Noirot’S Call of the Moose: The Biography of Clark Noirot

By Kitty Noirot

TO VIEW NATURES MAGNIFICENT BOUNTY, YOU ONLY NEED ONE THING ADVENTURE. BE BOLD, BUT CAUTIOUS AS WELL. CLARK ALWAYS MADE THE BEST OF A SITUATION BY CALMLY AND STRATEGICALLY PLANNING HOW TO ENSURE THAT HE HAD AN EXCELLENT TRIP.

This book is clearly a window into Clark Noirots life as an avid outdoorsman! The details and the flavor of his adventures, from childhood, to military service, to more current times, are described here in such a way, it felt like I was there with him. Experience life from an earlier time in Americas history through Noirots eyes and words. This is truly an enjoyable book to read for this fisherman/hunter!
Mark T. Masicampo; Oceano, California

The literary style of Kittys book brings alive a simpler time in life a good read for anyone that is an avid sportsman. She has captured her fathers life from childhood through his adulthood in a very picturesque style. Her words give a vivid accounting of the places that Clark has lived and hunted. A real treasure of a book!
Patsy Tobias, avid reader

Born on a farm near Sparr, Michigan, in 1928, Clark Noirot always had a deep love for the great outdoors. As a child, he loved to fish and hunt, bagging his first rabbit at an early age. But it was the urge to fly a plane that culminated in his becoming a bush pilot, a profession that took him to some of the most beautiful places in North America.

Noirots Call of the Moose is an extraordinary story of one mans lifelong love affair with nature from early childhood through the golden years of retirement. Filled with amusing anecdotes, snippets of nostalgia, and a good deal of wit, Noirots charming stories reveal how he created a career out of being an outdoorsman. Colorful characters infuse Noirots tale, and breathtaking descriptions of wildlife and of the Canadian wilderness create a magnificent backdrop.

From majestic moose and killer bugs to freezing nights and close encounters, Noirot paints a rich portrait of his life as a hunter, fisherman, conservationist, pilot, moose caller, and, above all, survivor.

Enjoy the experience of the Canadian wilderness as Noirot drinks from natural bubbling brooks, hunts, fishes, and relishes the clean, cool fresh air. Noirots Call of the Moose satisfies the nature lover in us all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 24, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450267342

Kitty Noirot

KITTY NOIROT, Clark Noirot’s daughter, currently lives in the foothills of the Sierras in California.

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Copyright © 2010 Kitty Noirot

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-6732-8 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-6733-5 (cloth)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-6734-2 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 11/16/2010

This book is dedicated to you!

Clark Noirot is a Moose Caller. He learned to moose call and describes in detail what to expect when calling the Bull Moose to a location. Author also has 2 CD’s available with audio instructions on how to call moose. Clark has become such an expert moose caller that an episode in this book details how a guide sent Clark to hunt his own moose call due to the perfected natural sound of his call. CD’s are available by email. [e-mail]

Foreword

Clark lived the life that he dreamed of. Nothing ever stopped him from taking great adventures. He has exhibited extreme respect for the preservation of wildlife and for the protection of our natural resources.

Living your own dreams could be closer than you realize. The planet as well as individual lifestyles are constantly changing. Clark’s stories start at his birth and are never ending. He is a very strong Rambo, per his doctor.

To create, to view nature’s magnificent bounty, you only need one thing - adventure. Be bold, but cautious as well. Clark always made the best of a situation with calm and strategic planning to ensure that he had an excellent trip. He learned how to ‘moose call’ in order to be a more successful hunter.

This book is full of non-stop nostalgia, quotes from days gone by, as well as an era of untouched wilderness adventures as Clark had in Northern Michigan, the Upper Peninsula, and throughout the United States and Germany.

This book should be considered interesting and informative for hunters, nature lovers, wilderness enthusiasts, photographers, hikers, or one just up for a good life’s story.

Acknowledgements

Thank you for your interest in ‘Noirot’s Call of the Moose’. Dad, now the stories will be available to readers worldwide. Mark Masicampo, for ‘Trout Tips and Tricks’, Tom Dolkas, Guitarist for the CD ‘How to Moose Call’. Gerry Shaltz, Author, Tom Kusel, Author.

