10 hours of island hopping
In clear and calm contrast to the last time I had been to Old Factory Bay, the sky melts into the water, the two nearly indistinguishable. I’d never seen such stillness on the bay; clouds, islands, and icebergs lying upside down, perfectly mirrored in the water. The first truly hot day of the spring, and by sheer luck, I am invited to spend the day goose hunting with three Cree hunters - them shooting with guns, me shooting with a camera, of course. By even further luck, there are many geese flying that day. Flocks of up to 50 Canadian long neck geese fly low over the water as we hopped from island to island. Island hopping - the boat driver’s terminology for cruising the waters and landing on the islands that dot the James Bay.
We are on our way to another island, thinking maybe we’ll find some duck eggs (we did), when someone spots a large flock of geese about to land on water, some 100 yards ahead of us. There is a palpable shift in energy. When once we were drifting along, pointing out the floating ice and chatting about how it could be so hot on the islands, yet so cold on the boat, now we are each tense and alert, prompt to ready the necessary tools: a megaphone for the goose call, the guns, my camera. The boat slows, we don’t want to scare the geese. Someone calls the geese through the megaphone so they will stay where they are as we inch along to close the gap between us. Guns are ready and one of the hunters, the father to another, turns to his son with a smile and crosses his fingers - if we’re lucky, he signals. I do hope we are.
Now, I have never experienced any sort of hunting, let alone hunting from a moving boat. I am nicely perched on the back of the boat, because we have slowed to such a speed that this felt safe and was, after all, the best spot for an opportune shot of the geese that are happily bobbing on the water. How was I to know that we would go from 10 km/hour to 50 km/hour in a matter of seconds? I wasn’t to know, for although the hunters had been dedicated throughout the day, thus far, to explaining to me what was happening, or what was going to happen, or what had happened, at this point, I do believe sheer adrenaline and the routine of needing to snap into sharp focus on the task at hand had taken over. No one warned me that as the boat surged forward with the power of a 115 horse power motor behind it, that all three hunters would simultaneously start shooting at the geese as they frantically took flight.
Thankfully, continuing with the luck that I seemed to be having that day, I did not fall off the back of the boat. However, nor did I get any decent shots of the action, what with the dodging of the shotgun shells flying back at me, the trying not to fly off the back of the boat, and having the wrong lens on. There was also the question on my mind of who was driving the boat that was racing along at 54 km/hour while every person in the boat was shooting at the geese.
I need not say more, the photos tell the rest of the story. Though I will add how satisfying I found it when the driver lit up his cigar for the long ride back to town, faint wafts of smoke drifting back towards me.
