My Most Unforgettable Experience!
(reprinted from the December 1942 issue of The Paulson Post)
(Told by “Eskimo” Abbott, 18 years a trapper in the Arctic, now a Sergeant at No. 7)
From Moose Hide to White Sheets in Twenty Years, not bad. Just about twenty years ago around this time of the year I was just waiting for Christmas Holidays to come as I could go North with my Dog-Team. An old chum of mine, George Pies asked me up to spend a couple of weeks at his fishing camp. and boy. was I raring to go. It was about 90 miles to go North-West of Big River, Saskatchewan Trout-Lake. It’s called Prince Albert National Park now. It was just a Ueryon Country at the time, not many white trappers.
George had a bunch of Husky Pups he wanted me to break into harness, he was getting old and they were a wild bunch of half Collie and half timber-wolf, but they were shore nice one’s.
Well, at last the School closed and away George and I went with my dogs early one morning, it only took us a couple of days for it was cold and the travelling was good. We didn’t have much of a load so we could travel fast.
We slept out one night with just a bunch of Spruce bows and made a lean-to for shelter and had a big tamarac fire and a couple of Rabbit robes, boy, I thought that was the life for me, eating and sleeping outside
George was crankie like all Northern men are on the trail, everything just had to be taken down one way or he’d get a long face and Id try to please him as much as I could.
We got to his Camp on the open narrows. It stayed open all winter for the water was fast and steep. His cabin was along side of a hill and sheltered in by big Spruce. It was a long low building. He hung his nets in it, that’s whet they call! ‘Putting the Side Line Flots and Sinkers On.” ‘
Boy. it was swell, Mr. Pies was expecting his wife and daughter up on the Freight-teams. They freight with horses in those days, they bring supplies up and haul back fish.
Well, the day after we got there we cooked up a bunch of bannack, this Bannack is a bread you make out of flour and baking powder, and that afternoon he was telling me that there was a lot of Moose close to the camp. George said if I wanted to go with him and we would get some fresh meat. I’d never killed a Moose and I was all excited wondering if he would let me shoot his rifle. It was an old German Mouser No. 8 M.M., I think.
Well, away we went on Snow-shoes, back of the camp, George had a trail he hauled wood on and then there was no trail. Boy, there was lots of tracks.
George had the gun and was ahead of me, we walked about a mile or two and he said, “Not a very good day for hunting, not enough wind.” So he sat down on a windfall for a smoke. So I said, “How about letting me go ahead and see if I can get one.” He says, “Shore, but be careful, if you see one and get him right behind the front shoulder and watch that old gun for she kills at both ends.”
So away I went. it was about three o’clock in the afternoon and I’d only gone a little ways when boy, there was a big “Bull” looking me right in the eye. Gosh, I didn’t know whether to let him have it or not or go back and tell George, but 1 lifted the old Mouser and put a cartridge into the chamber and took good aim, and pulled the trigger. Well, after I got steaded and looked again there was my old Moose going for the timber, but he turned, fell, got up again and then looked straight at me, he took a couple of steps and fell over dead. I let out a yell for George and there he was coming at a dog-trot and a big smile on his face. I was yelling, “I got him, I got him.’” George went up and cut his throat and told me he had been trying to get the old fellow for years. Boy, was I happy. I wanted to go back and get the Dog-team and haul him to camp, but George said, “No it would take too long,” we would skin him and quarter it up and come back the next day. We worked about a quarter of an hour and George said that he was going back to camp, the teams might be there and he wanted to make supper for the bunch. He told me what to do and away he went.
Well. I got the hide off the Moose and cut him up Indian style and thought I had done a pretty good job, it was getting dusk and I started to get afraid, I don’t know of what but it was so quiet. So I built a fire and turned the Moose hide with the hair up and it was dark by that time, so I thought I’d just stay there for the night. After a while I laid down and rolled the Moose hide around me and rolled over and over in it, and went to sleep and never heard a thing until I heard voices. It was George and his Daughter, he said, “I don’t think he’s lost for he could of followed the snow-shoe tracks back to the cabin.” I tried to get out of the hide but it was frozen too stiff for me to get out and then they were right up the hill laughing and kidding me. So George took his axe and pride me out of the skin and out I came. Boy, I didn’t know what to say. I felt cheap and he said, “Why didn’t you come back to the camp?” I said, “Well, I was afraid to.” I sure got kidded the rest of my holidays for getting locked in the Moose hide.
Sgt. Abbott.
RCAF.info Note: If anyone stumbles across more information on Sgt. “Eskimo” Abbott, I would love to provide some additional information here. This was an interesting story and I would love to find out what ever happened to our intrepid explorer.