I-Universe Publishing (Jesse, Ryan), thank you so much for your help. Lastly, love and admire the sasquatch and continue keeping a watchful eye out for this nasty, illusive, smelly creature. I’m sure he is worth the wait- once you get to know him. Thanks to friends, family and co-workers whose interest in this book helped to expedite the finished version. Special thanks to Max, Patsy, Ann, Rex, Sara K., Maryln.

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Growing up in Sparr

3. Sparr School

4. Pigeon Fishing

5. Mule Skinner

6. My Lucky Buck

7. Doc’s Horse and Buggy

8. Dad was a Caterpillar Driver

9. Bob Cat Hunters

10. Trying to Mimic Jesse James

11. My First Car

12. Harley Rider

13. Visual Illusion

14. Family Business

15. Military Service

16. You Have My Chair

17. Driving for the Colonel

18. Write Your Congressman

19. Slugged by an Indian

20. Ski a 75 degree Slope

21. Prop Freight

22. Fraternization

23. European Hare

24. Standing Guard

25. Wild Boar Hunt

26. To Soar with Eagles

27. The German Dane

28. Egg Shell Breakfast

29. $245.00 J-3

30. First Moose Hunt

31. Short of Gas and Daylight

32. Prince of a Man

33. Saved by the Grace of God

34. Goulais Island

35. Wilderness Mechanics

36. Short Moose

37. No Trespassing

38. Braggart Toolmaker

39. Eating Road Kill

40. Take All You Want And Eat All You Take

41. Eat Bird, Not Bull

42. Dyson Lake Memories

43. Sixth Sense

44. The Bad Minority

45. Snow Mobile Racing

46. Great Opportunity

47. Fabulous Sightings

48. Nineteen Moose

49. Shangri La

50. Pinch Your Nose

51. Boundary Water Canoe Trip

52. Damn Beavers

53. Bean Pot Soup

54. Hunt on Moose Creek

55. The Prediction

56. 3 Camps, 3 Moose and a Sasquatch

57. Maryln Fishes

58. Kitty Fishes

59. How Much is Moose Meat?

60. Hot Mags

61. Motor Home Hunting

62. Morel Morning

63. Moose Jaw Safari

64. Military Jet Crash

65. Lord, I Need Your Help!

66. Skunked in Colorado

67. Nearly Eaten Alive by Mosquitoes

68. Caribou Hunt

69. Hunt Your Own Moose Call

70. Chamois Make Good Patches

71. Monster Brookies

72. Duck Soup

73. The Helio Courier

74. The Ideal Perfect Moose Hunt

75. Wyoming Elk Hunt

76. Trout Tips and Tricks

Introduction

This is the Biography of Clark Noirot. He was born in 1928 and led an amazing life. His life has been very satisfying as he was able to have many wonderful flying, fishing, and hunting adventures.

The story begins during the Great Depression and includes nostalgia which leads us to understand first- hand what men endeared during those difficult times as well as how Clark’s personality was molded. Clark is a very strong person credited to the fact that at an early age, he was relied upon to help his family work a farm, hunt, fish and survive hardship. Clark went in the Army when he graduated high school. It was there that his initial interest in flying occurred.

As Clark tells the tales of trips that were taken, he fills ‘Noirot’s Call of the Moose’ with humor and excitement. One who submerses themselves into the pages will follow him on each and every adventure as he adds detail not only to the area of interest, but actually paints a picture with his words. He uses details on location, time of year, temperature and wind factors as well as placement of rocks, grasslands, mountains, sounds, time of day, what was said, what was eaten, along with his accomplishments and trials with error. He includes his hunting buddies from trips taken and those ‘prince of men’ whom he idolized.

In order to repair mechanisms, you need to study how they are made and when Clark needs to make wilderness repairs on his airplane he explains critical factors, what he uses to repair a downed seaplane, and is soon up flying again. I think this book with the beauty of the northern area of the United States and the subject matter with exciting adventures described by Clark make this book a reading enjoyment for young and old. What makes it somewhat of a rare read is indeed Clark’s special art of moose calling.

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Growing up in Sparr

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Anna and Louise Wolf

Back in November 28, 1928 I came into this world. It was a stormy 28th of November. My father, a Frenchman, took one look at me and said, Well, hello there, Chum. (Like ‘Cheery Chum’) That name stuck with me through my entire life.

