it another try in the dark. All we had were a couple of flashlights, but we weren’t worried about anyone running into us so we pushed out into the black. Once again we threw our crawlers out there and we started getting bites. Well, we thought they were bites. I could feel my rod tip moving, but I didn’t feel anything on the line, so we turned on our flashlights to have a look. There were ten million bats flying over our heads and hitting the rod tips, thinking they were bugs. What a sight! We shown our beams up into the sky but it never made it very far. It was almost a solid black cloud over our heads and we got our butts back to shore, quick.

The next morning we caught our breakfast and then continued on with our trip. This time, I brought along a fish finder to see if they were still there, and where they might be. Jamie and B.B. took the boat out with the sonar and I sat on the beach trying from there. None of us caught any and from what they told me, very few showed up on the graph. The lake is about three times the size of Sunken, and it’s a lot deeper. They measured it at 51′, so that would explain why the State planted them there. B.B. registered it on his GPS unit and he had to call it Lost Lac. It seems just about every county has at least one Lost Lake and he’d already listed two of them. It was from that spot where we ran into some trouble.

Since I was doing the navigating, it was up to me to read my map book and come up with a course to get us to the next spot. Up until then, I’d been working on my somewhat tainted memory, and now we were moving into some “uncharted territory”. This is where Brian’s GPS saved our asses. Just before we’d arrived at Lost Lake we passed an intersection that I didn’t register. When we left the lake I saw a two-track that led off to the right and figured that was the one to take. We were going to go east and a little south to Dutch Fred Lake to check out that one too. Brian kept looking at his GPS and it showed that we were going east by north and I couldn’t figure out what the deal was. Brian even began to wonder if there was something wrong with his unit, and I began to wonder if there was something wrong with the map. Turns out I was right. Along with a record of where we’d been on his unit, it also gave the Lat/Long of where we were on the planet. On my map, there’s printed corresponding numbers for the same thing, but our numbers didn’t match up. When he read me his numbers, the map told me that we were many miles South of where we actually were. Jamie got out his map book and checked out the numbers; his looked to be a lot more like the real world, but didn’t show as many two-tracks as mine did. We drove around and around, making guesses and a few “what the hells” when we came to a bridge over a little creek. We’d given up by then with Dutch Fred Lake and were trying to get back to 77. From the map, we were pretty sure we were just South of 77 where it travels in a NW/SE direction and all we’d have to do is get across this bridge. From above, the bridge looked as though it might handle foot traffic, if the people were young and small, but underneath it was all held up by thick steel “I” beams. The only problem with getting across it was a post that stuck up at our end. After the guys checked it out, they told me that there was a padlock securing it to the foundations, but since we weren’t in any kind of emergency, we let it be. It wasn’t far from there where my .22 came into play.

We were on our way South again when a partridge flew across the trail and landed in a tree a way’s back in the brush. When we got to the spot, we started looking for it, and Jamie saw it first. My .22 was closer than B.B.’s shotgun so Jamie got that out. As he was removing it from its case, I told him “It’s sighted dead on”, so that’s exactly where he aimed it. The birds head hit the ground at the same time the rest of the bird did. It was a 75′ shot and as clean a kill as I’ve ever seen. After some more driving and figuring and guessing, we went by a road that looked as though it needed to be gone down.

Within a quarter mile, we pulled up to Dutch Fred Lake. When I’d looked up Lost Lake, Dutch Fred was also listed as one where those brook trout had been planted. The wind was right in our faces, so Jamie drove around to the other side to get into the Lee. Unlike the other two, this one has cabins on it. Not all the way around, but there wasn’t anyone at any of them so it was no problem driving on the beach. This time I got into the boat with Jamie and Brian stayed on the beach. We had made up some venison burgers the night before so he was going to re-heat a couple as we fished. I turned on the Sonar and started to make our sweeps looking for fish. When the depth read 42′, we found ‘em, and that hole was just FULL of them. As we made our first pass, I got a hit that almost pulled the rod out of my hands. I set the hook, and as it started to take line, the boat got pushed over with the wind, and the motor cut it. For a second there I had all kinds of visions passing before my eyes and then all I saw was the end of the line dangling in the wind. “Dear sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph” I thought and asked Jamie if he wanted to eat Lunch. I knew they were in there, they weren’t going anywhere, and I was starved. We went back in and had lunch filling B.B. in on the action. After we finished, we headed back out, and within 10 minutes, the motor cut my line again. We still had a ride back to do, and it was starting to get late, so we called it a trip and headed back. All the way back I thought about those lakes and how happy I was to finally get back. I also started thinking about how I was going to get back there again. If anyone out there wants to go, I’d be more than happy to get them there, but I’m going too. If anyone wants to use B.B.’s GPS for directions there, look up: Dead Fred Lake.

