your a lucky fellow to know those folks....charlie

Charlie,

The Aboriginal people of North Central Saskatchewan are wonderful people. They cross paths with French Canadians whom they greatly dislike. The feeling among the French Canadians is mutual. When I first made friends with an Aboriginal and he began taking me to tribal lands, my French Canadian friends were appalled. They told me that I would lose a lot of my French Canadian friends if I insisted on going to tribal lands. I continued to go but never lost any of my French Canadian friends, one of whom I stayed with every year. They soon accepted my friendship with the Aboriginal people but told me that I was never to sleep with a “squaw”. I never did, but not because of the threat.

Both the French Canadians and the Aboriginal people are among the finest people I have ever met. Both looked forward to my two week annual trips and treated me like one of their own. Once I bemoaned the fact that I was going to miss Thanksgiving Day back in the states. The French Canadians got together and threw a big Thanksgiving feast for me. My friends and their relatives were all there. We had a wonderful time and I got another great memory to treasure.

tom it sounds like you have made some friends for life....bet those were some good hunting grounds....charlie

Charlie,

The hunting was incredible in my area of Saskatchewan. The ducks and geese cause problems for the farmers up there. They welcome hunters. I was introduced to all the farmers in my area, some of whom became close friends of mine. Many would invite me to dinner. I didn’t need Aboriginal lands to hunt on but I’d go there for moose.

A friend’s job was to dump a load of grain every morning on a reservoir where hunting was not allowed. The government fed the ducks and geese to try to draw as many as possible from the farmer’s fields. I’d go with him in the morning and we would fill a dump truck, loaded from a silo on the banks of the reservoir. We would then drive around in circles on the “duck pad” to distribute the feed. As soon as we got up the hill the ducks and geese would crowd into the duck pad to feed. It was a wonderful sight, thousands of ducks and geese came in to get their share of the grain.

Feeding the ducks might have helped the farmers a bit, but I didn’t notice it while hunting. I saw fields literally covered with thousands of mallards and the sloughs were always full of ducks. It was grand shooting, but more important was the sight of so many waterfowl. I took a non hunting friend up there once just to experience it. He loved to watch ducks and so I never shot any on his property in Pawling, NY. The memory of what he saw will remain with him for life.

what a sight that must have been....charlie