"Just There" Was A Long Way

James John

James John is an expert Gander River guide living in Glenwood, Newfoundland. With his native heritage, he has a special feeling for the land and water around him. He learned his guiding skills from his father, James John Sr.

FATHER'S STYLE WAS TO catch or kill only what you could eat, what you're going to supply for the winter. Even when we had to go and kill caribou to eat ourselves, we were only allowed one. One caribou could do us a month. After that month was over, he would send us up for another one.

He'd only give us two bullets each, me and my brother. I was eighteen or nineteen then, and right accurate, longing for the time to come. But he would hold off and send us up in the right time of the year, in July or August, to make the kill.

We would go up to Northwest Gander, up on our trapping ground. We would spend four or five days, or a week up there, hunting, because caribou weren't plentiful then. You had to wait for them a lot.

We would sit and wait until the right time, when we could hear them way off in the distance. Whenever there were four or five caribou together, we could hear the noise from their hooves.

You waited when it was calm, or when the wind was blowing your way. You waited until you knew they were coming your way. Then you went towards them to get handier and handier to the noise. By and by, sure enough, you'd see them and you'd pick out one of the caribou.

It had to be a boren doe (barren doe), dad used to call it, a caribou that never had no calf. He wouldn't kill either one that had a calf, or a stag. My dad used to tell us how they used to tell them apart. Those Indians, like dad, grew up in the woods, so they knew exactly what they were looking for.