There are a few conventions in travel storytelling, and in particular travel TV. The women are intrepid, they will be challenged, but having bonded with a local woman over some validation ritual, will rise to the challenge, and by the end the half hour she will be joyful at the edge of her comfort zone.
If the man is under 50 he's a sort of guide, strangely sage, often quite earnest, he maybe a former marine, but is the least blokeish former squaddie available. He'll have packed his anglophone liberal values along with his Swiss Army knife. Asking a goat herder about the gender pay gap in her village. If he's over 60 he's a reluctant to very reluctant. His most profound complement is to complain that such and such cannot be purchased at home. There will be some griping, mainly about missing the comfort of his own bed. Sometimes to mix things up it's a father and son. Bit of both. Anthony Bourdain made a fortune and some excellent TV by the simple expedient of having the camera follow him as he met the people for the first time, being curious, and not moaning.
The trip really begins about 16 years ago I spent the afternoon with James Marchington, and Charlie Jacoby from the Fieldsports Channel. Their friend Ian Spicer had invited us to some range time at the West London Shooting School. This was to be the start of my long fascination with the 6.5mm bullet. Ian had a 6.5 swede and mentioned in passing that the Scandinavians shoot capercaillie from treetops with 6.5 solids. Big day for me, formative even, I’d never heard of capercaillie either. I've shot a couple of thousand 6.5's since then, but capercaillie have eluded me.
The first flight is completely full, and at Swedish customs it turns out the missus isn't the only person perturbed by my laissez faire travel arrangements.
Customs guy: Why are you visiting Sweden?
SBW: I'm going for a long walk in the snow [ turns out to be slightly prophetic ]
Customs guy: [slightly incredulous] it can be very cold
SBW: I have a very big coat
Customs guy: they say it can be dangerous to get too hot
SBW: I'm more worried about the skiing to be fair
Customs guy: On your own? It really can be quite dangerous
SBW: I'm going with a friend from facebook
Customs guy: Does he have a name?
SBW: Jon
Customs guy: a second name?
I show him my phone
Customs guy: It's pronounced Yew-n.
SBW:Ah, glad you mentioned that
Customs guy: Where does he live?
SBW: No idea where he lives, never even spoken to him on the phone, and to be fair I'm not sure how to pronounce the name of the airport I'm meeting him at either.
Customs guy: Ah
It's probably someone else's paperwork if I'm eaten by cannibals, and his if he deports me, so he wishes me luck and stamps my passport.
Our little chat means the next flight and my luggage have left without me.
Airport guy: "Happens all the time, we'll have you on another flight in an hour or so". I get the 'or so' version which is four hours. I message Jon who takes the whole thing in his stride
Jon: There's a gun shop, and I'll buy my wife a present
Of all the unexpected things that happened perhaps the most remarkable is the food in Stockholm airport is fantastic. I know you don't believe me. Why should you. Someone who gave a shit about their job cooked this from scratch. In England even the salad would have been shaken from a packet by a particularly spotty and ambivalent teenager.
The next plane is smaller, the airport smaller still, the daylight shorter.
And so it begins. I’ve only ever been to the top of Europe once and it was mid summer, I've also only skied. once, on a dry ski slope, just over 40 years ago. Surprisingly it's not that cold, maybe one or two degrees cooler than London.
In Alaska there’s a fella called Wiggy who makes the ultimate puffa jacket. I was having a productive period at work so I'd ordered one the day before Jon messaged me. Seemed fated. Jon and I had met on Facebook in a conversation about 6.5mm choices, he mentioned hunting capercaillie, I'd said it was a long held dream to hunt them he'd said 'come along I go every year.' I'd not thought much of it, one day out of the blue he's back in touch "Are you coming?" Seeing as I'd just ordered the coat, I said yes. Seemed fated.
I consulted Bird House as he's done lots of cold weather camping, and I posted a thread on the Stalking Directory. One response seemed wise 'I'd spent all kinds of money on high tech clothes I was freezing my tits off, until I copied the locals and bought a big wool sweater, after that I was fine". I shared this insight. Bird House gave me the look that says "how am I having to explain this to you?'.
