Don’t forget your flashlight

Hunting is filled with numerous routines, rituals and rites of passage to ensure you enjoy the camp, remember the woods and honour the hunt.

On the first and last day of deer season I arrive at my watch before dawn and leave after dark. On both occasions I perform the same private ritual. I lift my rifle over my head and hold it up for a few seconds with one hand on the barrel and the other on the stock. I could never make my silent salute to the wilderness and the wild animals that I come to hunt without my flashlight.

The woods are more dangerous at night especially without a flashlight. You can’t see familiar landmarks to find your way to your watch and back to camp. You can’t see holes and rocks that could twist your ankle or break your leg, and branches that could poke your eye out. 

The woods are also more frightening at night because they are pitch-black. I remember listening to a man leaving the woods after bear hunting over bait and knowing he terrified because of the dark. There was a ridge between us so I could not see him climb down from his tree stand and walk through the woods with his flashlight to his four-wheeler fifty yards away.

But I knew what he was doing the whole time because I could hear him shouting, not to me or anyone else including himself, but to the black bear his imagination thought was waiting for him in the dark. He was shouting to try to alert and scare the bear away.

“I’m leaving now,” were the first words he shouted out.

Then as he climbed down from the tree stand he shouted, “I’m climbing down from my tree stand.”

A few seconds later he shouted, “I’m walking to my bike.”

The last thing I heard him shout was, “I’m starting my bike now.”

  Then I heard his bike zoom away down the trail back to the comforting lights of camp.

He was afraid but his flashlight helped him stay in the woods until dark which gave him a chance to shoot a bear.

Those precious few minutes after dawn and before dark are the best time to kill a deer or moose or bear. All three are nocturnal and travel through the woods to return to and leave their day time bedding areas just after dawn and before dark. They move around during the day to eat and stretch and urinate but generally rest during daylight hours.

I got lost the only time that I tried to walk to my watch in the dark without a flashlight. I was heading for a beaver dam. The camp beside us also sat a man at the same dam. He sat on one side and I sat on the other. We sat with our backs to each other. He watched their bush and I watched ours. We never spoke over the years until that morning and never again after except for a nod or wave or tip of the cap.

The man on the other side of the beaver dam did not get lost the morning I did. I got to the beaver dam late - about a half hour after day break. I heard two shots on my way.

When I arrived there was a doe floating in the water beside the dam, and a buck with big antlers laying on the shoreline.

“Please don’t tell me those deer came from my side of the dam,” I said.

“Only if you want me to,” he replied.

I never forgot my flashlight again, not because he nailed those antlers to a tree on his side of the dam where I could see them. Because I would have nailed them to a tree on my side of the dam - if I had only got there sooner.

Since then I’ve killed deer on my watch at daybreak and with only minutes of daylight remaining. Sometimes I found and gutted those deer in the dark with the help of my flashlight. Better still I have helped others who forgot their flashlights do the same.

Having a flashlight with you while hunting is one of the many little things you must do right to be a successful hunter.