Bears, antelope, eagles and even human beings are among the interesting creatures conservation officer Les Olson has encountered over the years.
Olson retired May 3 from his position as Compliance Area Specialist for Saskatchewan Environment. Over a 36-year career he has worked in Reindeer Lake, Blackstrap, Preeceville, Battlefords Provincial Park, and finally North Battleford where he's been since 1982.
Olson, originally from Spalding, got into the field because he was always interested in natural resources. He ended up building an interesting and story-filled career at his post. As Compliance Area Specialist he filled a supervisory role in the department in connection to the other conservation officers.
While based in North Battleford, his beat covered an area stretching from Unity to Blaine Lake and south to Perdue.
The role of a conservation officer is wide-ranging and varied. It is truly a 24-hour job with many middle-of-the-night calls to respond to, said Olson.
The position involves checking hunting and fishing licenses, dealing with people experiencing problems with wildlife, some environmental work, checking shorelines to ensure they are not being altered without permits, working with parks to do park policing and enforcement, and many other activities.
It involves direct contact with animals, many of which Olson would end up transporting for testing in Saskatoon. Some of those encounters have provided the most interesting stories for Olson.
One of the most humorous encounters was a call in 1996 involving an antelope who stood in the middle of a highway in the North Battleford area alongside a German Shepherd dog.
He had calls from people who were noticing the antelope as a road hazard, so he went out to investigate.
The dog was gone by then, but the antelope was still there, and he reached out and was petting it to see its reaction. At one point he had to grab the antelope by the horns to keep both it and himself from being hit by oncoming cars.
"It was obvious this thing had experience with people. It wasn't a wild antelope," said Olson. He observed it had been domesticated to some extent.
"Somebody obviously picked it up when it was little when it shouldn't (have)."
The next question for Olson was what to do with the animal. A zoo in Moose Jaw agreed to take the antelope, but it needed a place to stay before it was picked up the next day. A local area farmer said not to worry, and agreed to hold onto the antelope until it was picked up. Olson was a little worried, though, that the antelope might eat the flowers that were in abundance in his yard. "Nah, I don't care," was the response.
Olson got a call back from him the following Monday, and immediately asked if the antelope was still there.
The man at the other end of the line responded: "Nope. You know, I'm not very happy with you and your antelope."
"See," responded Olson, "I told you he'd eat your flowers."
"I don't care about the flowers. But who's going to pay for my motorcycle seat?"
It turned out the antelope had carved out a big hole in the seat of the farmer's motorcycle. That was the last anyone heard from the antelope.
Olson has had other encounters with animals that were perhaps not so funny at the time.
Olson had experience handling trapped bears from time to time, but particularly remembers an encounter with an amusing but particularly temperamental young bear cub he needed to transport to Saskatoon.
This bear cub was not used to traps or cages. Olson allowed the bear to roam free around his house and the young bear was quite comfortable doing that. But Olson found out the bear would be constantly wailing all the time when caged up, which made it a challenge when it came to sleeping at night. The bear needed constant babysitting.
"I ended up sleeping on the couch with my hand on the cage so it could be sure there was someone around," said Olson.
Transporting the young bear to Saskatoon proved a tough task, as the bear cub ended up running around in the car and was "biting my ear all the time," said Olson.
"So I put him in a cage, and he screamed all the way to Saskatoon," said Olson.
Dealing with upset bears is one thing, but dealing with skunks is quite another. Olson once had to deal with a situation involving skunks that had been poisoned, and he was stuck with the job of transporting the carcasses.
Olson transported them in a station wagon with the windows down, and it was no fun. "They stunk to high heaven," he remembers.
There have also been encounters with birds, including eagles that had run into trouble of their own over the years.
On one occasion he had to pick up injured eagles and transport them to Saskatoon. His department also handled a situation where 10 eagles were poisoned about 10 years ago by
furadan, an agricultural chemical.
Some might think the animal encounters might be harrowing for Olson. Not so much, he says. Olson said his most frightening encountered have been with the human beings. He says some of these rough and tough characters were not so happy to see anyone from the Ministry of Environment.
"There were actually two instances where people threatened to kill me," said Olson. Those incidents happened when checking up on hunters in violation of the law.
Scarier, still, those individuals had guns on them, something conservation officers didn't have.
"We didn't carry firearms," said Olson.
Diffusing those tense situations turned out to be another skill Olson acquired on the job.
"Sometimes discretion is the better part of valour," he said.
Those incidents represented only a very small part of the job. They were outweighed by the many responsible hunters and anglers, he said, who not only follow the rules but who co-operated with him and his department to help them and make sure the rules are followed by others.
"The majority of fishermen are wonderful to work with," said Olson, who notes the fishermen point out the "things they see that shouldn't be happening."
When he was posted to North Battleford he expected to stay only a short while, as it was customary for conservation officers to move from community to community every three to five years.
"When we moved here we didn't even plant an apple tree because we didn't think we'd be here that long," said Olson.
He ended up staying put, along with his wife Donna and three kids.
"North Battleford has been a wonderful place to work and raise a family," said Olson.
What's next for Olson is to step back a bit. They have a place at Turtle Lake they may move up to in the near future, and he plans to do some volunteer work. He might not stay retired either, and says he might look for another job.
What is for sure is that Olson, with his retirement from a life's work dealing with birds, bears, skunks and even humans, is turning the page on a big chapter of his life.
"It was a great job, working with great people," he said.
