Chapter Nineteen:
A Great Mentor
In the early spring of 2000 I had started working at Frank Dunn Toyota in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. There were many staff there, and I got along with them all, but there was one fellow in particular, with whom I developed a great respect for, not so much during the time that I worked at Frank Dunn Toyota, but more so, in the years to follow.
I first met David S. in March of 2000. David was a mechanic at the Toyota dealership and I used to go over to where he would be working on a vehicle in the shop and strike up a conversation.
Initially, I simply introduced myself to him and then I asked him a few questions. Peter, my brother-in-law, had told me of this fellow he worked with, (referring to David,) and how he liked to go hunting…. Peter had described David as a guy who liked to “paint his face and crawl through the bush.” I had my own preconceived notions of some macho guy who had something to prove, but I was relieved to learn David wasn’t like that at all.
My first conversation with David went something like this:
“My brother-in-law is Peter Simpson,” I said. I continued: “My name’s Jesse. I’m new in sales. Peter told me you like hunting …”
“Yup. That’s right I do.” He said
“What do you hunt?” I asked.
“Elk,.... moose…., whitetail,...” he said, with a slight pause between each word, and a polite smile, as he continued working on his task, skillfully, pivoting nimbly underneath the car that was on a lift, elevated to about his shoulder height.
“Ohhhh I said,... that’s good….” And I took a moment to think about that,...
“What kind of a rifle do you use?”
“.308.” He replied.
“It’s a bolt action?” I asked.
“No.”
“It’s a semi-automatic?”
Nope,....
“It’s a lever?
Yup.
“Ohhhhhhhh” I said, nodding in understanding,.... I could tell that David was experienced and that he was smart, and disciplined,.... He didn’t need to tell me all about himself,..., he just answered with short and polite answers,..., but there was something about him, a quiet confidence, and you could see it in his face and hear it in his voice, and it was intriguing,....
David was a mechanic who worked at the shop, at Frank Dunn Toyota, and he was a middle-aged, Metis man (Metis means part Indigenous Canadian and part Caucasian Canadian), who had grown up along the North Saskatchewan River, in the area of Lilly Plain, Saskatchewan. Years after we first met, I asked him where he was born while speaking to him by telephone, while I lived in Japan, and he told me…:
“I was born in a little cabin along the river.”
David was special to me for various reasons. I didn’t know the extent and depth of his experience, but I would learn about it and be affected by it and by his friendship over the years.
Back in 2000, David and I talked once in a while, when I first started at Frank Dunn Toyota, and I decided,in short-order, that he was worthy and a safe person to show my prized antlers that I had kept off of the whitetail bucks that I shot in 1998 and 1999. I took them to the dealership one day, the two racks, in early 2000, just after I had started working at the dealership and I showed them to Dave. Dave could’ve said or done many things, including criticizing me and my antlers, but instead he was respectful and complimentary:
He said, after looking closely at the racks, and then thinking for a few seconds in thoughtful silence:
“If you can take a buck like these two,... you should be pretty happy….” He looked at the antlers and picked them up, one at a time thoughtfully. Weighing them out in a kind of contemplation:
“Yeah,” he said, matter of factly, and with a kind smile:
“If you can get deer like that, you’re doing something right!”
Inwardly, I was elated! He thought positively about the antlers and about me! It was as though a wall of fear was erased between him and I.
He said further, again, rather thoughtfully :
“No,…,” and he exhaled as he said it,..., “out of all the animals, including elk, moose and whitetail,..., a big whitetail is about the toughest to get”, as he sized up the racks. He looked at the racks and then back at me and then back at the racks and smiled warmly… “ pretty nice,'' he said….
I was relieved. Finally, someone who was kind….
Dave was funny in his own way. He was clever too. He had stories,… so many stories, and you could tell he knew things. He drove a smaller, older truck…. His truck was a two-wheel drive Toyota Tacoma. In that respect he reminded me of my dad, who also used older, second-hand stuff, like dad's older chevy truck and his well-used snowmobile that we used to take to Swearing Lake…. About his two-wheel drive truck David said, when I commented about it not being 4 wheel drive, “I can get pretty much anywhere I want to with a 2wd….” he said. “Gimme a set of chains and a jack-all and a chainsaw and I can go anywhere,...” The way he said that, I knew he spoke out of genuine experience,..., and I respected him all the more because of it….
