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In the 45 years I have spent hiking and camping in the great outdoors, I have encountered many animals of various species. My father was a trapper in the early thirties and he taught me at an early age what to watch out for at different times of the year regarding the feeding habits and moods of animals in the wilds. So over the years I have developed a sixth sense as to when and what animal I’ll meet and which animal wants to have its picture taken and which one wants to be left alone.

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I have had hypothermia a number of times in extreme circumstances and conditions, but the experience that stands out the most in my mind is a hiking/hunting trip I took some years ago with my oldest son Dean, when we went to a very remote area of northwestern British Columbia for a ten day hunt.

I love getting close to nature and enjoy hiking alone, or with my sons, going from one destination to another,

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It happens to the best of us. You are enjoying a marked trail, and decide to go a little further than you should into the unmarked woods. Maybe you misread a map or your compass settings, and wind up going the exact opposite way than you should. And all of a sudden, you find yourself in an unfamiliar setting, with no idea how to get home. That’s right, you’re LOST!

Hundreds of people each year get lost in British Columbia’s wilderness.

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When fishing, always make sure you wear a hat and a vest. I’ve seen more people with barbed hooks stuck in them, mostly in their head, from getting too close to an inattentive fly-fisherman or casting fisherman. It’s not always their fault. I remember one time when it happened to me.

My father and his best friend Ron decided to go fishing on the Crooked River in central British Columbia.We loaded all of our gear into the car,

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I have used a variety of compasses from time to time, but it was not until spring of 1960 that I used a compass every day as part of my job – that job being a compass man establishing boundaries in the forests of northern British Columbia. With a small, hand held compass, I had to be very accurate, starting out at one corner, traveling the perimeter of a square and arriving back at the same spot.

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I have had lots of pets in my time, but never one as unique as Bo-Beep. Bo-Beep was a Spruce Grouse that flew into my life in the early Sixties, and came along with my on some of my adventures up in Northern B.C.

When I worked for the B.C. Ministry of Forests in the 1960’s, I would practice a technique that I now know is called “slipping”. With a piece of string and a shoelace,

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Anyone can walk into the wilderness and walk out again in two weeks. How you fare in those two weeks depends upon how prepared you are. The English used to go on safaris for months into the South African wilderness and would have 30-50 porters with them, and when camp was set they would have a table, white linen cloth, crystal glasses and a bottle of wine, and good meals. This is what we called “prepared”.

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