In this first edition of ‘Outdoorsman’ All-Terrain Vehicle Magazine’s John Arkwright shares one of his many stories about his hunt camp in Northern Ontario. Read an excerpt below taken right from the pages of All-Terrain Vehicle Magazine!
My longtime best friend, Jim Brogan and I have hunted and fished together for over 30 years. It was always in the back of our minds to have a camp of our own but those opportunities are few and far between.
In December 2004 I got a lead on one not 20 miles from home. We snowmobiled in to check it out. The camp was under three feet of snow but it seemed to be in decent shape. The main building was 16 x 20 with a porch on the front and a lean-to attached to the back.
We were like a pair of school kids. Could we afford it? Not really, but that didn’t stop us. In order to come up with my half of the money, I had a yard sale and sold six snowmobiles, five of them were vintage Polaris TXs from the ‘70s that I had planned to restore for way too long. February 2005 came and Jim and I were the official owners of Long Lake Hunt Camp.
The camp had only been used one week of the year for deer hunting. The other 51 weeks its tenants were mice, bats and squirrels and, let me tell you, they were not toilet trained. We quickly found out on our first night in camp; the more the building warmed up, so did the odor of those rodent droppings.
We filled half a dozen aluminum pie plates full of warfarin and the party was on. When the propane lights were put out it was like Prom Night for a bunch of over-hormoned teenagers. Those pie plates were rattlin’ and shakin’ and full of mice.
Turn on a flashlight and all these little pairs of red eyes were staring at you while they were literally chowing down on their ‘Last Supper’.
Read more in Volume 9, #1 of All-Terrain Vehicle.
