Testimonial – Bill Falcon

I started hunting when I was about 29 years old. I’ve never really hunted big game, I just always hunted small deer in Florida or wherever I could. Then I got involved in Georgia. My buddies would always go to Canada, hunting, and they never had room for me. So one day I got on the website and started looking around for hunting in Canada, Saskatchewan, and, I called Greg. He called it a discount hunt. I said I’m all about discount ’cause I didn’t have much money. I came here and it’s been amazing. I’ve met so many good people here, Tracy, Greg that owns the place, Calvin that hunts out here, he’s one of the guides, and Steve and Dave. Bernice is an amazing cook, amazing person. I’ve met so many people out in the situation that I’m in that come in here, that take some time off from their busy lives and what not.

It’s like I come here and it’s like I never left. I come here twice a year, I come here for Spring Bear and I come here for Fall Deer. I’m here for 5 days, 6 days for the bear and I’m for a week for the deer season. I get here and it’s like I just left the house here last week. Everyone treats me well, I have fun, we joke with each other. It’s a camp. If you can’t joke at a camp you don’t have fun.

We shoot deer every year we shoot bear every year. I bow hunt, I like the bowhunting part of it. It’s more of a challenge for the bear. It’s fun, it’s fun. I started coming out here. I’ve been here, this is my third bear hunt and this year will be my fifth deer hunt. I’m already scheduled, I already got my deposit, I’m scheduled for next year to come back because if you don’t schedule this place, you don’t get in. You don’t want to lose your spot at the table, and I’ve got a spot at that table. When I come in that’s my spot.

He gives you, he sets you up at a comfortable distance. When I come out here, my comfortable distance when I’m bowhunting is 20-25 yards. I don’t want to shoot 30-35-40 yards because I’m not comfortable, I’m not an avid bowhunter, I don’t practice the way I should. I practice 3,4,5 weeks before I come up here. At 20 yards, I’m good. At 25 yards, I’m good. 30, I can do, I know I can, but I choose not to. Greg makes it easy for me, where’s your comfort zone, 20-25 yards, he sets me up a 20-25 yards. 20-25 yards, the bait is there at 20-25 yards, 30 yards, that area there, I’m comfortable. Last year I shot my bear at 24 yards. Tonight, I’ll shoot one at 23, cause I’m going to shoot one at 23.

I come to Canada because I’ve always dreamed about Saskatchewan. I’ve always dreamed about Canada. On the drive up here from Saskatoon, which is about 2-1/2 hour drive, I’ve seen bear, I’ve seen mule deer, I’ve seen geese, I’ve seen snow geese, I’ve seen ducks, I’ve seen everything. The amount of game and the amount of amount of stuff that you can do in Canada, here compared to where I live. Florida is a great place. I live in Florida, we have good fishing, we have decent hunting, but nothing like this.

I just came off the lake, right now. I like to talk a lot of shit. Excuse me, a lot of shit, and brag, and I’m gonna do this and I’m gonna do that. I was one short today. I said I was gonna catch 6 and I caught 5 and they give me crap for that. But it’s OK, I can live with the crap because they give me crap there all the time. But I enjoy it. I have fun. I always say I’m going to get the biggest deer. I never get the biggest deer. I always say I’m going to get the biggest bear, I never get the biggest bear. But, I have fun talking about it and dreaming about it and thinking about it. And it’s here, they’re here, they’re here, they’re here. Every year someone gets a really big deer in this camp, or a big bear. They’re here. With hunting there’s little bit of luck.

When I got to the bear last year. When I first shot my bear last year, it was the first bear I ever shot. I thought I shot a monster. I thought I shot a monster. When I got there, I was like, I’m hoping this is the bear I shot, it was the bear I shot. It shrunk. But when I got home, it got bigger. Because it always gets bigger when you get home. The bear was bigger, the deer are bigger.

