Deer Season 2022 Opens

Deer season 2022 is entering its fourth day this morning. Squirrel-Eating Jon – the man whom eating nothing but squirrels matured to a full-mediocrity – has been out every day. Conditions for hunting deer were superb the first two days, snowing, blowing, the thermometer dropping. He stuck closer to home cos the roads were treacherous

Does This Fence Make My Grizzly Bear Look Fat?

Doing the usual rounds post early-season snow, Squirrel Eating Jon noted the local grizzlies being quite particular about where they crossed the barbed-wire fences that truss our rural world up like a holiday roast. This fella approached the usual fence-crossing point, stopped and had a look, then turned off and followed south to a place

Carry Enough Gun – Refining a .375 Holland & Holland Chambered Rifle

Above – a selection of fine vintage Rigby magazine rifles. This one will appeal to fans of fine arms who like to be prepared. The boyscout in you. As well perhaps to handipeople who like to fashion things with fine wood. Experts will tell you that if you spend time skulking about in grizzly country

Death of a Horse

In late February or early March of this year (who can be sure what month it is?) we lost one of our home-bred registered Clydesdale horses. The death of a horse is always an event when it happens, but not a particularly rare one. Horses need no real excuse to drop dead, they are infamously

Local Grizzly DNA Results In

Last fall Squirrel-Eating Jon collected 24 hair samples of grizzly bear from the area immediately adjacent the farm. These were sent to a lab for DNA analysis. The first results of the analysis are in. Eating reckoned from the evidence he gleaned tracking the bears as well as trail camera shots garnered by himself and

A Grizzly Fall

September 2020. Big grizzly moving its slow thighs approaching the farmstead from the east, a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun. Rough beast at outer gyre. We had been aware that grizzlies visited our place on occasion most years. Until this past fall, we had not been aware just how much bear activity there

A Very Dark Night

This was in early October. Coming back from the farm market in Calgary town after 7 pm it was already getting dark and by the time of arrival back at the farm full dark. And on this particular night, dark as it ever gets, night of the Dark Moon. This was in the years before

The Wild Comes Stalking

Wilderness or “the wild” is formally defined as “an uncultivated region, as of forest or desert, uninhabited or inhabited only by wild animals.” Something like this. The farm is located on the top of a level plateau three miles inside the eastern edge of foothills forest. Or today rather, inside the patchwork mosaic of oat