by Tim Homan
Woodland Caribou Provincial Park, Ontario. Mid-August, 2018, last two nights of our canoe trip along the Bloodvein River, which for most of its mileage through the park is totally unrecognizable as a stream with a flowing current. Here the Bloodvein is largely a chain of lakes with numerous islands and long improbably shaped peninsulas dividing the lakes up into arms and bays and coves that stretch out in all directions.
The day before we had fought our wind-whipped way out to our preferred campsite on a small island right at the western edge of Larus Lake, a perfect setup for our final day's paddle to the big lake's southeastern shore. That campsite was occupied, so we backtracked to the west to find an empty site. A strong and gusting crosswind from the south-southwest shoved us to the north, forcing us to zigzag--quartering into the wind, then quartering with the wind--to prevent the waves from slapping full-whitecap weight against our broadside.
Halfway back to the large island we had passed an hour before, we spotted the quintessential configuration of a classic Canadian Shield campsite. Out front on a point, the heavily glaciated rock rose sharply from the water before curving backward and planing off level into the forest. Both sides of the high-humped shield sloped gently down to shelving rock, low and smooth, just right for landings. We focused on the waves and the upward jut of the rock straight ahead. Closer still, we thought we could see a telltale slab-rock fire ring, further confirmation we were paddling toward a safe and scenic harbor about a mile from the wide western entrance into Larus. With the exception of the recently beetle-killed jack pines, the campsite was perfect. The high-wall fire ring was out front at the point, well above the water and open to the breeze. A narrow path led to a small, tent-sized clearing tucked into the boreal forest.
Late that afternoon, while we were cooking supper well away from camp, a juvenile Northern Goshawk landed near the top of a jack pine snag and remained perched for several minutes. The big accipiter was close, nearly at eye level with us, and the light was good. We whispered important field marks as we carefully inspected the yellow-eyed raptor through the 8.5x magnification of our binoculars. When this fierce bird of prey dropped off its perch, it immediately dove between two white birch (1) considerably closer together than the length of its horizontal wingspan. In one quick and fluid motion, the goshawk tucked its wings in as it tilted them both 45 degrees closer to vertical--right wing pointing northeast, left wing southwest--and shot through the birch-bole slot with room to spare and no loss of speed.
During supper, an exceptionally long and chunky beaver swam close to the shoreline, cutting its eyes at our canoe, clothesline, and us as it passed our camp. The curious rodent swam about 50 yards beyond us before turning around and cruising even closer to the water's edge for a second and longer look at our encampment. We glassed the jumbo beaver--head wide and flat, forty-five to fifty pounds best guess--on its second territorial reconnaissance. The widening, inverted V of the tree-faller's trailing wake sparkled in the evening's light.
Early in the afternoon the next day, we noticed fresh ash fall coming down in the light breeze blowing out of the north as we canoed around the island. The only active nearby fire we knew about was burning south of the Bloodvein near Simeon Lake, its forest-blackening front being pushed to the northeast by the prevailing southwest winds. We had chosen the north side of the Bloodvein and an island for our next to last and last camps for that very reason.
That evening we paddled out to explore the two coves separated by the point of a peninsula nearby and generally north of camp. We spotted two beaver swimming in the smaller cove. The longer and larger beaver, probably the same chisel-toothed lumberjack who had paid us a visit the day before, slapped his paddle-flat tail flush on the surface of the lake twice, sending the loud-whack warnings of our intrusion, the resounding sounds similar to the sharp-crack report of a .22 rifle.
As we rounded the point into the larger, arrowhead-shaped cove we couldn't miss the towering plume of smoke billowing up just over a low ridgeline to the north-northwest. The smoke was rising high and fairly fast, but the plume was not wide like a large wildfire on the march, and its color--a mid-grade gray--told us this was not a fiercely hot and furiously burning fire. Compared to the extensive, recently burned areas we had paddled past flanking the Bloodvein, this fire was relatively small and moving at a slow pace. The cooler and calmer weather of the coming night would stall the actively flaming fire to a near standstill. Even though we knew this was not a fire to fear in the next twelve hours, we were still glad we had camped on an island.
