fiction is believable
Very good fiction... you are not sure if it’s true
Excellent fiction... you will argue it’s true
Outstanding fiction... it is the truth
Rod and Claire own and operate a Bed and Breakfast on Pigeon Lake.
Pigeon Lake is one of the Kawartha Lakes in Ontario, Canada
This book is a work of fiction.
Names, places and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and experiences.
Places and names are used in a fictitious manner. The stories were told and were they true stories? We will never know as most of the orators have left.
Chapter One
Jake Payne and The Fall Deer Hunt
At one time in our history we were all hunters and gatherers and that is how we survived. Hunting was more than killing and the family fire was more than just for cooking. Step outside any major urban centre and you will still find everything stalls for the first two weeks in November as many skilled craftsmen we rely on are not answering their pagers. They are responding to a different calling. You do not have to pick up a bow or a rifle to join the Norwood men on the “Hunt.” Hopefully this story will give you an insight into the ancient ritual.
North of Norwood, in Dummer Township, there are plenty of white-tailed deer. In some cases there are too many. The fall hunt is one way to keep their numbers in balance with their food supply. Dad and I were not hunters, but my brother and mother and many of my uncles enjoyed hunting. Some families are split that way. Some hunt and some choose not to.
I certainly enjoyed the many fine meals of game that my mother would cook. Partridge and rabbit were my favourites. This was all due to my brother’s ability to shoot like a trained marksman. My brother loved to hunt, especially in the fall. I was very proud that he never missed a partridge on the fly. His rifle, a .410 under and over, was short and easy to manoeuvre in the thickets. This rifle had a .22 barrel on top of the .410 shot gun barrel, and each chamber held one shot. I walked behind him and kept very quiet as we searched out hawthorn trees where partridges dined on fall berries. Ted was aware that we would be back to hunt next year, so he took only one or two birds per five acres. Ted would shoot a maximum of two on any walk in the woods, as that would be enough to feed mom, Ted, and me for lunch. If we did flush a partridge and it took flight, it was cleaned and in the bag within minutes. When we walked home from school at noon hour the three of us would have partridge stew, or if we were lucky, rabbit stew would be in the pot. Ted would watch out our kitchen window in the winter for rabbits eating raspberry canes. The loaded rifle in the corner of the kitchen would slowly stick out of the window and I, the non-hunter, would be in charge of going out to get the kill and completing the one last cleaning job before we were off to school.
The rabbit population had many predators, so good hunting occurred only one year out of seven. Fox and coyote populations respond to the food supply. Their numbers increase and decrease with the small game they can catch. If the fox population falls prey to rabies, rabbits multiply quickly.
Hunters, like Uncle Ken, ate everything they trapped. He said the best meal, the one he would have if it was his last, was roasted muskrat. I have not tasted muskrat, but some day I hope to have the opportunity.
Jake Payne
November first, the deer hunting season opened for a two-week period. Rifles and shotguns were both allowed in our area. Most hunters preferred using a rifle as it had a much longer range than a shotgun. Deer licences were issued by the provincial government along with a steel self-sealing tag to be inserted through the leg of the deer just above the hoof, as soon as the deer dropped. This is when a sharp knife came in handy. Many hunters put themselves in a jam with game wardens by not putting on their tags before bringing carcasses out of the woods to camp. Deer were plentiful and licences were issued - one per hunter and one for the camp kitchen.
Each November, Norwood District High School had a drop in the attendance of young male students, as a father’s invitation to go to hunting camp was more attractive than the option of going to classes and doing homework. Teachers at the school knew students would be missing. Serious students would catch up when they got back. Yet, somehow, important tests and assignments were always scheduled around those first two weeks of November.
This would be Jake’s second year in the hunting camp. Jake was fourteen. He purchased his first rifle when he turned twelve. Jake wanted a .22 calibre single shot rifle to go groundhog and rabbit hunting.
In those days, in the late-fifties, you never asked your parents to take you to town. You just hitch-hiked on Highway # 7 into Peterborough with or without a friend. One spring Saturday morning Jake hitched a ride into Peterborough. This particular Saturday morning, he got a lift with Jack Warner, the owner of the fuel oil depot in Norwood. Jack drove a four or five-year-old Olds 98 and was going into Peterborough on business of some sort. The conversation got around to why Jake was going into town. Jack was pleased that his hitchhiker was a local boy, interested in getting rid of groundhogs, pesky creatures that created dangerous holes in which farm machinery broke axles and animals broke legs.
Jake was always amazed at the older men in town who could roll their own cigarettes. Jack Warner was an expert. On the stretch of highway going west, before the hill to Indian River, Jack pulled out to pass a truck, and at the same time, pulled out his tobacco pouch and papers. In the time it took him to put the tobacco on the paper, roll the cigarette, lick the glued edge, and strike the wooden match on the dash, he had passed the truck. This was all accomplished by steering with one hand and his left knee.
After that trip, Jake tried and perfected the ability to find a paper and fill it with tobacco and lick and light with one hand. He nicknamed his cigarettes “the Jack’s.” The pool hall crowd at Katie’s was impressed the first time he performed the feat, and they soon copied this crowd-pleaser.
Getting dropped off on Lansdowne Street meant walking north on George Street to the Woolworth’s Department Store. The store was located on the corner of Charlotte and George. The gun section was downstairs next to the budgie and other song birds’ sales counter. Exactly eleven dollars and ninety-five cents was carefully counted out and the new .22 was his. No tax, since this was a few years before the so-called temporary federal and provincial sales taxes were introduced.
The middle-aged sales lady carefully put his new purchase into its cardboard gun case and thoughtfully brought to Jake’s attention that he needed ammunition. Jake had forgotten about that but did have the money to purchase two boxes of bullets. There were fifty per box. He took his brother’s advice and got longs, ammunition with a bit longer lead and more powder, so it would carry farther to the target. Later, his brother Harvey would show him how to drill a hole in the end of the lead to turn his longs into mushroom bullets to save an additional five cents per box.
Jake could hardly wait to get home. Walking south on George Street to Lansdowne
