JAY – It was 1989. Harvey Calden was a pilot, hired to fly people from Maine into northern Canada for hunting and fishing trips.

On a flight into Labrador, he and a co-pilot ran into some bad weather.

They flew the plane low and broke out of the clouds over Umiakovik Lake. They banked the plane over the lake and saw a “black mass” in the water.

“I had never seen so many fish,” Calden said. “The water was gin clear, and you could see them by the thousand. We landed there and taxied up to the beach.”

But Calden found more than a spectacular school of fish. “We saw smoke coming from a camp and an old man walking toward us.”

The man was Elmer Wilson of Old Town. It was Wilson whom Calden had read about in a newspaper article 25 years earlier.

Calden was a young man when he read the article, with little money, married and raising two young children, but that guy in the article – Elmer Wilson, outfitter and owner of Canadian hunting camps – was living Calden’s dream.

So Calden kept the article; it sat on his night stand for years. Meanwhile, Calden bought his own camps in Maine and began hiring out to fly hunters into northern Canada.

The chance meeting of Wilson “really shocked me,” Calden said. The two started talking, and eventually Calden ended up buying his first set of camps in Canada from Wilson.

“From there I just expanded and expanded,” he said. “I’ve been adding camps yearly.”

Once in a lifetime

Calden’s wilderness hunting and fishing camps are plotted out on a wall map of Labrador and Quebec at his Jay base. His company, Labrador Outdoors Inc., also sets up mobile camps depending on where the caribou herd is in its migration.

Calden monitors the movement of nearly 800,000 caribou yearly to try to give hunters the trophy hunt of their dreams.

Calden now has a fleet of planes, including four planes with floats for landing on water. Calden says he is the only outfitter with a license in Labrador and Quebec. He owns more than a dozen camps.

There are currently about 40 outfitters. The Canadian government is not giving out any more licenses.

“It’s an expensive operation,” Calden said, with the cost of fuel needed for the airplanes, generators and the rest. He has to fly fuel into the remote camps in 55-gallon barrels. It costs nearly $5,000 to get four drums of fuel to the most northern camp, he estimated.

Ice and supplies are flown in, too, as well as clients.

Calden serves about 200 customers a year, both men and women. Over the years the number of women using the service has increased. Out of 200 people, about 20 are women, Calden said. Two women took the second- and third-largest caribou last year, he said

Normally there are six customers a week per camp, along with three guides, a cook and another employee. The average cost of a trip is $3,000, he said. The average age of his clients is 45 to 50.

“For most of these people, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime trip,” Calden said.

Came up short

Originally Calden wanted to be a game warden. But at 5 foot, 7 inches, Calden was 3 inches too short to meet height restrictions at the time.

He worked in body shops, paper companies and shoe manufacturers over the years. But he continued seeking secret spots to hunt and fish in his spare time.

On one fishing trip to Greenville, he drove for miles to get to the spot, stoving up his new truck along the way. It wasn’t too long after he arrived that he saw people he knew from Jay. They had flown into the area. He decided to be a pilot after that trip.

The next day, he took his first flying lesson.

Calden bought a two-seater plane for $1,750, one he started by turning the propeller by hand, to make lessons more affordable.

He went on to get his commercial license. He bought a bigger airplane and took a weekend job giving scenic airplane rides. He bought wilderness camps in northern Franklin County and took a job flying people into northern Canada to hunt caribou.

Then he met Wilson, and his expansion into Canada began.

“I like to share the adventure with others,” Calden said.

dperry@sunjournal.com