While we were enjoying the low-slanting light before dusk, a lone Common Loon swam closer and closer to camp, curious as the beaver had been the night before. The bold waterbird stopped within 35 yards of our camp chairs, close enough that we could clearly see its warrior-red eyes and its four striking and precisely patterned black-and-white designs through our binocs. The loon wailed once, loud and long and plaintive--a primeval call from a much older wildness--before silently swimming into the smaller of the two nearby coves to the north.
The all female mosquito wing of the Red Cross (2) was polite enough to wait until the day was nearly dark before seeking blood meals in relatively light numbers. We took that as our cue to retire to the tent because we were waking up at four-thirty in the morning. We were scheduled to meet a floatplane at a beach along the southeastern shore of Larus Lake the next day. Larus, at 5 miles north to south and 3 miles east to west, was the largest lake along our route. The day before we had witnessed the rolling whitecaps out in Larus when we had checked out the occupied island camp.
Three days earlier, we had been ambushed by a west wind on Barclay, a much smaller lake than Larus. We thought waking at five-thirty and breaking camp without hurry would be early enough, but it wasn't. When we launched from Barclay's northeastern corner, the water was almost mirrored glass. Twenty minutes later and still before eight, as we were paddling toward our southern turn into a narrower, riverlike run of the Bloodvein, the wind slammed into us without warning or warmup. The wind whistled in with the frightening swiftness of a microburst, blowing up from almost zero to gusts ranging from twenty-five to thirty-five mph, fast enough to knock the froth off the white-crested waves that had suddenly leapt to life.
We had planned a leisurely paddle to photograph a still flaming shore-side fire we had noticed from a distance when we first entered Barclay from the southwest. Page had framed a few photos before the wind struck and instantly changed our plans. The wind quickly fanned the fire only 15 feet from shore. The flames had been a sedate 1- to 1 ½-feet high when we closely paralleled the first hotspot. Less than five minutes later, as we rounded the western point of the peninsula, the dancing orange flames in the final hotspot had already flickered up to 2 ½- to 3-feet high. Both fire and water leapt to the wind's gathering rush.
We had never paddled this far north before, and did not trust this Manitoba prairie wind (3) to fit any preconceived patterns. So we decided to launch before six and paddle the short 4 miles hard and fast to the beach before the wind found out we were awake.
Late that last night, I awoke to a steady rhythmic sound. At first my groggy mind thought the strange noises emanated from Page, that all the smoky air had added to her extensive repertoire of snore sounds. Before I had any more thoughts on the subject, Page rolled over and said, "Do you hear that sound? It's coming from right outside my side of the tent" in a calm and matter of fact tone. We both sat straight up on our air mattresses, suddenly on high alert to the worrisome sounds of what had to be a large, four-legged prowler right outside our tent in the wilderness-dark night. We turned on our headlights, listened for a few more thumping heartbeats, then agreed that the vocalization--guttural and growling--was probably a bear.
We had done everything right. We had camped on an island. We had cooked and eaten down at the landing. Both food barrels were tied up to a white birch near the canoe. Our outfitter had told us that fewer than a 1,000 canoeists dipped their paddles into the lakes of the sprawling park (approximately 1,215,650 acres, and growing) each summer. Because there were no designated campsites and usage was so light, bears acclimated to human food were nonexistent in the interior of the park. We knew all that. But those facts mattered not a whit when the growl of a beast came out of the black night and an older response system--one all ancient instincts and adrenaline, all fight-or-flight fear--threw Occam's razor and daytime rationality right out the zippered flaps of the tent.
We synchronized three loud and urgent hyahhs in quick succession, rising anxiety giving a boost to the volume. Silence. The chuffing growls stopped. We cupped our ears and pried into the night for the telltale footfalls of retreat. Nothing. Nothing but black silence, not even the faintest whisper of wind. I fitted my hearing aid back into my bad ear. I unzipped the vestibule screen and grabbed the bear spray out of my fanny pack. After hearing a confessional and cautionary tale from a friend, who had inadvertently sprayed himself in the crotch--twice in three days--while carrying a bear spray canister in his pants pocket in Yellowstone, I was immediately careful about how to carry the canister and when and where to fire the spray.
