A Dinner at Anders

Anders invited us to dinner at his home in Slitu - a forty minute drive outside the city. When he commutes to Oslo it takes two hours of riding trains, driving, and riding his bike to make the same trip. The night he came by to pick up his game cameras he had to be careful to leave early enough to catch the last train leaving the city.

For our drive, we were told to take the E18 through Askin and Spyderberg and that his house was behind the big grocery store in Slitu. The directions were vague but we printed off some google translated map directions and set off.

The countryside outside of Oslo is smooth bright green rolling hills with forests right up to the edge of the tilled fields. I saw the same sort of landscape in Japan, where it seemed the farmers had a hard time keeping the trees from barging into their fields and there was a sharp line between wild forest and tame field.

The E18 was less of a highway than a hydra. Every road sign along the way claimed the highway led off in a different direction. The translated instructions were difficult enough without the road signs suggesting we should turn away from the E18 to follow the E18. The confusion was because they were rebuilding the road, creating a newer E18 that would run parallel to the old road and the signs referred to both old and new roads indiscriminately.

There are unmanned traffic stations along the roads leading into and out of the city with instructions to call a number and pay a toll. It cost ~20Kr to drive into or out of the city.

Confused by the translated directions, we took a wrong turn at a roundabout onto the wrong E18 and ja had me call Anders and make sure we were going the right way. Anders speaks excellent English but he does have an accent and it was difficult figuring out what he was telling me over the choppy cellphone.

After doubling back and heading through a toll booth we turned off at Slitu and drove past a huge shopping center. It was like finding a walmart in the woods and we assumed he must live farther down the road but after driving a while we circled back and drove around the back of the giant building. Anders house was there and it was obvious by the absurd number of bird feeders and bird boxes hanging from every tree or vertical surface in the small yard.

Anders purchased the house from his grandparents only recently and was in the middle of renovating. In Norway individuals can renovate their homes freely but they must hire a contractor to work on the bathroom tile. He anticipated spending $40k for someone to come out and tile his small bathroom.

The house was furnished in the height of 70's chic - though he was in the process of ripping out the carpet and painting the walls.

The game cameras I brought from America, were to replace the older cameras he had been using. Anders is an avid hunter and outdoorsman and the walls of his living room were covered with game trophies. He is particularly interested in Roe Deer and one whole wall is covered with mounted roe deer skulls.

Roe deer are a species common to northern Europe and Asia and cold climates. They are smaller than American white tail or brown deer and ja remarked on the small size of the mounted skulls. Anders' was upset by this insinuation and suggested he'd just insulted his manhood. One of the skulls had a metal draped over it's forehead and another had a bullet mounted in the same place. The antlers even on the prize winning one were only about a foot long but gnarled and bumpy with age.

When we arrived he was in a bit of a panic. He had asked ja to call before we left so he could time the food preparation to match our arrival but he'd forgotten and his only warning we were on our way was when I called to ask for directions. He used the meat from 12 large wood pigeons in an Indian dish with white rice and a yogurt salad. The food was good and the dog begged beneath the table for scraps. He interrupted the conversation several times to shout,

"NAI!"

After dinner Anders prepared his shotgun and we drove out into the countryside to a local shooting range. The place was full of outdoor enthusiasts and it was interesting to see the same clothing, hair styles, and mannerisms in a foreign culture as you'd find in the outskirts of the California central valley. The shared interest seemed to warp people into a particular mold or maybe it was the other way around, and men prone to short beards, flannel, swaggering, and dirty ball caps are genetically prone to become hunters.

Anders bought three boxes of shotgun shells from the woman in the booth (refusing to let us to pay) and we went out to the clay pigeon slinging machine. The shooting range was a cleared field bordered by a line of pine trees. The machine was gasoline powered and had dials that activated side to side and up and down motion. With everything enabled, the machine would sling the clay discs in a random direction out over the field and the shooter had to bring the shotgun to his shoulder, aim, and hit it before it sailed off into the trees.

When it came time for me to shoot, and after a short confused discussion on which way the switch went to make the gun safe, I hit the first pigeon thrown into the sky to the merriment of my audience.

"Stop now! Stop now!" they called out because at that moment, I had a lifetime 100% hit rate.

Later Anders participated in a more formal shooting competition while we watched from behind a fenced off area in the cold wind. It involved a referee and five or six shooters rotating through a series of posts as they shot a full box of shells. Anders said he joined the competition to compete against a friend but that afternoon didn't go so well.

Videos

After shooting we returned to his home to discuss the russ and ja mentioned he was interested in seeing the lynx Anders had captured with one of his game cameras. The motion triggered game cameras were setup in several secret forest locations where he had wooden feeders. The cameras captured roe deer and moose, and occasionally, wood pigeons, badger, or lynx.

Anders couldn't remember the location or date of the picture of the cat so for the next forty minutes we browsed though his huge collection of Roe deer pictures, organized by date and feeder location, to find the single lynx.

His enthusiasm for the deer was obvious and he pointed out particularly large specimens as we flipped through the pictures.

In one series of pictures a badger can be seen running through the frame chasing the deer away from the feeder.

"Stupid Badger chasing my deer." he grumbled.

It took some time for him to locate the picture of the lynx and there was only one shot with the cat looking away from the camera.

While sorting through the pictures of roe deer he stopped and pointed out particularly large stags saying, "He better make lots of babies because I'm going to get him this season." He showed us some images of a large male taken a few weeks before and hoped he'd get a chance to shoot it before his neighbor caught him. I admit I don't fully understand his attitude towards the deer. He is obviously enthralled by them but this fascination it's somehow rooted in a desire to kill them.

"Oooh! I want to shoot that one!"

While writing this, I couldn't remember how much feed he said he'd put out this winter so we emailed him:

This year was the first I feed at all my hunting areas and I feed close to 4 tons of oat this winter (That was rather hard compared to a normal winter) :)

I put out the cameras two weeks ago and check them last weekend. I am doing a little bit of experimenting with the settings now..

The first camera had gotten some images of roe deer, but over 2000 of particularity one moose! Has to change the settings because that is way to much pictures :)

The second camera had taken some 300 pictures of roe-deer, moose and pigeons so that was good!

The third one unfortunately has a malfunction, it had just taken pictures of nothing continually until the memory card was full some hours later. And I could not access the menu when I was checking it, so I talked to Cabelas and I am sending it back to get a new :)

He sent a few pictures taken by the new game cameras along with his email.

At the end of the evening, after we had passed back through the toll booth, we received a call from Anders and it took several minutes to decipher his accent over the bad cell connection to understand he was asking if he had left a box of shotgun shells in our trunk. We pulled over and the shells were there. He insisted we drive back and grew increasingly impatient as ja argued with him. I think I agreed with ja when he suggested we just leave them in the car and return them the next time we saw him in Oslo but Anders was adamant, "You need a license!".

We turned around and went back through the toll booth twice more to return the shells.