That night, we decided to head over to the Bear Butt Bar for a copula beers and a coffee. The guys had the beer, I had the coffee. We were there shooting the bull with the bar maid when a nice old lady came in with her husband. Neither one of them looked like they needed another beer, and her husband looked like he didn’t need to be out at all. My suspicions were validated when the lady told me that he’d already had 3 strokes, and I don’t think he was very far from his fourth. Another woman came in with her new puppy and showed it around to all the other patrons. It’s not often you get to see a guy who’s about to have a stroke and a new puppy in the same night. After a second round we called it a day, and a night and headed back to camp.

29 Sep

It was 28º at 5:30 when I woke up and I decided right then that the next time I went camping, I was going to bring an electric blanket. Over the summer I had bought a nice 14′X14′ walled tent which was on sale at K-Mart. When I got it, I had visions of the old days where I’d camped with my Uncle during a couple deer seasons. It was very similar to this one, but unbeknownst to me, this one had roof vents. They’re a great idea in the summertime, but not so much in September and October when I’d planned on using it. Doug had brought up a fair sized tarp to put over the thing, but unless it reaches down to the ground, it isn’t much help. Next summer I’m going to install some Velcro strips attached to visquene and seal them up. I knew it would be toasty in the cabin, ’cause Jamie had it up to 112º when I’d gone to bed the night before. After getting the chill out of my bones, I headed out, broke the ice in the wash basin and did up yesterday’s dishes. What I lack in my cooking abilities, I make up for in the “Housebitch” category, and I’m glad that I can at least do that.

The guys got up about around 9 and after figuring out what we were going to do that day, made ourselves some breakfast. Jamie brings along his cast iron frying pan and has his bacon cooking down to an art form. Jamie has a one burner stove, which he set’s on medium low and then he cut’s the strips in two and after placing them in the frying pan. With his fork he works on them one at a time until each one is done to perfection, then moves on to the next. There’s something hypnotic about watching him work and on one of the days, I almost forgot to cook the eggs. He also cooked up some sausage paddies and Brian did up the toast, which turned into another great breakfast.

By the time we finished it was almost noon and the guys headed off to Hurley I think, and I went out to the tree for one more day hunting. The bait pile looked as though a small bear had been by, because there was only one log moved off the pile and another moved over. By then it was beginning to look like my luck bear hunting had totally run out. I had brought my bath towel with me this time and I tied it to the limb I was sitting on, in the hopes that maybe that would help. It didn’t. Within a half hour I began to wonder if this was going to be the culmination of four years of waiting, and three months of preparing. It really didn’t matter though, what I wanted to do, I was doing. For another couple hours I sat in that pine, watching the Whiskey Jacks fly in and out of that pile, with bits of granola bars in their beaks. Chipmunks running about trying to stay out of the way of the Jacks, and avoid getting eaten by the Kestrel hawk that was sitting in a tree next to mine. The red squirrel was still at his post making his presence known to anyone within 100 miles, and listened to the Ravens with that haunting cooing and clucking call that I’ve come accustomed to. All of that and that pain in my ass from sitting on it too much. I enjoyed, no, relished in the thought that it was I who was doing it. It was I who had come up week after week, bringing my family and friends to join with me in this adventure. And it was I who was just hurting too much to go on with it all. I glanced over at that red squirrel and waved my arms until he was worked up into frenzy, and climbed down out of that tree.