We sat there, mostly still, listening, talking sporadically with soft voices. There had been no noise at all, and definitely no sounds of a big Northcountry black bear padding away from Page's side of the tent. A half dozen dead jack pines--small, 3 to 7 inches in diameter--stood within 12 feet of that side of the tent. The snags were shedding small brittle branches; we would have heard any heavy animal running or walking through the dead pines. Same with the dense shrub layer surrounding the rest of our tent. We sat there, our ears probing the night forest for the slightest sound.
After several long minutes, the growls started again same as before: ahhufff, ahhufff, ahhufff in steady cadence about a second and a half apart. We hollered loud and long again, just once. The mammalian sound--omnivore or carnivore, definitely not a woodland caribou--went silent again. We listened with growing concern, absolutely no sounds of a bear-large beast doing anything--breathing, snapping branches, forcing its weight through dense shrubs. We unzipped the front of the tent and crawled out onto the needle litter on our hands and knees, headlights in our hands. We both swung our light beams back and forth along Page's side of the tent, fully expecting to light up the hulking, heart-stopping form of a nearby bear. Again nothing, nothing at all, not even the slightest musky scent of ursid odor. We were relieved that we had neither heard the weighty tread of a bear, nor seen the obvious black bulk in our headlights.
We left the tent's screen flap open and sat just inside and listened, but not as intently as before. After several minutes the growls began again: ahhufff, ahhufff, ahhufff steady in rhythm and moderate in volume. We didn't yell this time. I decided to walk around the tent--headlight in one hand, bear spray in the other--and find this spook-in-the night. The sound stopped at my first footfall out of the tent. Whatever it was … was very close and keenly attentive to our sounds and movements. I circled completely around our three-person tent, lighting up the low woods. Again, no bear, no animal of any kind.
I paused for a few moments in front of the tent, then raised the beam of my light up into the jack pine snags. I quickly caught the bright yellow shine of two large eyes set fairly close together. The eyes moved as whatever it was bobbed its head like an owl, eyes comically swinging in half loops, down then out then up, side to side back and forth. I took a couple of steps toward the eyes, shined my light, and identified a pair of short rounded ears cupped close to its head and the dark silhouette of a long bushy tail before the largely arboreal mammal ghosted higher up the dead conifer.
The maker of those big-animal vocalizations was an American marten, a medium-sized member of the Weasel family (Mustelidae). I sat down in the tent and waited. I looked at my watch, a little after three-thirty, and timed the interval before the warning sounds began again. After slightly more than two and a half minutes, the don't-mess-with-me growls, all bluff and bluster, began again like we knew they would--ahhufff, ahhufff, ahhufff--the volume increasing little by little as the cat-sized mustelid slowly climbed down the tree.
Curious, I walked out to the nearest snag and shined my headlight directly on the marten 9 feet up the conifer. This time I plainly saw his triangular face, the big brown bushy tail, the patch of lighter colored fur on his throat. When I spot-lighted his eyes, the small carnivore shot 3 feet up the trunk with astonishing speed. Any creature that can run a red squirrel down as it makes a mad dash up a tree must be, by that fact alone, unbelievably quick and supple. Knowing this and seeing this are two different things altogether. In fact, the American marten's movements were too whip-snap swift for me to follow.
I shined the professional predator two more times, concentrating on following his blurring speed up the tree. Under those conditions, headlight at night, he was simply too fast for my eyes to follow. The mustelid was there, and then he wasn't. He was 3 feet higher up the tree. His fast-twitch tree-climbing ability was amazing, a masterpiece of genetic evolution. I watched the marten--his yellow eyeshine big and bright 20 feet up the pine--a minute or two more, then walked back to the tent so the nervous, small-mammal hunter could finally make his escape. We sat in the tent, fear replaced by mild embarrassment, and listened for the chuffing growls the marten broadcast as he slowly worked his way down the dead evergreen.
After a similar short interval of silence, the little bluffer began his I'm-a-bad-ass routine--ahhufff, ahhufff, ahhufff--a big-animal sound, the mimic of a black bear wuff, meant to intimidate would be predators at night, including human animals that throw sunbeams from their front paws. We remained still and quiet. The marten's tough-guy growls grew louder as he descended the 5-inch-diameter needle-tree. Ahhufff, ahhufff, I'm rough. Ahhufff, ahhufff, I'm ready.