My name is Clark Ronald Noirot. Since my father’s name was also Clark, I did not use that name all through my youth and into my adulthood until my father passed away.

I was born on a farm about three quarters of a mile west of Sparr, Michigan; population was 50 at the time. Sparr was beautiful and will always hold special memories for me and my family. The land itself was rich and abundant. My Father owned 80 acres. Of course, a pasture was what my father saw, and excellent farmland this acreage made. Swampy woodland bordered each side of its broad pasture and farm land. There were old wooden gates at each end of the field. We had fresh stream water running into five nice sized ponds on the property so we never had a problem hooking a brook trout out of those ponds for a meal.

My father had a beautiful riding horse and loved to ride. I once witnessed evidence of his excellent riding skills. His sister, Margie, was riding another horse and it ran away on her. I’ve had horses run away on me and you can’t stop them. I wasn’t afraid of the horse when this happened to me, but he broke and ran and just wouldn’t quit. I jerked and tugged on the bit until red froth ran from his mouth but he wouldn’t stop. Once a horse did a summersault to get me off his back and I ended up on the ground right beside a big rock! Well, my Aunt Margie couldn’t stop her horse, either. My dad jumped aboard his little riding horse and commanded, Catch him! The little riding horse caught up with the bigger animal, my father reached up and plucked his sister from the saddle and pulled her behind him as he rode. The runaway immediately came to a complete stop. One doesn’t want to think about what could have happened if he had been unable to catch her and pull her out of the saddle at that moment.

I recall driving a horse between crop rows with the cultivator to keep the corn clean. I was always yelling, Gee-Ha, Gee-Ha! The horse would not walk to the right row of corn from the left row unless you would chime to him the entire time. That was quite a project, for a ten year-old boy to follow a cultivator for hours out in a corn field, but I did it.

Sparr School

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Sparr School House

In the 1930’s, 75 years ago, I went to a little school called the Sparr School. It was actually a ¼ mile west of Sparr and a ¼ mile east of my Dad’s farm.

One day we went to the barber shop in town. There was a man there that upon seeing my dad said, Clark, I want to apologize. My dad was puzzled. Why do I need an apology? he asked. The man continued, Well, a buddy and I were fishing down the river behind your place and didn’t catch any fish so we thought we would go fish in your ponds, hoping that you weren’t home. So, we snuck up the creek bed into the outlet of the ponds where we couldn’t be seen from the house. We fished over the bank for quite a while and we still couldn’t catch anything. So, finally we ventured up and stuck our head over that bank and then saw that you had drained the pond to clean out the weeds! We knew that someone greater must have intervened, so I told my buddy, We’d best leave quickly because evidently we weren’t supposed to sneak in and fish in Clark Noirot’s ponds!"

I went from 1st to 8th grade in a small one room school. I used to go to Sparr School when I was in the 7th and 8th grade and build fires in the morning during the winter so the room would be warm when the teacher and the other students came to school. I, of course, lived just down the street. It was quite easy to get there nice and early. I was even paid a little bit by the teacher.

I used to eavesdrop on the 8th graders when I was in the 6th grade since we were all in the same building. When we had spelling bees, as a 6th grader I would out-spell the 8th graders. To show you that my memory isn’t all bad, I even recall one of the words. It was ‘miniature’, and an 8th grader named Reggie Dipzinski couldn’t spell it, but I did. So I won that Spelling Bee.

Sparr School wasn’t but 3 feet higher than the swamp. When they were digging the outhouse at my Uncle Art’s place, he instructed the older kids to ‘make sure they dig down to the water’. When the kids asked why that was necessary, Uncle Art said, Because I want the water to splash up and help clean me when I am done!

The building is still there. In later years, someone turned the school into a ski house, a vacation weekender type of thing.

