Good morning.

I'm standing in the woods near Cummins Pond in Dorchester, New Hampshire, surrounded by thousands of acres of land that in recent years has become much wilder than it used to be.

The good news about that is that the critters are coming back, and we're going to try to catch a few of them today with our camera, assisted by a guy you've really got to meet.

Way up at the end of a long dirt road in Lyme Center, New Hampshire.

Alfred Balch’s house is surrounded by wildlife.

Moose, deer.

Otters.

Loons.

Bears.

Lots of bears.

Alfred spends his spare time in the woods with a video camera, capturing private moments of animals, unaware that anyone is watching.

When he first sent me a DVD copy of some of his work.

I thought, we have got to meet this guy.

Well, today we're going to we're going to follow Alfred through the woods if we're able.

He's pretty spry, and he's going to try to show us how he does it.

A pleasure, Alfred.

We're going to go to the woods together.

But first we're going to take a canoe ride.

Right?

Yeah.

I'm ready.

Let's go.

Oh, and I'll hold it for you.

Okay.

Yeah.

My balance is just terrible.

I'm going to back up.

Okay.

Yep.

In that seat.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Bottom.

A lot of hidden rocks.

Alfred, that loon over there is calling us.

Yep.

He's making a nice, gentle call, so he's not frightened at all.

Let's go see if we can find him.

Okay.

Or her.

That's the case.

May be just about this direction.

I think.

Whoa!

Check out that loon feeding on a fish.

Lucky loon.

He gets sushi almost every day.

You spend a spend a lot of time doing this, Alfred.

Why?

Yes, I do.

Well, I just I love being out with nature, and I love seeing nature.

And, you know, I have as much fun, being able to show it other people and share it.

You know.

And you have the good fortune to be surrounded by it.

You haven't got to go far to find it.

Yeah.

You know, I told a guy once, a friend of mine, I said, you know, I'm not wealthy.

And he says, but your’e rich.

He says, look where you live.

You know what you have around you.

And and, you know, I've thought about that a lot.

That's true.

When you want to go cruise for moose or beaver or Otter, we could take a ride.

The ledges down here is what they call the oven.

East shore?

It’s on the east shore.

Yeah.

Okay.

And, we may see.

Could see a beaver.

Could see a deer.

Could see most anything.

Actually.

I'm on the way.

It's a beautiful, beautiful scene.

The water is great.

There are a couple of streams that come in.

One is a tough brook, and the other one is meadow Brook.

You know, just tiny streams, you know, loaded with little brookies.

Well, little square tails and moose tracks and moose tracks.

You never know what you're going to see.

Up beyond here, there's, pretty good, beaver bog, you know.

And as a cow, moose with two calves.

You know what a beautiful picture.

And it just so happened that my batteries were dead, and my camera.

Alfred might have missed a chance to get that shot, but his batteries were in good shape when he met this bull moose.

I think it's important for, you know, that especially the young people, to see you know, what the wildlife is like out there, what it's like out in the woods.

It was a loons nest one year over here on one of those hummocks.

Well, Alfred, no moose this morning yet?

No.

You have seen them here, though.

Oh, yeah, I've seen them.

I see them quite often.

You know.

You know, you never know, but, Yeah, I've seen them down on the other end there where we were just at.

And I've seen them actually, you know, on this end and all over.

Yeah.

They were tracks.

Yeah.

Well, have me exhausted the aquatic possibilities.

You want to try the terrestrial?

Sure.

And go look for bear.

Deer?

Yeah.

We'll go see what we can find for a bear.

You know, you never know when you're going to see those critters either.

But you know, I've seen them all.

All hours of the day.

Must be fun to be a bear this time of year with the bugs everywhere.

Yeah.

You know, I don't know how much the bugs bother him, you know.

Well, you know, I've seen, where the bears have dug out Yellowjacket, you know, nest ground, ground bees and devour them.

You know?

No, I don't see how they can do that without getting stung.

Send me a bear.

I got yellow jackets under my porch.

Okay, let's run this vessel ashore.

All right.

While Alfred and I load the canoe onto the truck.

We'll show you a sample of Alfred Balch;s Lime Wildlife DVD.

Hi, I'm Alfred Balch Over a period of many years, I have roamed and hiked the hills of Lyme, New Hampshire.

These scenes that I have captured in the hills, mountains of Lyme, New Hampshire.

This snapping turtle is probably a female looking for a sandy spot in which to lay her eggs.

Seemingly unaware of my presence, this porcupine is very busy feeding on red clover.

White tailed fawns are born in May and June.

These twins are probably about a month old.

With her cubs safely up a nearby tree.

This mama bear is content to chew on the bones of a winter killed deer.

Moose are the largest of the deer family.

Standing about seven feet tall at the shoulder.

A large bull might weigh more than half a ton.

Note the antlers still in velvet.

This blue finch Indigo bunting is just one of the many beautiful bird's nest in the Lyme area.

The short tailed weasel known as ermine, is brown in summer and white in winter.

This one was catching mice, I hope here at camp big rock.

I'm not sure whether this barred owl had caught its prey.

It looks a little bit begotten.

He or she seemed to be saying.

Well, you can just stand there if you want, but I'm going swimming.

Took us about half an hour over one of New Hampshire's worst woods roads to get back to Alfred's house.

No sooner we got back, then we spotted a black bear in the field below the house, and Alfred was off with his camera to get some video of it.