The growls became perceptibly louder not only because he was moving closer, but also because he, both predator and prey, became more nervous as he approached the forest floor. Ahhufff, ahhufff, I'm big as a bear. Ahhufff, ahhufff, I'm quick as a cougar. Ahhufff, ahhufff, I'm wild and dangerous as a windigo. Ahhufff, ahhufff. But most of all … ahhufff … ahhufff, I'm … out of here.
We heard the quick scrambling of claws across brittle bark, then all was silent again. The marten had jumped down from the jack pine and silently scampered away, free from immediate fear again.
Notes
Ahhufff, ahhufff. Sound out the short ? something like the "a" in awhile. Make the sound quick, then raise the volume for the rest of the vocalization. Make the double hh sound softer than "hit" and add a moderate guttural growl to the sound. Finish the fffs like wuff only hold the sound a little softer and longer.
The marten had been on the prowl, on the prod, night hunting on the forest floor: moving, stopping, listening and looking for potential prey. Late at night, he approached the silhouette of our tent and its attendant scents and snore sounds. The strangely shaped bulk and strange large-animal sounds jolted the most arboreal member of the Weasel family to high alert, scared him right up the nearest conifer, a dead jack pine only 8 feet from Page's side of the tent. He waited, listened, looked, sniffed the air in search of familiar scent.
After a few minutes of decreasing tension, after the forest seemed safe again, the mustelid decided to descend the snag and continue his work. Since it was black night, and since his true size was highly inflated by fur and long-tail fluff, he deployed a defense mechanism: a loud, big-animal sound, a huffing growl that told everyone a big bear was nearby.
We awoke to the large-animal sounds on high alert. We waited and listened for the assumed large black bulk and its attendant sounds, smells, and dangers. Scared, we employed our own defense mechanism: three fierce hollers in quick succession, big animal sounds shouted out full force into the night.
The growler immediately ceased his bear impersonation as he shot back up the snag and morphed into a small, fearful fur-ball again, silent and still. Now he was really scared. He waited. We waited. After a few minutes, the marten began his descent, employing his big-bluff defense mechanism again, perhaps a little louder than before. We responded with a single loud yell. It worked. The bear that was only real inside our tent fell silent. The marten ghosted up the tree again, his fast-twitch movements a blur, a scared three-pound predator again. And so on until I spotlighted the little guy and learned that we had been bluffing a bluffer, that we had engaged in a bluffing duel with an animal one-sixtieth of my weight.
The American marten (Martes americana) is also known as American pine marten or simply pine marten. This species exhibits a significant sexual dimorphism in size, males much the larger in height, length, and weight. The largest males are approximately 28- to 29 ½-inches long from nose to tail tip, 18 ½ to 20 inches for the head and body, and an additional maximum of 9 ½ inches for the tail. (The tail measurement does not include the long hairs at the tip; it is of the tail vertebrae only.) I called the Woodland Caribou marten a male because he was noticeably larger than the presumed female I had seen up close some years earlier.
The bear mimic sounds are not the marten's only deception. Their fury bodies and long fluffy tails make them appear deceptively large. The male marten I discovered up a dead pine beside our tent looked as long and heavy as a medium-sized house cat. Male martens may be nearly as long, but with a maximum heft of only 3.0 to 3.4 pounds, they weigh well less than a half-grown cat.
I used the adjective "fierce" to describe the Northern Goshawk (the "o" is short) because of its reputation, size, and prey. Bird-book author Pete Dunne called this hawk "A Street Brawler of a Raptor." In his masterwork, The Audubon Society Encyclopedia of North American Birds, John K. Terres wrote the goshawk is "extremely audacious when hungry." The eyes of a mature goshawk are blood red.
By far the largest of the three North American accipiters (the other two are Cooper's Hawk and Sharp-shinned Hawk), the goshawk--20- to 27-inches long, the female considerably larger than the male--is described as a large, elongated raptor, a large robust hawk about the same size and weight as a Red-tailed Hawk. Goshawks prey upon birds and mammals as large as grouse, ducks, and snowshoe hare.
*1 The white birch, primarily a Canadian species and the most widely distributed of the native birches, is also known as the paper birch.
*2 Female mosquitos require protein for their eggs to develop and must take one or more blood meals in order to reproduce. Because the males don't bear the reproductive burden, they do not ingest blood, not even a droplet. While the females search for involuntary blood donors, the males seek flowers where they siphon nectar and serve as pollinators. Both sexes eat mainly flower nectar and fruit juice.
