Bouncing along on the ATV through northern Alberta’s mixed stands of poplar, birch and spruce among wide-open muskeg swamplands, I felt it: the unmistakable excitement—and unease—of venturing into an unknown wilderness. Shawn Mack, a guide at W&L Guide Service and son of owner Wally Mack, expertly drove us on the scant path he and his brother Kristen, another guide, had carved out in the bush weeks earlier with chainsaws.
The route saw us juking fallen trees, bounding into and out of small depressions and cruising through open stretches among grassy bogs. Each minute, it took us deeper into the region’s wild public land (crown land, as the locals call it), which seemed to extend indefinitely. In one open spot, Shawn stopped the ATV, peering down at the soft mud.
“That’s a bear,” he nodded, gesturing toward an impression in the dirt. “Decent one, I think.”
Black bears were exactly why my traveling companions and I had journeyed thousands of miles into another country amidst a global pandemic. The trip itself had already been delayed two years running due to COVID. Meanwhile, in that time, the bears hadn’t been hunted at all by outsiders, and we’d