There's a company that advertise on Facebook that say they still sell the pullovers they supplied to Shackleton for his adventures in the antarctic
. Bird House has tracked down the weavers that actually make them and have their own website. Loads cheaper and they were having a new year half price sale.
I'm now the proud owner of the biggest, heaviest, itchiest Woolly Pully I've ever seen. I look the part. I could belt out a sea shanty at any moment
According to the historic weather data we should expect negative 13C during the day and negative 26C at night. I've never been anywhere colder than neg ten so I started to feel some trepidation.
All the 'Four Season' sleeping bags I could find in the UK were clearly not intended for Sami seasons, minus 4 isn't even a Scottish winter. The Shipping fees and import taxes on my coat from Wiggy's had driven me to penury so I wasn't in the mood to order from him again. Bird House was all about chemical heaters, Jon took the view that expensive sleeping bags were over rated and two cheap bags would be better. My inner Yorkshireman rejoiced. I've recently become more industrious with clay busting so I've been spending more time in the north with Super Plumber and The Northern Monkey. In yet another of the tedious displays of incompetence regular readers will be all too familiar with, I left the Wooly Pully behind. Attempts at shipping proved unsuccessful. So it didn't join me on the journey.
In the 18th century before the discovery of the country's mineral wealth, lead to the invention of dynamite, which lead to the armaments industry, Sweden had sunk back from its days of empire. and millions of Swedes emigrated to the USofA . Many of the things that to me are typically American are of Swedish origin. Lots of people, by people I mean chicks, look like they've stepped out of a Ralf Lauren commercial. The red wooden farm houses, and a preference for sweet foods.
Of all the many wonderful things Swedish culture has brought to the world, the most annoying and perhaps most baffling has to be Ikea. You never meet anyone over the age of ten who likes it, but we all go there.
I met a Japanese woman who worked for Ikea in Japan. Given the Japanese people's famous preference for a quiet, ordered, sort of calm, I had to ask.
"How do people cope with the infuriating madness that is a trip to the seventh circle of hell?"
"Foreign company, all part of the fun"
At the house Mrs Jon is serving moose meatballs with a crazy delicious 'brown sauce' I'm not sure if I said the right thing when I asked 'this is what the Ikea dinner is supposed to taste like' She pulls a face
SBW: Is Ikea not popular here? My children were raised on those horrible meatballs, they loved them?"
Mrs Jon: " I hate that place, but I have a whole house full of their stuff"
At this point the evening descends into a kind of gameshow:
She produces a coffee mug.
SBW: mum's house
She produces a bowl
SBW: we have those
She produces a glass
SBW: ex wife has those, actually we have some too.
You know how to make venison meatballs, but while we're passing here's the simple wonder that is 'Brown Sauce".
Reduce cream until it's thickened, add some browned or dried onions, add mushroom soy sauce, and then if you're so inclined a little whisky. You'll never endure the tyranny of that muck Ikea sell in a sachet ever again. It's crazy delicious. It would even go well with cardboard.
SBW: These are unobtainium in London. I'm under strict instructions, f I go home without one I'll never hear the end of it
Mrs Jon [incredulous] : But what do you slice cheese with ?
SBW: A knife
Mrs Jon [slightly more incredulous, and actually horrified] But the slices will be thick?
In the morning I gift their kids enough Tunnocks and assorted candy to open a sweet shop, and we hit the road. We leave to the sound of "No Mummy this is breakfast" which needs no translation.
After a short dive we collect Dan from his doorstep he greets me with "It may take some time to get warm in my clothes, mocking him in English" It took him no time at all.
Hunting friends always seem to come in pairs; one reckless, a speed demon, the other a chill fellow, happy to tootle along more concerned with not digging the car out of a snowdrift than the time of arrival .
The sport of unending criticism of the other's driving is the perfect middle ground everyone can enjoy. Its international. The Northern Monkey has it that gearboxes surrender when they hear me coming, I have it that were he to re-sit his driving test he would fail. My friends in the north are exactly the same.
Is it called a smorgasbord when there's only one dish ? Pretty easy to spot where the capercaillie have been. Past tense.