*3 The western boundary of Woodland Caribou is the eastern border of Manitoba. The park's prevailing southwest winds blow in from Manitoba.
The day before we had fought our wind-whipped way out to our preferred campsite on a small island right at the western edge of Larus Lake, a perfect setup for our final day's paddle to the big lake's southeastern shore. That campsite was occupied, so we backtracked to the west to find an empty site. A strong and gusting crosswind from the south-southwest shoved us to the north, forcing us to zigzag--quartering into the wind, then quartering with the wind--to prevent the waves from slapping full-whitecap weight against our broadside.
Halfway back to the large island we had passed an hour before, we spotted the quintessential configuration of a classic Canadian Shield campsite. Out front on a point, the heavily glaciated rock rose sharply from the water before curving backward and planing off level into the forest. Both sides of the high-humped shield sloped gently down to shelving rock, low and smooth, just right for landings. We focused on the waves and the upward jut of the rock straight ahead. Closer still, we thought we could see a telltale slab-rock fire ring, further confirmation we were paddling toward a safe and scenic harbor about a mile from the wide western entrance into Larus. With the exception of the recently beetle-killed jack pines, the campsite was perfect. The high-wall fire ring was out front at the point, well above the water and open to the breeze. A narrow path led to a small, tent-sized clearing tucked into the boreal forest.
Late that afternoon, while we were cooking supper well away from camp, a juvenile Northern Goshawk landed near the top of a jack pine snag and remained perched for several minutes. The big accipiter was close, nearly at eye level with us, and the light was good. We whispered important field marks as we carefully inspected the yellow-eyed raptor through the 8.5x magnification of our binoculars. When this fierce bird of prey dropped off its perch, it immediately dove between two white birch (1) considerably closer together than the length of its horizontal wingspan. In one quick and fluid motion, the goshawk tucked its wings in as it tilted them both 45 degrees closer to vertical--right wing pointing northeast, left wing southwest--and shot through the birch-bole slot with room to spare and no loss of speed.
During supper, an exceptionally long and chunky beaver swam close to the shoreline, cutting its eyes at our canoe, clothesline, and us as it passed our camp. The curious rodent swam about 50 yards beyond us before turning around and cruising even closer to the water's edge for a second and longer look at our encampment. We glassed the jumbo beaver--head wide and flat, forty-five to fifty pounds best guess--on its second territorial reconnaissance. The widening, inverted V of the tree-faller's trailing wake sparkled in the evening's light.
Early in the afternoon the next day, we noticed fresh ash fall coming down in the light breeze blowing out of the north as we canoed around the island. The only active nearby fire we knew about was burning south of the Bloodvein near Simeon Lake, its forest-blackening front being pushed to the northeast by the prevailing southwest winds. We had chosen the north side of the Bloodvein and an island for our next to last and last camps for that very reason.
That evening we paddled out to explore the two coves separated by the point of a peninsula nearby and generally north of camp. We spotted two beaver swimming in the smaller cove. The longer and larger beaver, probably the same chisel-toothed lumberjack who had paid us a visit the day before, slapped his paddle-flat tail flush on the surface of the lake twice, sending the loud-whack warnings of our intrusion, the resounding sounds similar to the sharp-crack report of a .22 rifle.
As we rounded the point into the larger, arrowhead-shaped cove we couldn't miss the towering plume of smoke billowing up just over a low ridgeline to the north-northwest. The smoke was rising high and fairly fast, but the plume was not wide like a large wildfire on the march, and its color--a mid-grade gray--told us this was not a fiercely hot and furiously burning fire. Compared to the extensive, recently burned areas we had paddled past flanking the Bloodvein, this fire was relatively small and moving at a slow pace. The cooler and calmer weather of the coming night would stall the actively flaming fire to a near standstill. Even though we knew this was not a fire to fear in the next twelve hours, we were still glad we had camped on an island.
While we were enjoying the low-slanting light before dusk, a lone Common Loon swam closer and closer to camp, curious as the beaver had been the night before. The bold waterbird stopped within 35 yards of our camp chairs, close enough that we could clearly see its warrior-red eyes and its four striking and precisely patterned black-and-white designs through our binocs. The loon wailed once, loud and long and plaintive--a primeval call from a much older wildness--before silently swimming into the smaller of the two nearby coves to the north.