Dave reminded me of my dad. In many ways. He was a bit like me too. He didn’t care for team sports. He liked hunting, he also liked just spending time in the bush, and he made no apologies for any of it. I especially liked that about him, because it meant I, in turn could be myself because that was one of my favourite things in life,... spending time in the bush, alone….
David was experienced. He knew things. And I just knew, by the manner in which he spoke, that he told the truth. We got to know each other a little, over the one year and six months that I worked at Toyota. As we got to talking little by little, I decided to make a fun bet with him, about who would shoot a bigger buck in the fall of 2001….
In fall of 2001 I had been hunting quite a bit at one of my spots, and I knew there were some bigger whitetail bucks around my hunting area,.... The reason why, or, a couple of the reasons why I liked to hunt for a big buck as opposed to shooting the first deer I saw, was because they were harder to see, and, they were harder to get a shot at. Because of these factors, it made the whole hunting process a lot more time consuming, but, being out in the field was such a blissful experience, that I always wanted to be out there as much as possible, therefore, it made sense to go for a big buck. It really lengthened the hunting season. David would say, “I’ll hunt all season, and I'll wait till the last day, unless I see something really big,... then I'll shoot somethin’,... on the last day,... then I’ll shoot a nice buck!” He meant it (and he did it, too!)….
I used to listen to him excitedly! It was exciting because I knew exactly what he meant. If you shot a doe, on the first day of hunting season, then you had to stop hunting (according the regulations), unless you were hunting in a two deer zone, but, usually, the zones in our areas were one deer zones. So, shooting any deer meant the end of deer hunting for the year. Sure, you could put your deer rifle away, and go hunting partridge, or something else, but white tailed deer,..., they were very special animals. So smart, so leery,... and so beautiful and majestic too! Most people never even lay eyes on a big, mature whitetail buck! The bucks are simply too cagey, and they simply choose to stay away from all forms of human activity. Unless, they’re either in the rut,..., or they are presented with bait, or– they are on the trail of a doe who has been presented with bait, and the doe is in estrus and the buck is in rut. Interesting, isn’t it?
Now, as far as baiting deer is concerned,..., it is what it is. Throw some bait out in deer territory and watch how quickly the deer find and habituate to it,… almost addicted or dependent on it. I didn’t bait deer and neither did David. That was a factor in our friendship,..., that we saw eye to eye on the terms and conditions of hunting. We hunted, for the most part, the same way,.... David didn’t really like “driving around,” (as a hunting tactic) and neither did I. He liked to hunt animals “one on one,” he'd say. No driving, no baiting, and not even any tree stands. That was David. I was fortunate to have a person like him who was of similar hunting philosophy to myself and my father.
I would ask David a couple times over the years that I knew him, if he would take me out hunting. I was half-joking but half-serious, too, but both times he said very bluntly,...
“No.”
“ I don’t believe in that.”
“Nobody should guide anybody,” he said.
I knew what he meant. It had taken him a long time to learn the ways of the bush, and the lessons he learned had cost him. Nobody guided him, or set him up in a spot to shoot an animal. In the end, persistence and love were his teachers,..., that was evident, and that was what he told me, only maybe not in those exact words.
Indeed, for me too, it was quite similar. I had gone hunting with my dad a few times as a young boy,..., quite a few times, and then I started going by myself, when I was about 11 or twelve. Then I began to hunt a great deal,.... I hunted for partridge, ducks, geese, and deer, and then when all the seasons ended, I hunted rabbits because there weren’t any regulations for rabbits. When I wasn’t hunting, I was reading about hunting or thinking about hunting or thinking about one of the birds or animals that I liked to hunt. David was probably the same way. He told me stories later on when I would speak to him on the phone from Japan, about catching partridges with his bare hands, in the snow, when he was a kid….He would see a hole in a snow drift in the bush, on a bitterly cold day, with a distinct look to it,..., the kind that a ruffed grouse makes when it flies down out of a tree into the snow for shelter from the cold and wind. He would sneak up to the snow bank and lay on top of it and catch the partridge in his bare hands by digging in the snow! I was amazed…! I had never thought of that! But it made perfect sense…,... no,... David S was and is a rare person,..., and he had so much love and knowledge of the bush,..., well, I was often pleasantly and dumbfoundedly surprised by the nuggets of brilliance that he would share with me!
