I left the farm with my rifle slung over my arm and hit an easy stride heading west.  Fresh venison was the goal on this evening and i was in no hurry.  I cut sign - freshly abandoned beds under a canopy of young spruce - about a half mile into the woods and began still-hunting into the open aspen woods.  The snow that was there was crusty and the patches that were bare were crunchy with leaves.  There'd be no sneaking up unawares this day, so I concentrated on matching my gait to that of the deer themselves.  There are ways of blending in even while being obvious.  I stood a good long while on the slope of the ridge that flanks the big Coulee, moving only my eyes.  This was a popular stretch with ungulates, whitetail and elk especially.  The November foothills air was brisk at 1100 metres, but I was as snug as a nest of eider ducks in the capote I'd made years ago from a four-point traditional Hudson's Bay Blanket.
 
The Coulee was named after a fellow called David, a Methodist missionary who purchased a significant landholding in the area.   He ran a trading post on the river flats that also bear his name.  He descended from a line of missionaries, as both his father and his grandfather, who also played significant roles in western Canadian frontier history, had heeded the call.  Here's what the father, John, writing in 1898 had to say about his favored winter garments for facing long days and nights spent traversing the Alberta wilderness of the mid-19th century: 

..."Perhaps I am the best clad in the party, and my clothes altogether will not weigh much.  A flannel shirt, moleskin pants, full length leggings with garters below the knees, duffil socks and neat moccasins, a Hudson's Bay capote, unlined and unpadded in any part, a light cap, and mittens which are most of the time tied on the load, while i wear a pair of thin, unlined buckskin gloves... I did not for several years wear any underclothing, and though in the buffalo country, and a buffalo hunter, I never had room or transport for a buffalo coat until the Canadian Pacific Railroad reached Alberta, and the era of heavy clothing and ponderous boots came in, with ever and anon men frozen to death in them!  Not so with us; we run and lift and pull and push and are warm."  

This is one of my own favorite things among the many favorable features of the capote: it is light, allowing for unimpeded movement.  It is also eminently comfortable, and unlike many modern fabrics, silent - an important consideration for a woodsrunner on the hunt. Being unlined it is best worn alone on average cold winter days, or when moving on the coldest days.  While stationary in the coldest weather, it is best worn with a number of layers, preferably also wool. 

The capote was introduced to the native tribes by the fur-traders and became popular amongst them as well.  They especially liked the traditional coloured stripes considered the trademark of the Hudson's Bay Blanket, (but also used by other traditional blanket makers like Pendleton and Witney.)  While these colours - dark blue, yellow, red and green bands, were considered an arbitrary design by the original maker, the tribes did not see them so.  To them, blue represented water, yellow the sun, the fall season and the harvest, red the hunt or the war foray, and green the advent of spring.  Wearing such colours was therefore a new way for them to celebrate life itself.   

Capotes are relatively easy to make with rudimentary skills, and patterns are available from a number of sources.  It is best to use a tough wool blanket of tight weave, otherwise it may pull apart at the stitches when you move.  (You might try making a flimsy wool blanket tougher by running it through a wash and dry machine cycle, however, it will shrink!)  The most popular portrayals of traders and mountainmen in art and film depict them wearing full-length capotes adorned with fringes.  In reality, however, capote wearers of the fur-trade era were much more likely to be seen in plainer examples unadorned by the fringe, as this was an touch that did not come into favor until after the height of the fur-trade.

Wearing the capote has survival value beyond protection from the elements.  It can be viewed rather as the native peoples viewed it - a celebration and statement of reverence for the circle of life.  The aesthetic of the garment, with its inviting texture, picturesque way of hanging on the frame and rich colours makes the wearer feel good in ways that go beyond the physical about the experience of existing under harsh conditions, imparting a largeness of spirit and joy of life dwarfing the dull utilitarian.  It has been well documented that it is precisely such a bright, adventurous, and even playful turn of mind that can spell the difference between life and death when applied to a survival situation.  It is the quality in fact that has enabled children, with no formal survival training, yet embracing the moment as a kind of game, to have survived under some of the same documented emergency circumstances that have claimed the lives of well trained adults in their parties who were nonetheless operating under the handicap of being uninspired dullards, their impatient spirits mired regardless in the mundane.

I had been standing for some time and the evening was leaning towards dusk when my eyes made out an incongruous horizontal shape amongst the vertical boles of the forest.  Examining it revealed it to be a section of the body of a foraging deer, about forty yards from me, and partly screened by foliage. It was an easy shot, and had this been a survival situation or a simpler time less overrun by our own species, my hunt that night would have ended with plentiful meat.  As it was, I had to comply with game laws and make sure of the sex of the animal before squeezing the trigger.  I waited for the deer, completely unaware of my presence, to show its head and solve the mystery of its sex.  Luck was the deer's and not mine that night, however.  Instead of stepping out into the open and certain death, it faded back into the forest without further revealing itself.  It was growing too dim for further stalking.  Perhaps this deer would live another few seasons, to fall prey to one of the huge Alberta pumas that frequented the area.  Whatever the case, I was not discouraged.  My stalk had been successful and was its own reward.  I did not need the kill.  I was not going to go hungry without this deer, physically nor spiritually.  There would be other hunts.