I had a bear with a couple of cubs come by and she was very protective. It got the old blood juices boiling and excited. I couldn’t wait for Greg to come pick me up. ‘Cause it was dark and I had bears all the way around me. That’s excitement. That’s not the kind of excitement I want to have, but that’s some that happened to me on this deal. Another thing that happened to me on this deal, I see my old friends. I come out here. I met Tracy Lee 3 years ago. I met Terry 3 years ago. I met Big Sexy 3 years ago. I call Big Mike Big Sexy. I met him 3 years ago. We hunted with deer and we hunted with bear and we fished together. We talk, we talk about going to football games together. We had a fishing trip scheduled this year in Panama with Tracy and I, but his wife bought him a 40th year Anniversary and he backed out on me. I guess his wife is more important than me and would pick her too especially after 40 years of marriage. So I’m looking for someone to fishing now.

When I first came to Canada, I have a friend that always told me, I always wanted to go with him to Canada but he never had room for me to go, that’s why I hooked up with Chaparral. And he says, you’re going to go there and will be a guy that been going there for 5, 6 years and been spending big money with him and he’s going to get the best stands. And when I got here I was expecting that and then all of a sudden we’re pulling out cards, and I said, what are the cards for, and he said, we’re gonna draw stands. So, I told that to my friend back home in Florida and he said, I can’t believe he does that, he does that? Ya man, he draws for everything. Even when we go back, even when we don’t see the deer that we want to see or we haven’t deer or we haven’t seen bear, we go back into the box and we draw again. You don’t say, I wanna go hunt here and I wanna go hunt there, no, ’cause everybody wants to hunt there and everybody wants to hunt there, we give them a shot. I love it. I love the idea of drawing. I’ve drawn really good stands and I’ve drawn really good bad stands. But the bad stands, there’s deer in the bad stands, just not the deer that you want. The funny thing about modern deer hunting, is that we look at these cameras and there’s this deer on camara, there’s this deer on camera. This week, we had a guy shoot a bear that was never on camera. Nobody ever seen that bear, he just sowed up, and he got shot.

Greg has a vision for this place to make things grow. If you don’t let them walk, they don’t grow. He’s always saying, it’s not like fishing, you can’t put them back.

Everything here is top notch, man. Everything about Chaparral. You come here, you have your own room, you have 8 separate rooms for 8 hunters. Each room has 2 beds, some have 3 beds. It’s all yours. You share 2 bathrooms. The guides take care of everything for you. They bring your backpack with you. They carry your stuff. They make sure your comfortable. You need an extra pad, they get you an extra pad for you. A piss bottle, whatever you need, they got it for you. Bernice makes a killer lunch for you, takes a good lunch. A good meal in the morning. A good meal when you come home. Everything about here is perfect, everything here it’s perfect.

Besides the bear hunting, just the comradery. The friendship, the bullshit. Tom and I bullshit all day long about crap this and that, in the boat, we’re fishing, we’re having fun, we’re laughing. Just memories, every time I come here something else happens, something different happens. I see something different, I meet a different person. I mean I didn’t meet Mike, I met Mike this year. Chances are I’ll see Mike again next year. Everybody that’s in here, I’ve hunted before with them. Whether I’ve been here in bear season or deer season, I’ve hunted with them in the past, except for Mike, and Mike’s brand new. That’s what I take about this place, when I leave this place, you know, I hate leaving, but I know I’m coming back.

One thing I forgot to talk about was Bernice’s food. We have, the food here is amazing. Everything is amazing. There’s ribs, there’s pork chops, there’s shrimp night, there’s steak night. Sometimes we get lucky and get moose night. It’s the food, it’s like everything. Everything is home made, everything is home made. The desert, the candies, the soup, the pies, brownies, the strawberry thumbprints, the carrot cake. Everything, everything, everything, everything is amazing. Plenty of it. If you go hungry, it’s your own fault.

Dave and Andy and Bernice and Shelly, Greg’s wife. She knick knacks and stuffs up, everything, the cabin is always nice. I walk in the cabin this time, there’s a frickin’ teddy bear on my bed. I can’t see very well real close and I’m like a teddy bear, what the hell’s a teddy bear doing on my bed. It wasn’t a teddy bear, it was rolled up towels, she made up into a teddy bear. She make’s you feel good. This is home. When you come here you’re not staying that the Ritz, the Dukane or the Waldorf or staying at the Holiday Inn. Your staying at somebody’s house and they treat you like family and that’s why I come here. That’s why I have a relationship with Greg and with Bernice and with all the boys out here.