Campfire Lies of a Canadian Hunting Guide

9781571571670

1571571671

Fred Webb was born in 1935 during the middle of the Great Depression to a family that made its living in the woods. By the time Fred started school in 1940, his dad had already been overseas for a year in the Canadian army. At the time it was nothing out of the ordinary for boys of six or seven years old to be handling knives, guns, traps, and axes ... all tools of the trade for making a living in the woods. Boys in the country handled firearms and ran trap lines at an extremely early age, especially given that most of the fathers were overseas in the army. (The war started in 1939, something that doesn't get much mention in United States history books.) Fred left school in the early 1950s and began a career guiding, cutting logs, and driving a truck. After a couple of years, he joined the army, got married, and started a family -- all this four years before he could vote or legally enter a beer joint! After leaving the army, he went back to work in the woods, again guiding, trapping, and eventually establishing his own outfitting business. For about a decade, Fred worked as a radio operator and guide on scientific exploration trips from south of the equator to well north of the Arctic Circle, always returning between trips to guide and trap in northern New Brunswick whenever possible. Since 1967 he has been a full-time guide and self-employed professional hunter, working with literally thousands of sports hunters and fishermen in New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Labrador, Ungava Quebec, and the Northwest Territories. By the time he was sixty-two, he had survived five bypass surgeries, and today he continues to run hunts for caribou, muskox, and grizzly bears in the NWT with his son and partner Martin. From his base in Kugluktuk (Coppermine) on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, he and Martin continue to develop new areas. Fred lives in British Columbia with his wife, Irene