There was always winter time and plenty of time to play. Back then there weren’t many vehicles, especially on the Sparr Road, that went down the hill and into the swamp for 2 miles. We would take our hand sleighs, ‘Flyers’ we called them. A bunch of us kids would go to the hill. We called it ‘Grandma Wolf’s Hill’ because it was one mile north of the school and my grandmother lived in the house on the hill and I also had two uncles in nearby houses. We went to the top of that hill and when the road was good and icy we could slide a good mile. Several times, I made it all the way to the school house, which was almost to the section where we would have to watch out for cars. Of course we could see all the way down that hill. Then we got brave and went almost another mile to the top of the next hill. We could just make it over the intermediate hill and speed it up and make it to the school which was a 2 mile run. It was quite a thrill, we used go pretty fast! I remember one time we had a nighttime party and we were sliding down the hill. My sister was there, as were several of my cousins. No one yelled to warn us that they were coming down the hill and because of that a kid hurt his leg pretty bad on the front end of their sled when the force knocked his legs out from under him. We used to ride double-decker. Not everyone had their sleigh so the biggest person would get on the bottom and another smaller kid on his back and down the hill we would go! I was normally on the bottom.

There was a real cowboy that worked for my Uncle Bill and his name was Tony Spar. I don’t know if the small town of Sparr was named after his family or not. My Uncle Bill would travel with Tony to Montana by train. With Tony Spar and other cowboys that were hired on in Montana, they would round up a herd of wild mustangs. They would load them on a train headed to the Straits of Mackinaw. There were no bridges back then, so they would then load the animals on ferry boats to cross the Straits. From this side of the ferry there were no train tracks, so they would herd the Mustangs right down Old US 27 just north of Gaylord. They would then turn off and head east up over the hills and back down to Sparr, then east of Sparr where they would drive them into the last 6 miles to my Uncle Bill’s farm. There, they would break the horses for riding, plowing and hauling and then sell them. That was part of their living at that time.

Later, Uncle Bill started his store in Sparr. He had a merchandise store with a gas station. I would ride my bicycle from the farm to the store for supplies needed by my Mother. One 4th of July, which was the only time we were away from the farm for any period of time, we would break off chores in the morning and go for a picnic at a lake somewhere. We would swim, have a picnic and then come back and do chores that same evening, since they always needed to be done. This particular time, I headed for Sparr on my bicycle around 9 am and it snowed on me! I went home with the supplies my Mother needed and was very excited as I told her, We’d better picnic inside where we can keep warm by the stove because it snowed on me! We had an old Warm Morning upright stove that we burned wood and coal in to keep the old farmhouse warm. I helped my dad pull a two man crosscut saw to cut logs to stove length and we would then split them with an axe.

My Uncle Art lived right across from the Sparr School and ran a creamery. Uncle Art was never really well, although he fathered 13 or 14 children. He was afflicted with a spinal disease that made him all humped over. He had to walk crooked because he couldn’t straighten up. He had to look sideways to see where he was going. But he had to have been quite a businessman to take care of that large family. I was sometimes invited to eat with them. Man, 13 kids and Uncle Art and Aunt Maggie can put away a lot of food! Later I was told by one of my cousins that Old Bressler used to come and eat with them. He himself would eat just as much as their whole family. He ate a dozen or more pancakes, a dozen or more eggs, a dozen or more bacon strips, five or six cups of coffee, which was enough for their whole family. I guess they didn’t invite him over for dinner too often or they would have gone hungry because there just wasn’t enough food. This story could have been true because Old Bressler used to work at the old lumber company, which was near the railroad tracks. Every night he would stop in Gaylord at Harry Nichols’ Meat Shop and buy 5 pounds of meat. There was no refrigeration back then, so that is how much meat he and his wife would eat each night, I don’t know what else he ate with the meat since I never dined with them.

One time, I visited their house and they had a huge ill-tempered German shepherd who didn’t think I belonged at his house at all. He snarled and growled at me like he was going to eat me. I wasn’t very big, maybe 10 years old. I just kept talking to him and finally got him calmed down. I then put my hand on his head, when I went to the door everything was just fine. I had been afraid to turn around because I couldn’t see him jump at me - so I backed out. Next visit to their house, I had no trouble with him at all. He was a real nice dog.

My Mother and I would quite often go berry picking. We picked mostly blackberries and raspberries. We would hike back into the swamp where cedar trees had been cut off and the blackberries and raspberries would grow there. We spent several hours picking berries to take home.

There was a boiling spring in one of the areas where we picked berries southwest of the schoolhouse. We had an old tin can stuck on a branch by the spring so we could stop and have a cool drink when we were hot in the fall from picking berries and that water was ice cold. Later I stopped there with a snow mobile and dipped a drink of water out