Carl Johnson was there along with the other two when I got back into camp. Carl had been coming up for 4 years and he’s come to be a regular attraction to this yearly event. He’s a logger, and he looks like one. 6′ tall, ruggedly handsome and has a sense of humor that catches you off guard but leaves you laughing for months afterward. His first comment to me was “Hondas don’t float” when I walked up to him and from the looks of him, I could see he was right. After he’d come in, all the guys had gone for a ride and they tried to get through a mud puddle that turned into a little more than they bargained for. It didn’t look deep from the top, but once in and the water started to come over the seat, he knew that wasn’t the case. Jamie had rode back to town and bought a couple quarts of oil for Carl’s Honda quad runner and they changed it right there on the spot. Those guys talked about it like it happened every day, so it probably has, but it would’ve been enough for me. Later, I started to talk to Carl about his job and he summed it up with the following; “Every tree is a potential stump”. I chuckled a bit and thought of all those "tree huggers" that read this blog every day. I knew that was going to make it in.

After a bit, we went next door to see our bear hunting neighbors that had been so successful the week I’d been up to bait with Doug. Not all of them had come up this time, just three of the guys and two had their wives. It was a whole lot more civilized over there this time, but it was great seeing them again. Two of the men are guards at the Ionia Penitentiary and they told us some stories that aren’t going to be involved in this story. There are two things I can tell you about them and one is that they’re gentleman, and the second is NEVER GO TO THAT PRISON! I suppose all prisons are alike but I know of one where two guys really enjoy the art of submission. If you want to hear the details, come up across the bridge and we’ll fill you in.

Jamie made some mac and cheese and we sat around the fire until it started to pour again around nine, and that’s when I went to bed.

30 Sep

The last day of trout season. 7 years ago, on this very day of the week, I was there for this event. Actually, it was the REASON for this event. Don’s been an A-1, Mod-1, Number 1 trout fisherman all his life. In my family, we celebrated the opening day of trout season, and closing day was usually a day of mourning. Most of us would meet at Grandpa’s; on Union Lake and either spends the day on the end of his dock or in the kitchen getting hammered on Whiskey Sours or Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer. Now I spend opening day fishing Walleye with Doug on Lake Charlevoix, but next year things will be different. My brother Butch has moved back to Michigan. After a long wandering period looking for whatever it was he was looking for; but what I think he was looking for can be found in the headwaters of the Jordan. In honor of Don, and Butch, and my Grandpa, I decided to head over to Highbanks and spend the last day fishing for trout.

When I got up at 6am, it was of course, still raining. Not long after everyone got up, Jamie’s future brother-in-law, Wade Belford, drove in on his Kawasaki. Wade is another nice guy that has joined the long list of nice guys that this place seems to draw. Back over the years it was Don, Doug, Jamie, and B.B., Jerimiah, and Bubba, Denis, Mike Anzel, Carl and Brian. Dan Cox, Kent Seymore, Dave Crandall, and “Beagle”. Pat Elliot, “Tooth”, Hunter, Bo, Maggie, and lastly Sally. What a great group of souls to gather with in celebration of another year gone by.

B.B. helped me put his johnboat in my truck, along with all the gear I’d need, and soon they were off to explore the trails. They were going to head East towards Strongs, and then Northeast towards Monocle Lake and a ridge that runs adjacent to it. From that ridge you can see out over Lake Superior and across to Canada. They would stop at High banks to see how I was doing, and showing me that they didn’t drown in that little mud puddle mentioned before. I would have thought they were crazy to ride in such lousy weather, but I was about to set in a boat under the same conditions, and I knew I wasn’t crazy.

It poured all the way to the lake and was still raining when I put the boat in. The weather guessers had told me it would rain until noon, and then clear off some. Must be “clear off some” means “pour some more” up there, ’cause that’s what it did. The guys stopped by and after a couple of beers and some discussion, decided to head back to camp and dry off. Those guys were absolutely, no bullshit, soaked! I’d been sitting inside a waterproof environment, with the only thing outside was my nose, and these guys had been going through brush and as many water holes as they couldn’t avoid. They sure were having fun though. I’d caught two small ones by then, and after they left I headed out for one more try. I trolled for another hour or so, going through every lure in the box and decided to give it up. I caught two more, and both of those were only 10″ each, so I put them back.

