Dr. Friedrich Wilhelm "Fritz" Remmler (1890-1972), Hunter & Falconer
Friedrich Remmler was born to a German family Son of a
German father and a Swedish mother, Remmler grew up in Finland and developed a
passion for hunting at an early age. As a teenager, he acquired and trained a
golden eagle for hunting, becoming the first hunter in Finland to do so. This
led to the opportunity to hunt on the Kirgiz steppe with the Kazakhs, expert
falconers whose eagles took down full-size wolves.
Remmler started to go on the hunting expeditions, through his father’s business
contacts, he was invited to a wolf hunt on a Russian estate where the
vodka-drenched all-night carousing is more dangerous than the animals.
In his book he skis after lynx in the bitter cold of a Finnish winter, spends a
terrifying night adrift on an ice floe while hunting seals, is nearly washed
out to sea on an island duck hunt, and meets a mysterious hunter who calls in
wolves by howling. Later, running a business that supplies live animals to
zoos, Remmler takes on the challenge of trapping live moose in nets. and grew
up in the Grand Duchy of Finland, hunting & shooting at every opportunity
in what is now Finland, Karelia and Russia. He pursued wolves with borzois as a
guest of the Neratovs, ran down lynx, bears & more wolves with famous
Finnish huntsmen, hunted seals on ice floes with commercial sealers where he
was swept off in an ice storm, surviving only by luck.
He visited Russia's great eagle market at Orenburg, and made innumerable
observations on the society around him. After WWI Remmler he ran a business in
Finland, collecting wild animals live for zoos and collections around the
world, pioneering the safe trapping of elk. Remmler came to Canada from Germany
in 1951 and was employed as a gamekeeper for General Motors, where he helped
maintain land owned by the automaker on Griffith’s Island on Georgian Bay, near
Owen Sound, Ont. He also spent four years working as an officer of the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police.Eventually, he and his family emigrated to rural
Ontario where he wrote this memoir.
He retired in 1964 but that didn’t mean he had stopped working. He continued to
dabble in films, making children’s movies for the National Film Board of
Canada, most notably, 1966’s “The Bear and the Mouse”, a variation on a fable
by Aesop where mouse comes to the aid of a trapped bear in return for past
favour. The bear catches and then frees a mouse; later, the mouse chews an
escape route for his trapped friend. He passed away in 1972 as a result of a
massive heart attack.
“The Memoirs of a Hunter- Experiences in Finland and Russia, 1904-1930”
(published in August 2009.) The book is a true tale of hunting in the frozen
wilderness of another time. Friedrich describes his adventures in graphic
detail. His words are complemented by illustrations by Russian artist Vadim
Gorbatov. Ingmar Remmler was doing a little housecleaning when he came across a
hidden gem that had been buried for more than 35 years. It was a 450-page
manuscript, written in German, that was completed by his father Friedrich,
shortly before he died at 82 years of age in 1972 “I found the manuscript at
home,” Ingmar said as he held up the work. “My father had originally written it
back in 1972. He submitted it to publisher but they rejected it. They said it
was too long.”
It is an astonishing account of hunting, trapping and hawking from a lost
manuscript boxed in a cellar for over thirty five years .This is a staggering
true-life adventure of deep snow, dark forests and times and places long since
claimed by history. Described in graphic detail and illustrated by renowned
Russian artist Vadim Gorbatov, this mesmerising account will captivate not only
the hunter, but anyone interested in wildlife and the outdoors. This is a
fascinating - and perhaps unique - account of a life divided between middle
class St. Petersburg, the Russian aristocracy and the vast multinational
peasantry.
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