This episode was a turning point for me and this series. After quite a few months of talking to TV channels and an american distributor, and concluding that conventional television distribution wasn’t a good fit for this particular project, I finally got shooting to the kind of content I wanted to show – field dressing, harvesting of offal, skinning – … Read More
FROM THE WILD – S1E5 – DEFLECTION
This trip was intended to be easy. We were supposed to be going into a part of the province where game was rampant and our pockets burst with big game tags. Do a little fishing. Set up camp. It only ended up being a handful of those things. One reality that didn’t make the edit but had a big impact on the … Read More
The Untold Stories – Black Bear [Pt 1]
When we started to take a look at the 2014 production schedule of From The Wild, it was clear that there were going to be some epic memories captured on camera. One of those was the haul-out of the black bear in crotch-deep water, then walking a mile or two in sloshing boots and soaked jeans with a bear carcass … Read More
FROM THE WILD – S1E3 – BEAR
Don’t think I wasn’t apprehensive about tackling this one. When the prospect of bear hunting for From The Wild first came up, I scoffed. I’m now firmly on the opposite side of that fence. Rationale: Spring bear is not in fact fatty at all, which many claim is what makes it ‘gross’. Bear meat is far from ‘gross’, and in … Read More
Whitetail Hunt #2
So apparently fate would have it that last year’s season of harvesting zero big game was to be juxtaposed with 2013’s crazy successful season. First morning out deer hunting, I filled my general whitetail tag. Bought supplemental doe tags because I didn’t think I’d actually shoot my elk. Being as it may that hunting is the new golf for business … Read More
Why I Need an Annual ‘Charcuterie Day’
It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that an annual ‘Charcuterie Day‘ marathon immediately following the annual ‘Pig Day‘ is in my future for a long, long time. Here’s why. Bacon. Beyond bacon [reason alone], I’m not concerned with the possibility of trichinosis in my extremely high quality bush-raised-and-handled-by-me pork and skipping right past freezing and into to curing and dry … Read More
Elk Hunt 2013
Elk are damn smart. Someone visiting Jasper National Park might not think so as they drive by an elk casually grazing within the throw of a paperweight, but in any other setting they demonstrate why they out-survived the sabre toothed cat and the wooly mammoth. I’m serious, look it up. They’re nocturnal feeders [park elk excluded], so you’re essentially trying … Read More
Deer Hunt 2013
I’m pretty sure I was a teen the last time I shot a deer. Long ago enough I don’t remember how old I was, but I remember why. And it’s not because I don’t like deer. My thoughts on deer as a game meat or red meat in general were changed a few years back when I had a chance … Read More
An Heirloom Tool
‘Fabrique Nationale d’Armes de Guerre – Herstal – Belgique’. My uncle figured my grandfather had had it since at least the mid 50s. I suppose firearms made by military manufacturers would have been a lot more common back then, only a few years after WWII. My grandfather was an officer in that war. I have a painting of his that … Read More
Letter to The Moose & Elk
Dear moose and elk, You won this one. You did. But it’s not because you’re awesome, or cause you ran really fast or hid really good. The big reason you got away lucky was cause I was in camp crumpled on the floor with the flu. Otherwise, you were totally, totally, totally in so much trouble. And yeah, whenever we … Read More