Here is a view of the lake and some other views from the hills. The Argo is the only way to bring the supplies to this remote camp. There are some areas that even a 4 wheeler might not be able to negotiate. We saw one lonely woodland caribou on the way out. We saw several moose on the way in. I am sorry I do not have a digital camera with a more powerful zoom.

In the last picture if you look at the horizon where the land ends there is a fine line of water and beyond that you can barely make a line of mountains (it was very hazy that day). The water is the strait that separates NF from Labrador. The mountains are in Labrador. The few communities on that coast of Labrador can only be approached by water or air, no roads. This is a beautiful, but rugged, unforgiving land.

Sorry, I missed the lake view. Float planes can use this lake.

Man, That sure is a prettier landscape than Shiloh! But Jose, do you have someone with a good natural gas supply up there to keep you going?
Bryan

More views of town and the site of a WWII bomber that crash landed on 30 Nov. 1942. She was on her way to UK from Gander, NF with a scheduled stop in Greenland. They hit bad weather, icing, etc. After almost 8 hours in the air battling the elements and almost out of fuel the pilot decided to put her down in the coastal flats behind town. He had about 20 gal. of fuel left. He only travelled about 150 linear miles in those 8 hours! He made the nose gunner jump out from 600 ft!, but he made it even though it was hardly high enough for his old parachute. The pilot and copilot also survived. The plane was stripped shortly after. That aluminum fuselage looks as good as new. Brandon is the guy reading the account of the accident.

-- Edited by jdemoya at 20:37, 2008-09-13

The plane was a light bomber used in the North Africa campaign. Code name The Boston. I never heard of it. Some of you may have.

After the accident they change the route to go across the big pond and started flying out of Brasil.

Great stuff.

As I said we quit midmorning and came to town. After doing the tourist rounds: we checked the crash site, glassed the bay for whales, etc., lunch time was upon us. Brandon says let's go and get us some fish to fry. We head for the dock and enter the fish plant. A boat had just arrived with cod. They are busy cleaning the fish, icing it and getting it into the freezers. Brandon grabs one and out we go. He says he has some good southern stuff that a hunter from Alabama ships him regularly. We go to his house for the fixin's and head back to the hills. Boys, the cod we eat at home is garbage, is dry and rough. Fresh cod is one the best fish you could eat, moist and tender. We ate the whole thing. After the feast I get into the truck to get out of the wind and take a little nap. Brandon goes to the point to glass.

Picture is of Brandon cutting the fish while the oil gets hot.

-- Edited by jdemoya at 03:00, 2008-09-15

It has always amazed me how cool one can be when taking the shot. Your heart races when the animal first come into view, whether you intend to shoot or not, and it usually wants to come out of the chest after the shot. But one can draw, anchor and release as cold blooded as Carlos and Vasily pulled the trigger. No different this time.

The arrow is gone! I hear the familiar "thud" of a chest hit, but I never see the arrow in flight nor the hit (more to this later). The only thing I see is movement in the grass under his belly. The bull remains motionless, never acknowledging a hit. I missed him! I become an expectator trying to figure out what has happened instead of reloading and shooting him again. After a few long seconds, he turns around facing me, he knows not what has taken place either. As he shows me what was his far side I see blood dripping down from his belly. "You shot under him" I tell myself (which explains the movement of the grass under his belly). "It is just a skin wound, you'd better shoot him again". I reach for my mojo arrow, the one that killed the pig at Shiloh. Did I mention how one's heart wants to come out of the chest after the shot? Mine is beating with such force I can hear every single beat in my ears!

There is one small problem, the new projectile is of a different caliber: 11/32 chundoo shaft/nock and the maple shaft was 21/64 with a 5/16 nock that fits perfect on the string. Solution is at hand though, I always keep a small piece of electrical tape on the string to make the 11/32 nock fit. I slide it up above my nocking point and back down when I need it. But this time I moved the tape above the serving and I can't get it to slide back down (I shoot with a Hill glove so I have to grab the tape between my thumb and pinky). The moose is still trying to figure out what is going on. He can't see me and Brandon is behind him now. He starts walking my direction passing in front of me. I finally get the tape down and nock the arrow. More trouble: I bunched up the tape on my nock point and the arrow is nocked halfway between the nock and tape/serving. Too tight and crooked! I refuse to shoot under these circumstances. Is Bill trying to tell me something? Maybe I don't need to shoot him again.

As the bull goes by I notice he acts "sick". I also see more blood than a superficial wound can produce. I can not shoot him again: he is into small spruce trees that cover his vitals. He stops after walking 20-30 yards and beds down. Definitely there is something wrong with him because he beds down facing the wind. Realizing his mistake he gets up, takes a few steps back towards me and beds down again facing down wind this time. He is still looking sick. I go back up the hill and sit on the rocks to watch him. Brandon joins me and says that from where he was he could see blood on the grass under the moose. The bull is about 50-75 yards from us. Now and then we look through the binos: his breathing is laborious. He tries to get up several times, but he can not. Somehow he turns around and as he does we see his eyes roll back: the end is near. Facing the wind again he rolls on his side into the small brook that runs by. He sticks his head up into the air and expires. We watch him a few more minutes. He is not breathing at all. It is all over in 20 minutes or less.

Pictures show the bull's resting place as view from up on the hill. 

Jose,
You got me more addicted to this story than a soap opera! Good stuff, and a great hunt. Maybe you should send one in to the hunting mags so everyone can read about your adventure!
Bryan

I could have done not watching his last minutes. You can call it guilt, hunter's remorse, etc. It is real. We all go through it. Not an easy thing to take a life, but it is the natural order. John Nail puts it this way in his short essay Alone: "Death has a different meaning for the Natural man". Don José Ortega y Gasset says in his book Meditations on hunting that God created prey animals to be hunted, killed and eaten by predators. He thought photo safaris were antinatural and an insult to the purpose the prey animals were created. Life is sustained by Death.

God bless,

Jose

-- Edited by jdemoya at 02:52, 2008-09-18

After saying a prayer and thanking the Lord for Nature's bounty and the animal for giving his life, Brandon and I climbed down the hill. The moose was a decent one. To me he was. 8 pointer, not a large rack but good palmation. Boys, I am sorry I do not have good hero pictures, but it never crossed my mind. We took few pictures of the bull and I where he rested and after we were in the meat shed I remembered that we never took a picture of the bull and I up close so we took another one (the bull had already been cut in half). After the pictures Brandon went out to call the lodge to bring the Argo in to haul the moose out. Thank God for the Argo! It would've taken us half a day to get all that meat out of there.

It took the Argo and Brandon nearly 2 hours to make it back. Plenty of time for me to think about what had taken place. The arrow hit the moose as he started to turn. It hit him in the chest and came out through his belly. We later retrieved the arrow from the puddle of water that was under the moose. That arrow, except for being dirty, looked as good as new. The Zwickey head still sharp and ready for use again. It pleases me that the bull never knew what hit him, he did not panic, he did not run away. I'd like to believe he did not suffer much.

I am still puzzled by the fact that I did not see the arrow in flight. Brandon says he saw it, but he could not see the impact as the moose was turning away from him. 

-- Edited by jdemoya at 02:11, 2008-09-19

Sounds like Bill's arrows work is not yet done . It's gonna play a part in another story sometime later. DEN