, 2023 The Atlin Whisper

“Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world.”

Margaret Mead

A KILLER ON THE YUKON BORDER Part 1

Sheslay Mike

by Paul Lucas

In the North, legends are rarely in short supply. Most are of the positive variety, but there have been a number who, for one reason or another, went bad. Sheslay Mike Oros was one of these. Atlin Fall,1981. It was September 12. I remember the date clearly, because I was headed to one of two functional pay phones in town to call my mother on her birthday. Standing in that phone booth waiting for my call to go through, I noticed a lot of activity down by the lake - police activity. This was unusual.

At the time, the town had only one cop. When I first visited Atlin in 1977, that cop was Mike Morhun, a good pal of my friend and wildlife C.O. Jamie Stephen, (those law enforcement guys tend to hang together), and a well liked member of the community. He was a fair and efficient officer of the law who didn’t rest on ceremony, and could often be found in street clothes taking care of this and that – 24/7 –no easy feat. A good man, albeit a tired one.

Our current one man police force was Peter Bird but today, he was just one of at least six RCMP officers wandering around with that stony ‘this is serious” look on their faces. It was clear that something was up.

Hall Lake, September,1981. Fall in the North. There’s nothin’ like it. After a summer of endless days, when the light starts to fade, things start to pick up on the Yukon border.

Gold miners are working at a frantic pace, trying to make the most of the ground before freeze-up, builders are trying to get roofs sealed before the snow flies, residents are working overtime to get wood in, and hunters are out on the land trying to get a moose to fill their freezers for the long winter ahead. We were no exception. Hilbo and I had just flown into Hall Lake. With enough supplies for several days of hunting and fishing, and a little skiff slung between the floats of the Beaver, we were ready for anything.

The fishing turned out to be phenomenal. Lake trout and grayling were jumping in the boat, and now we were ready to head out to find some meat for the winter.

Our first foray was successful, and pretty easy. A medium sized bull pulling up weeds at the end of the lake made an easy target. Of course, shooting a moose in the water meant we had to haul our prize to camp behind the boat, and that took a very, very long time. Moose are heavy mammals. Anything involving a moose requires thinking big, and field dressing one is no small job. It’s a humbling experience. If you don’t have respect for your position in the animal world before skinning out a moose, you most definitely have one after. A lot of time is spent inside the carcass cutting this and clearing that. There is a lot of … well … everything, and you are pretty well covered by the time the job is done. I didn’t have a clue what was involved until I watched Hilbo go through the drill that first day. But hey, that’s how you learn, I guess.

With the job done, and Freddy hung up out of reach, we set out the following morning for encounter number two, an event that took place mid-morning on a rise above the lake in the middle of the morning - a good place to find moose after they feed and want to hang out in cover as the day gets warmer.

We beached the boat, climbed over the rise, and all of a sudden there he was - Albert, the great bullstaring straight at us. It looked like his blood was up and he was ready to charge. Hilbo wasted no time in dropping him.

I hustled back over the rise and down towards the water where the boat was beached to get the skinning knives and other supplies. I had no sooner plunged over the rim when I ran into another bull ploughing his way up the bank towards me, and he wasn’t a happy camper.

My feet didn’t touch the ground. I bounded up and over the top of that bank like a deer - with my rival right behind me and catching up fast. Fortunately, there was a little copse of young poplars growing along the brow of the hill, and they were planted so close that he ended up getting that massive rack of his tangled up in them. He was properly stuck. Stampin’ mad, the more he struggled, the madder he got.

I was tempted to make a face and blow him a raspberry, but he was starting to break off branches like they were toothpicks, and I just had time to yell ‘heads up!’ Hilbo grabbed his rifle and fired a shot over his head - causing my new pal to back out of the thicket and plunge down the bank to the lake and freedom.

After all was said and done, we figured we had run into two bulls getting ready to spar, and their blood was already up before we got there. It was, after all, rutting season on the Yukon border, and the males were competing for females by beating the crap out of each other to prove who is the most worthy; another ritual, of course, being the rut itself - that charming piece of devilry where the male digs a rut in the ground, proceeds to piss in it, then rolls around in the musk to make himself more attractive to a prospective partner. The ungulate version of applying a little after shave I’m guessing.

The whole thing has always seemed suspiciously familiar. Maybe it reminds me of last call at many of the bars I’ve played in.

Little did we know, that as we were fiddling and farting around Hall Lake in that clear, cool autumn air, a few miles to the south-east, a drama was taking place that was about to knock everyone’s socks off.

Hall Lake, as it turned out, was part of the Gladys Lake trapping country of a man named Gunter Lishy, and Gunter, at that particular moment, was feeling mighty poorly. Truth be known, Gunter was feeling mighty dead - dead and buried - in the mud along the margins of Hutsigola Lake, shot in the back by ‘Sheslay Mike’ Oros - a bushman and illegal trapper who was, as we spoke, pounding south through the toolies as he made his escape from the scene of the crime.

The shooting was the beginning of a string of events that was to last over four years - one that was destined to end in a wilderness hunt culminating in another shootout that cost the additional lives of RCMP constable Mike Buday and Sheslay Mike himself.

*My sources and credits for this story can be found at the end of Part IV. Thanks to all.”