The all female mosquito wing of the Red Cross (2) was polite enough to wait until the day was nearly dark before seeking blood meals in relatively light numbers. We took that as our cue to retire to the tent because we were waking up at four-thirty in the morning. We were scheduled to meet a floatplane at a beach along the southeastern shore of Larus Lake the next day. Larus, at 5 miles north to south and 3 miles east to west, was the largest lake along our route. The day before we had witnessed the rolling whitecaps out in Larus when we had checked out the occupied island camp.
Three days earlier, we had been ambushed by a west wind on Barclay, a much smaller lake than Larus. We thought waking at five-thirty and breaking camp without hurry would be early enough, but it wasn't. When we launched from Barclay's northeastern corner, the water was almost mirrored glass. Twenty minutes later and still before eight, as we were paddling toward our southern turn into a narrower, riverlike run of the Bloodvein, the wind slammed into us without warning or warmup. The wind whistled in with the frightening swiftness of a microburst, blowing up from almost zero to gusts ranging from twenty-five to thirty-five mph, fast enough to knock the froth off the white-crested waves that had suddenly leapt to life.
We had planned a leisurely paddle to photograph a still flaming shore-side fire we had noticed from a distance when we first entered Barclay from the southwest. Page had framed a few photos before the wind struck and instantly changed our plans. The wind quickly fanned the fire only 15 feet from shore. The flames had been a sedate 1- to 1 ½-feet high when we closely paralleled the first hotspot. Less than five minutes later, as we rounded the western point of the peninsula, the dancing orange flames in the final hotspot had already flickered up to 2 ½- to 3-feet high. Both fire and water leapt to the wind's gathering rush.
We had never paddled this far north before, and did not trust this Manitoba prairie wind (3) to fit any preconceived patterns. So we decided to launch before six and paddle the short 4 miles hard and fast to the beach before the wind found out we were awake.
Late that last night, I awoke to a steady rhythmic sound. At first my groggy mind thought the strange noises emanated from Page, that all the smoky air had added to her extensive repertoire of snore sounds. Before I had any more thoughts on the subject, Page rolled over and said, "Do you hear that sound? It's coming from right outside my side of the tent" in a calm and matter of fact tone. We both sat straight up on our air mattresses, suddenly on high alert to the worrisome sounds of what had to be a large, four-legged prowler right outside our tent in the wilderness-dark night. We turned on our headlights, listened for a few more thumping heartbeats, then agreed that the vocalization--guttural and growling--was probably a bear.
We had done everything right. We had camped on an island. We had cooked and eaten down at the landing. Both food barrels were tied up to a white birch near the canoe. Our outfitter had told us that fewer than a 1,000 canoeists dipped their paddles into the lakes of the sprawling park (approximately 1,215,650 acres, and growing) each summer. Because there were no designated campsites and usage was so light, bears acclimated to human food were nonexistent in the interior of the park. We knew all that. But those facts mattered not a whit when the growl of a beast came out of the black night and an older response system--one all ancient instincts and adrenaline, all fight-or-flight fear--threw Occam's razor and daytime rationality right out the zippered flaps of the tent.
We synchronized three loud and urgent hyahhs in quick succession, rising anxiety giving a boost to the volume. Silence. The chuffing growls stopped. We cupped our ears and pried into the night for the telltale footfalls of retreat. Nothing. Nothing but black silence, not even the faintest whisper of wind. I fitted my hearing aid back into my bad ear. I unzipped the vestibule screen and grabbed the bear spray out of my fanny pack. After hearing a confessional and cautionary tale from a friend, who had inadvertently sprayed himself in the crotch--twice in three days--while carrying a bear spray canister in his pants pocket in Yellowstone, I was immediately careful about how to carry the canister and when and where to fire the spray.
We sat there, mostly still, listening, talking sporadically with soft voices. There had been no noise at all, and definitely no sounds of a big Northcountry black bear padding away from Page's side of the tent. A half dozen dead jack pines--small, 3 to 7 inches in diameter--stood within 12 feet of that side of the tent. The snags were shedding small brittle branches; we would have heard any heavy animal running or walking through the dead pines. Same with the dense shrub layer surrounding the rest of our tent. We sat there, our ears probing the night forest for the slightest sound.
