This is the bear cage constructed earlier that summer by Don and Alistair. Naturally, there is a story behind the motivation to build such a structure. Shortly after arriving on the island in early June, Alistair kept hearing strange noises. Don’s hearing was bad enough that he could not hear these noises. They had experienced a failure of the emergency cutoff switch on Don’s motor and almost got stranded several miles from camp. After some fidgeting with the switch, Don got it working long enough to get back to the island and make an emergency repair using an old switch off the 17’ Lund now no longer used. That night, Don finally heard the noise after Alistair suggested stepping out of the cook tent to listen. At that moment Don heard what sounded to him as a lion roaring on the Serengeti at night and it was coming from the direction of the cabin.
A call next morning to a friend in LaRonge about where to get the motor serviced also discussed what these strange noises might be. The native was at a loss to explain the noise, perhaps a moose caught in a bog by a bear, but that was obviously not the case here. Don did take his carbine to his tent that night, just in case. About 1 AM, Alistair who was obviously near hysteria outside Don’s tent, awakened Don. Alistair claimed a bear attacked him while he slept in his tent! Don was not certain that an attack had taken place and his immediate thoughts were along the line of Alistair having a very bad dream. Don, dressing as quickly as possible under the conditions, grabbed his rifle and flashlight and they both made their way over to Alistair’s tent.
Alistair pointed to the front of his tent, “see? see?”. Well, Don didn’t see anything and was now sure Alistair had had a bad dream. At the side of the tent, it was a different story. Don did see about a half cup of white foam next to the rip in the side of the tent. This was no dream and suddenly Don’s 4” mag light seemed totally inadequate for the job at hand. They approached the cook tent, where all the food was stored and an obvious destination for a bear. Don discovered he didn’t have enough hands to hold the flashlight, rifle and still open the flap to the cook tent. Inside, there was no evidence that the bear gotten this far and that jived with the story that kept pouring forth from Alistair.
It seems he was awakened by a noise outside his tent described as the grunting of a pig. Alistair “froze”, making no noise what so ever (Just the wrong thing to do, one needs to make a lot of noise to scare the bear). The bear seemed to lose interest in his tent and departed to our trashcan outside the entrance to the cook tent. Alistair took that occasion to slowly unzip his sleeping bag to release him from its confinement. The bear heard this noise and returned to the tent, only this time with more enthusiasm. He pounced on the tent and bit down through the tent and got Alistair’s leg, still wrapped in part of the sleeping bag (Alistair’s leg had marks but the skin was not broken). At that moment Alistair stopped thinking and started acting on survival instincts, kicking the bear with his free leg and screaming bloody loud. This obviously startled the bear and he ran away. Don fired several shots in the air just in case the bear still needed some encouragement to leave the island
Alistair said he was not comfortable returning to his tent and suggested that they both move their sleeping bags to the loft of the cabin, even though the mosquitoes would be bad, it was easily defended. Don considered this a reasonable request and they moved to the cabin. Next morning the question came up as what to do about the bear. Don knew they could build a bear trap and catch the bear if it were to return, but he didn’t want to do that without first agreeing on what would then be done with the bear in the trap. Work was started on the trap immediately after Alistair had responded, “Shoot the SOB!” The two days estimated to build the trap ran into 4 days. A bear was never caught, even though the trap was baited with bacon and fresh northern pike. It has since become a favorite photo op location.