The capercaillie is an unlikely animal. About the size of a turkey they're omnivores in the warmer months, but when the cold comes and the ground freezes, they switch to only eating the toppist tops of pine trees.
Their shit suggests they don't really have the digestive tract for extracting nutrients from pine needles.
Not content with nearly starving to death their sleeping habits border on the suicidal too. They crash land in a snow drift, and hope to wake up in the morning. Sometimes the weather changes, more snow falls, then freezes, and they are trapped or savaged to death by predators. It's a wonder there are any left.
They also come with a perfectly placed white dot for rifle shooters to aim at. To make them a bit more sporting they have incredible eyesight, so 250-300m shots are the expectation.
Where I stalk in the hedgerows of southern England shots are a lot closer, but even in the highlands where shots are longer, there's usually a farmhouse or a road to be taken into account . The backstop is what defines a take-able shot. In the boreal forest the backstop is tens of thousands of hectares of hopefully empty forrest. Slightly unnerving.
The trick is to have a flat shooting round, as chances are going to be at 250 - 300m, but and its a big ask, a bullet that's also not going too fast, or expanding, so it doesn't detonate the delicious bird. You're looking for a neat pencil hole, in though the white dot, though the spine and out the other side. The Super 22's [22-250, 22 Creedmoor, etc] are probably a bit too destructive, 6 and 6.5mm are perfect. Lapua Sxxxxx are popular, and Barnes banded solids sound amazing if you can get any. Factory ammo is so expensive that Sweden is possibly the only place where you could actually save money by reloading.
[yes I know Lee loaders were made in 6.5 swede, I'm joking, sort of. I feel very sorry for anyone who is buying their Co-Ax now]
There's a giant network of unlocked huts, both private and public, you're never further than 6km from one. Mostly the last occupant has left you some tinned food, firewood and matches. Sweden is seemingly run on a slightly different version of the 'for us by us' principle. Where the 'us' is a much larger group. The extreme weather means there's a general assumption that some things are too important to be left to rugged individualism, of which they have plenty, so there's a sense of community and a government sponsored program of hut maintenance, rubbish clearance and wood gathering for huts both private and public. You can contribute if you want. Jon's taking the very reasonable view that his dad had done the hard yards building it in the first place and that as there were clearly others using it in his absence he'd paid up front.
Even a long way out into the forrest there are well marked snowmobile trails, which are graded during the snow free months. They are better kept than some of the roads in London. So you can drive really fucking fast. The boys tell me that the grading program is a kind of school leavers job everyone has had, it's quite well paid but extremely boring.
Ugnspannkaka the cube-ular pancake of Sweden. While cheese maybe be sliced thin pancakes are served thick. we really don't have anything like this. All the ingredients of yorkshire pudding, but cooked to achieve totally the opposite effect. Where Yorkshires must rise, [minimum 75mm - as defined by the royal society for chemistry] these bad boys are totally solid. Baked and cut into cubes, then fried to make them crispy. It's Sweden so eaten with Lingonberry jam. Bloody good.
Some things are universal to shooters everywhere.
Jon "I hate my Harris bipod."
SBW "I hate mine too."
In unison "the one I want is so expensive "
We confirm zero and take a couple of pops at 300m. Tikka man, what can you say? They are just excellent rifles; sure they lack the posh timber and style of the Shultz & Larsen, but two factory rounds a hair apart at 300m, you cant complain. I would have banged away to make a comforting little group but at this price per bang it seemed un-guestly.
During the travel show there comes a time when the protagonist must face his fears, like when Chief Brody gets on to the boat....
The sum of all my fears, in plank form.
I've never in all my life been anywhere where the constant complaint was 'Its not cold enough' they actually apologised about it. Seemed great to me, until we got moving, then I understood. The snow had melted a bit, a new crust had fallen, which had frozen insulating the melted snow and stopping it from re-freezing. On the snow machine this meant ruts, on skis it meant much much more inertia. On the lake it meant 20-50mm of icy water. I lived in constant fear of falling over and getting an icy soaking.
Fortified by a plate of stodge, and some vigorous coffee it's time to face my fear, strap myself to two planks and waddle forth.