After several long minutes, the growls started again same as before: ahhufff, ahhufff, ahhufff in steady cadence about a second and a half apart. We hollered loud and long again, just once. The mammalian sound--omnivore or carnivore, definitely not a woodland caribou--went silent again. We listened with growing concern, absolutely no sounds of a bear-large beast doing anything--breathing, snapping branches, forcing its weight through dense shrubs. We unzipped the front of the tent and crawled out onto the needle litter on our hands and knees, headlights in our hands. We both swung our light beams back and forth along Page's side of the tent, fully expecting to light up the hulking, heart-stopping form of a nearby bear. Again nothing, nothing at all, not even the slightest musky scent of ursid odor. We were relieved that we had neither heard the weighty tread of a bear, nor seen the obvious black bulk in our headlights.
We left the tent's screen flap open and sat just inside and listened, but not as intently as before. After several minutes the growls began again: ahhufff, ahhufff, ahhufff steady in rhythm and moderate in volume. We didn't yell this time. I decided to walk around the tent--headlight in one hand, bear spray in the other--and find this spook-in-the night. The sound stopped at my first footfall out of the tent. Whatever it was … was very close and keenly attentive to our sounds and movements. I circled completely around our three-person tent, lighting up the low woods. Again, no bear, no animal of any kind.
I paused for a few moments in front of the tent, then raised the beam of my light up into the jack pine snags. I quickly caught the bright yellow shine of two large eyes set fairly close together. The eyes moved as whatever it was bobbed its head like an owl, eyes comically swinging in half loops, down then out then up, side to side back and forth. I took a couple of steps toward the eyes, shined my light, and identified a pair of short rounded ears cupped close to its head and the dark silhouette of a long bushy tail before the largely arboreal mammal ghosted higher up the dead conifer.
The maker of those big-animal vocalizations was an American marten, a medium-sized member of the Weasel family (Mustelidae). I sat down in the tent and waited. I looked at my watch, a little after three-thirty, and timed the interval before the warning sounds began again. After slightly more than two and a half minutes, the don't-mess-with-me growls, all bluff and bluster, began again like we knew they would--ahhufff, ahhufff, ahhufff--the volume increasing little by little as the cat-sized mustelid slowly climbed down the tree.
Curious, I walked out to the nearest snag and shined my headlight directly on the marten 9 feet up the conifer. This time I plainly saw his triangular face, the big brown bushy tail, the patch of lighter colored fur on his throat. When I spot-lighted his eyes, the small carnivore shot 3 feet up the trunk with astonishing speed. Any creature that can run a red squirrel down as it makes a mad dash up a tree must be, by that fact alone, unbelievably quick and supple. Knowing this and seeing this are two different things altogether. In fact, the American marten's movements were too whip-snap swift for me to follow.
I shined the professional predator two more times, concentrating on following his blurring speed up the tree. Under those conditions, headlight at night, he was simply too fast for my eyes to follow. The mustelid was there, and then he wasn't. He was 3 feet higher up the tree. His fast-twitch tree-climbing ability was amazing, a masterpiece of genetic evolution. I watched the marten--his yellow eyeshine big and bright 20 feet up the pine--a minute or two more, then walked back to the tent so the nervous, small-mammal hunter could finally make his escape. We sat in the tent, fear replaced by mild embarrassment, and listened for the chuffing growls the marten broadcast as he slowly worked his way down the dead evergreen.
After a similar short interval of silence, the little bluffer began his I'm-a-bad-ass routine--ahhufff, ahhufff, ahhufff--a big-animal sound, the mimic of a black bear wuff, meant to intimidate would be predators at night, including human animals that throw sunbeams from their front paws. We remained still and quiet. The marten's tough-guy growls grew louder as he descended the 5-inch-diameter needle-tree. Ahhufff, ahhufff, I'm rough. Ahhufff, ahhufff, I'm ready.
The growls became perceptibly louder not only because he was moving closer, but also because he, both predator and prey, became more nervous as he approached the forest floor. Ahhufff, ahhufff, I'm big as a bear. Ahhufff, ahhufff, I'm quick as a cougar. Ahhufff, ahhufff, I'm wild and dangerous as a windigo. Ahhufff, ahhufff. But most of all … ahhufff … ahhufff, I'm … out of here.
