The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree

Welcome to our first blog post. We, Rikke and Trine, usually keep our posts and stories on our social platforms professional and often professional in the hunting world. But things are not what they used to be. We have both gone full-time into Hunt & Hike. While it’s a bit of a stretch to share more personally, we want to invite you into our world. In this first blog post, we take you to the place, or rather, the people, where it all began.

Our mother originally did not want to have children. The thought of losing them kept her from even considering it. At the time, she was engaged and had just moved into a beautiful detached house in the safe streets of Ry. She was on the threshold of putting down roots in a life that was basically practical, without spontaneity or adventure. However, that all changed when a dark-haired young man in a worn shirt walked into the kitchen of our grandparents’ home.

He was the new shooting student at Rye Nørskov, employed under our grandfather, Jørn Wagner. He showed our dear mother all the secret places that Søhøjlandet had to offer, and perhaps also the corners of the room in the student wing. Our grandfather was strict when it came to discipline and house rules. It was unacceptable not to finish eating when grandma’s stew was served on the third day, but it was even more forbidden to have relationships with the shooter’s daughters.

As you can probably tell, our father is not the stereotypical privet hedge owner, but rather the guardian of the forest. Our father is an adventurer and although it wasn’t the norm back then, he wanted to explore the world. Our mother knew full well that she had fallen in love with a man who was adventurous and independent and could not be held back from experiencing the world.

He wanted to be a hunting guide in the Canadian wilderness for a while. After some letters exchanged with a distant outfitter in Alberta and a plane ticket paid for with hard-earned money and a small advance from his inheritance, he set off. Everyone knows that maintaining a long-distance relationship is challenging, but try to imagine that there is no contact at all. No quick messages, short calls over Skype or electronic air kisses in emails. Our father was deep in the wilderness where communication was only possible via a walkie-talkie that only covered a few kilometers radius.

The longing became too great and she just had to see him. Our father had taken a few weeks off to show her the high mountains and wildlife of Canada. During a drive in a small van along the endless country roads winding through beautiful plains, he set the stage for something he had long contemplated. Our father has a remarkable ability to achieve what he wants and he does it in a way that you still think he’s an amazing person. So in between the mountains and the bear tracks far away from home, he gave our mother an ultimatum: “Helle, if you don’t want to have children, it just doesn’t have to be the two of us.”

You’ve probably already guessed the answer to this ultimatum, because here we are thirty years later, following exactly in our father’s footsteps. We grew up with hunting in our blood, and in this short text you have already met both our grandfather and father, both men who have left their mark on Danish hunting. These two gentlemen laid the foundation for hunting and nature to make up the majority of our lives. They have given us the opportunity to learn the skills of hunting and pass them on, which today we call Hunt & Hike.

Adventure is also part of our heritage. After countless times sitting on the Chesterfield sofa in the comfort room and watching our father’s time as a hunting guide in Canada unfold on the wall through the projector’s beam of light, it was our turn to go. The stories we heard over and over again live on in us. In the same way our father decided to explore the world, we did the same, but under completely different circumstances. There were no letters in circulation, quite the opposite. It was easy to spend four sabbaticals when you could send an email in a split second.

Thus, Rikke became a sled dog handler in the cold north and a hunting assistant in Greenland. Trine went to warmer climes where she trained owls, and later she went to northern Norway as a hiking guide. Now we travel every year as adventurous hunting guides in wild North America and elsewhere. We have a spark inside us that only continues to burn if we challenge our comfort zone.

This may not quite match what is written at the top of this blog post. A mother afraid of losing gave birth to two adventurous girls who are driven by the wilderness. This became really clear to us when we returned home from our first trip to Canada. She had spent months worrying about what might happen when help depended on a satellite phone and a helicopter. Our mother is warm-hearted, and with a life on the wing, she is the home we always return to when the world rages around us.

We believe that madness has a purpose and that opposites attract. Here you get the best of both worlds: a pair of feet that will never put down roots, while the road is paved with gratitude for every day we get to live. The wilderness is not always graceful, and we’ve already experienced a bit of everything out there, as a later blog post will reveal.

Welcome to our very first of its kind. A post that reveals that in many cases the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read along.

Best regards,

Rikke and Trine