In November of 2001 I made a fun bet with Dave, right before the deer season, as to who would shoot the bigger buck. We each did our respective hunting, separately of course,..., it's a key point to make, that I have never shared a spot of mine and Dave has never shared a spot of his with me, and that's the way it has to be…. But, we would compare stories–,... and in the end, one day he came to work and announced, very happily, that he had shot a nice buck. I was happy for him, and disappointed for myself a little.... I had, up till that point in that season, not gotten a chance at a nice buck.
At the same time in November 2001 I had decided to try teaching English in Japan and began preparing to leave Toyota. Though I didn’t really tell many people, I was really in a bad way, mentally, and emotionally, and I had to do something, so I talked to Peter and he contacted an acquaintance of his who had some business in Japan. The acquaintance then offered me a job through Peter and I decided to take it,.... I hunted a few more days, and there came a time to decide that it would be my last day of hunting as I had to leave Canada and I had many things to prepare for my new job in Japan,.... I shot a doe. David won the bet, and I was happy for him. I paid him with a case of Pilsner beer, a 24 pack, as that was the condition of the bet.
Finally, my last day at Frank Dunn Toyota came.... I’ll always remember saying goodbye to David. I was extremely nervous about leaving Toyota and going to a new job, again, but this time I was going to where I had very few people that I knew,..., let alone people like Dave.
When I said goodbye to him in 2001, David reached out and shook my hand and he said to me: “I wish you well.” I knew in that instant that he meant it, and I appreciated his kindness and his sincerity,..., and I wanted to break down right there and then, at his feet and tell him everything,..., about my OCD problem, about the daily struggles that made up the vast majority of my life and how sad and tired I was, and that I needed help,..., but instead, I shook his hand and thanked him, silently hoping desperately that I would somehow make it through the trip across the ocean that I was about to embark upon, against all my better judgment. I didn’t want to go, in many ways, but I felt I really had no choice. If I stayed there in Prince Albert, I felt I would surely die,.... And so, I left…..
I left on about the 7th of December 2001. I had cleaned my guns up, like I usually did, and by the time I got in the car to go to the airport,..., well, I wasn’t feeling very confident. But, I told myself, I would “succeed,” and that I would make it through this battle, and that I would figure out my problem. I thought about David ..., and how he was. He and I were similar in ways, in some respects, and then quite different in others. I wanted to be more like David, in the sense that I wanted to live at my farm and work, at some job, carefree, and then go home to my farm where I could jump on my quad and go for a cruise or just go out into the bush and just relllaaaax,.... I wanted to be “normal'' like David.
I headed to the airport and said my goodbyes to my parents. All my instincts told me to not go, but I ignored them. I knew I could stay in P.A. and sell cars,..., but I also couldn’t. I was working 6 days a week, selling cars, and even if I did sell 13,..., I didn’t earn the money that I wanted,or, to be fair, needed to earn,... Besides that, I only got 2 weeks off per year, and that wasn’t enough, and beside that, I felt so anxious, and full of dread, so often,..., I was always trying to think of a solution. I was constantly thinking of solutions, or applications of conscious endeavor to improve my life. Being very interested in Japan, and the Japanese language, and, hoping to find a woman, I decided to go to Japan where I knew a couple of families in Nagano prefecture, and that was where the English teaching job was. So, I got on an airplane to fly to Vancouver, and then I waited and boarded another plane and flew across the ocean to Narita Airport, in Japan. I Had just turned 25 years old in October. In the end, Japan would be a place that bestowed upon me many great encounters, and was the place where I would meet my wife of 20 years at the time of this writing.
David was very important because he would be a person whom I would go to for help, and he was a great confidant and a friend. He would always tell me that things would work out, and that he was sure of the existence of God. I would call him to talk many times, and sometimes I know I called him too often. But he never got angry with me, and he provided me with much needed moral support. I was very lucky to have met him, and he would be a powerful ally as “the war” raged on into the 2000s. Sometimes I felt so lost I just decided to do what David might do. In the end I came to realize that David would do whatever came the easiest and most natural to him, and was the best choice without having to think about it too much. I struggled to figure out what I was going to do with my life, and how I would be okay,….
To meet a friend whom you feel you can confide in and trust,… that is so very important in this life. We are social creatures. We need each other. That is a fact, and I sometimes felt ashamed about that need. That is not helpful. We should remember and accept and be happy that we are social creatures! Telling yourself you are weak because you want to have friends, that is not a wise philosophy- at -all, and is in itself a weakness that will impede your search for happiness. No man is an island, nor should he ever strive to be one.
Thank you, David, for all of your kindness....