I arrived back at camp just as they were pulling in, and with our firewood almost gone, we went up to “Firewood b us” for some more. B.B. and I, being the old guys, got to stay out of the way and helped haul the cut wood back to the truck. When Carl picked up that chain saw, he almost laughed. He normally uses a saw with a 36″ bar, and this one was 12. It was pretty obvious that Wade and Jamie worked in the woods a lot because they were always working near Carl, but never in a position where anyone could get hurt. For anyone who’s never done such work; it’s a lot harder than you’d think. It didn’t take long to get the truck full, so we were back in plenty enough time for B.B. and I to get across the street.

The other three had decided to head over to Curtis to a famous bar there, but Brian and I have always been fond of the world renowned “Last weekend in September, closing of trout season, trap shoot”. It’s a competition that I’ve mentioned in earlier renditions of this week long event and Brian and I wanted to have one more go at it. I must say, it was the most successful trap shoot that we’d both been in, and we tied at 100%. There’s nothing like going out a winner, and it’s even better when you can do it with a great friend.

Steak and pizza pockets were served for dinner that night, which only proves that it’s not the meal that makes the banquet it’s the company you have enjoying it. Most of the evening was spent in the cabin, because as you can guess, it was still raining. When I left the cabin around 9:30, it was 84º and rising, and I could hear the guys still laughing as I drifted off to sleep.

01 Oct

At 4:30 when I got up to relieve my bladder, the light in the cabin was on and there was some serious yelling was going on. “Get out of my bed you asshole,” was one of the things I heard and wondered what in hell was going on in there! Later that morning I got up the nerve to ask Wade what it was all about. Evidently it got pretty drunk in there that night and Wade ended up climbing into the wrong bunk. It’s not something I’d recommend doing with Carl’s bunk, but since it wasn’t me doing it, I thought it was pretty funny.

I slept in until 7:30 that morning, which is about as late as I’d gotten up in years. I’d been there 11 days and I still wasn’t ready to end it so I guess it showed. I was sitting there by the fire when I heard a familiar chattering coming from one of those little red devils in the trees. The day before, B.B. had spotted it, and since I wasn’t hunting any more he took a try at putting it out of our misery. There was some fast and furious shooting, but the little bastard got away. This morning, he was standing in the grass about 100′ away and reminding me who was the boss. It didn’t take long for me to retrieve my .22 and have a seat back by the fire. When he showed himself again, I put my cross hairs on his chest and squeezed off one round. He dropped like a rock. I suppose I should feel bad for killing something I wasn’t going to eat, but frankly, I didn’t. It wasn’t the one who’d been giving me such a hard time back at the pine, but he was a relative and it saved me the walk. After retrieving the carcass and hanging it in the tree next to the cabin, I started to pack all my stuff.

Jan had told me before she left not to forget anything this time. I always seem to leave something there, either from neglect or just a reason to come back. I’d made a point of keeping everything in order at the end of each day, so packing didn’t take nearly as long as it usually does. As the guys got up, they would start to pack their stuff and before long, it was just me packing my truck. They gave me a hand taking down the tarp and the tent, and by the time I had it packed they had swept and cleaned the cabin. I’d told Don that I would make the place presentable before I left, and I’d like to thank the guys for all the help in doing so. All I had to do was swab the deck, turn out the lights and lock the door.

Jamie had got out a box of clay pigeons and a thrower, so the last thing we did was to have one more trap shoot. We’d all been doing some shooting, so all I had left were 12 rounds and I put them to good use. My percentage dropped some, but it was better than it had been in earlier years, so over-all I did pretty good.

We all headed out at the same time, Carl in front, Jamie behind him, then me, and B.B. coming up behind. B.B.'s always the last one to leave, and always takes his time getting home. It’s not that he doesn’t want to get there; I just think he loves where he’s at and what he’s doing. As I drove south following Jamie, I thought about the great 11 days I’d just spent, the people I’d spent it with and what I was going to do when I came up next year. It’s always been that way, and with a lot of luck, it’ll continue for many years to come.

Now I’m sitting here, listening to the Monks boogie down, and how to put it all together into this story. My daughter Katrina is going to do the hard part, she’ll check all the spelling and the grammar, put the pictures in with all this and post it. Without her and all her help this would have just ended up in a note book off in the corner. I’d like to thank her and all the guys who came this year, ’cause without them none of this would have happened.

Copyright M. Kamradt 2006
All rights reserved

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