We heard the quick scrambling of claws across brittle bark, then all was silent again. The marten had jumped down from the jack pine and silently scampered away, free from immediate fear again.
Notes
Ahhufff, ahhufff. Sound out the short ? something like the "a" in awhile. Make the sound quick, then raise the volume for the rest of the vocalization. Make the double hh sound softer than "hit" and add a moderate guttural growl to the sound. Finish the fffs like wuff only hold the sound a little softer and longer.
The marten had been on the prowl, on the prod, night hunting on the forest floor: moving, stopping, listening and looking for potential prey. Late at night, he approached the silhouette of our tent and its attendant scents and snore sounds. The strangely shaped bulk and strange large-animal sounds jolted the most arboreal member of the Weasel family to high alert, scared him right up the nearest conifer, a dead jack pine only 8 feet from Page's side of the tent. He waited, listened, looked, sniffed the air in search of familiar scent.
After a few minutes of decreasing tension, after the forest seemed safe again, the mustelid decided to descend the snag and continue his work. Since it was black night, and since his true size was highly inflated by fur and long-tail fluff, he deployed a defense mechanism: a loud, big-animal sound, a huffing growl that told everyone a big bear was nearby.
We awoke to the large-animal sounds on high alert. We waited and listened for the assumed large black bulk and its attendant sounds, smells, and dangers. Scared, we employed our own defense mechanism: three fierce hollers in quick succession, big animal sounds shouted out full force into the night.
The growler immediately ceased his bear impersonation as he shot back up the snag and morphed into a small, fearful fur-ball again, silent and still. Now he was really scared. He waited. We waited. After a few minutes, the marten began his descent, employing his big-bluff defense mechanism again, perhaps a little louder than before. We responded with a single loud yell. It worked. The bear that was only real inside our tent fell silent. The marten ghosted up the tree again, his fast-twitch movements a blur, a scared three-pound predator again. And so on until I spotlighted the little guy and learned that we had been bluffing a bluffer, that we had engaged in a bluffing duel with an animal one-sixtieth of my weight.
The American marten (Martes americana) is also known as American pine marten or simply pine marten. This species exhibits a significant sexual dimorphism in size, males much the larger in height, length, and weight. The largest males are approximately 28- to 29 ½-inches long from nose to tail tip, 18 ½ to 20 inches for the head and body, and an additional maximum of 9 ½ inches for the tail. (The tail measurement does not include the long hairs at the tip; it is of the tail vertebrae only.) I called the Woodland Caribou marten a male because he was noticeably larger than the presumed female I had seen up close some years earlier.
The bear mimic sounds are not the marten's only deception. Their fury bodies and long fluffy tails make them appear deceptively large. The male marten I discovered up a dead pine beside our tent looked as long and heavy as a medium-sized house cat. Male martens may be nearly as long, but with a maximum heft of only 3.0 to 3.4 pounds, they weigh well less than a half-grown cat.
I used the adjective "fierce" to describe the Northern Goshawk (the "o" is short) because of its reputation, size, and prey. Bird-book author Pete Dunne called this hawk "A Street Brawler of a Raptor." In his masterwork, The Audubon Society Encyclopedia of North American Birds, John K. Terres wrote the goshawk is "extremely audacious when hungry." The eyes of a mature goshawk are blood red.
By far the largest of the three North American accipiters (the other two are Cooper's Hawk and Sharp-shinned Hawk), the goshawk--20- to 27-inches long, the female considerably larger than the male--is described as a large, elongated raptor, a large robust hawk about the same size and weight as a Red-tailed Hawk. Goshawks prey upon birds and mammals as large as grouse, ducks, and snowshoe hare.
*1 The white birch, primarily a Canadian species and the most widely distributed of the native birches, is also known as the paper birch.
*2 Female mosquitos require protein for their eggs to develop and must take one or more blood meals in order to reproduce. Because the males don't bear the reproductive burden, they do not ingest blood, not even a droplet. While the females search for involuntary blood donors, the males seek flowers where they siphon nectar and serve as pollinators. Both sexes eat mainly flower nectar and fruit juice.
*3 The western boundary of Woodland Caribou is the eastern border of Manitoba. The park's prevailing southwest winds blow in from Manitoba.