We followed, but there's no way we could go through the woods the way he does.

He moves so silently and sometimes not at all.

He says you should always stay still three times as long as you move, and decide where you're going to put your feet before you take a step.

So you can be looking up instead of at your feet.

It works.

He sees more of what's going on than most of us even suspect.

His videos are perfect evidence of that.

Yeah, we spotted the bear in the meadow probably eating grass and clover and we're going to try to sneak down there and see if we can get some shots of it.

Pretty good.

And, if she decides to get a shot of us, I think this one.

That's a pretty big cub.

Yeah, I think I think probably that that cub was released.

She kicked it out probably earlier this month so she could breed again.

So I think it's probably alone.

Okay, well, let's find out, shall we?

Well, I guess let’s mosey down.

It was.

Let's go over that way.

We could stand if.

If we wanted to as a mosquito, but I think the mosquitoes might get in.

Okay.

Where does this trail go, Alfred?

Well, this is an old skid road.

No logging road, and it dates back to 1926.

Oh, and I was researching the deeds.

I found that out, you know.

So it goes clear up to the what I call North Ridge, which is east of Denmark Hill.

Yeah.

So it's a, it's a it's a nice, nice walk.

These beaches ever give you beach nuts?

Yeah.

We're going to have some acorns this year.

We can cut over to here and then to the left.

We'll go out to where those, the, rocks they were.

They call those glacial erratic.

Erratic?

Yeah.

Glacial reddish boulders.

Yeah.

Boulders.

How about that.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A very interesting big glacial erratic.

It almost looks like a big piece of machinery, doesn't it?

The way it's split off there.

Oh.

Looking at it from over here, Will almost looks like a an anvil or something that's older.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was a beautiful.

They have facets.

And the reason for that is they get trapped in the ice and dragged along and they drag along on the ground.

And it grinds them down to a flat side.

Buttons I say again pretty soon the friction of that expanding flat spot is greater than the friction holding it in place.

And that will roll over.

Yeah.

Then it'll flatten the other side.

That makes sense.

So they've got this, aspect of angularity.

Now, what's this here?

Well, you see, this is a pole that the bears come in usually in June in the breeding season.

Yeah.

And what they do?

Oh, they come in here and and now stand up here and they'll scratch at this and they'll bite in the heavier marks are the bite marks, you know, you know, and they've gotten up here as to tell you how big he is.

That was a bigger bear.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Big enough.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They got up here, Yeah.

Isn't that great?

And that there's several poles down the roadway here, and they've done the same thing to all of them.

There's there's something about these that attract them, but they use it.

I've seen them come in and they'll rub the head on it, you know, rub back and forth, and sometimes they're back up to it.

I don't know if they're scratchi Another big bore bear marking and leaving scent during the June mating season.

Alfred, why did you become a wildlife videographer?

Years ago, I would see stuff, and it would impress me so that I would try to tell people about it.

You know, it's.

Sometimes they'd look at me.

Oh, sure.

And.

But I wanted to share it with them, you know.

You know, other than just a story.

And so that's when I started doing the photography and, and of course, I showed it locally, you know.

You know, talked about it locally for fundraisers and so on like that.

But I just enjoy it gives me a lot of satisfaction.

It's fun doing it.

And it gives me a lot of satisfaction showing it to others and, you know, so they can enjoy it as well.

I always carry the camera in like truck or snowshoe and, I found that you don't get a picture without it.

And I missed a few years ago a few opportunities.

So I always tried to have the camera with me and on the dirt road down here.

I came upon, a doe, just a just up the farm.

And he was still wobbly.

A newborn fawn, only hours old, noticed the neat rows and spots along the back with others.

Helter skelter.

Oh.

That's great.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

Having the camera with you, you know, pretty important.

You know, I've had to work pretty hard to get some of this stuff and.

But a lot of it I have gotten just with having the camera.

Yeah.

And being ready to use it, you know.

Oh, you're making me feel guilty because I never carry a camera.

Alfred, after you got a camera and started capturing wildlife, what was the inspiration for creating a DVD?

I'd been getting bits and pieces of stuff, you know?

You know, over the years.

And I'd like to be able to show this to other people.

And, you know, I showed some of my tapes, you know, it, put them on the TV and show them to him.

And they thought it was great and you should make a DVD.

I was missing one thing to get the loan to when they were doing the, Yeah, doing doing their displays real, you know, and aggressive behaviors, you know, you know, and usually, you know, how it is, you paddle over and down they go and come up behind you does away.

And so I said to my friend, where, who I do a lot of fishing with.

I said, how would you like to go out to Reservoir Pond and, do some bass fishing?

And, but what I really want to do is get some good loon pictures.

You know, I said, if I can get some good loon shots, then I can put this, this DVD together and finish it off, you know.

You know, so we went out.

We fished about halfway around the pond, and then we heard a loon and we heard another one.

So we paddled on over there, you know, expecting the same thing would happen a loon would go down and disappear.

We get over there, and it was like they was putting on a show, just just for, you know, especially for us, you know?

You couldn't have asked for anything on the reservoir pond.

Listen to the territorial calls of the loons as we watch their aggressive displays.

They they did the tremolo.

They did the yodel.

And and they stood up in the water.

They ran along the wall to see.

And it was just.

And it went on and on and on.

Oh.

Oh!

Oh.

Do you ever see bobcats out here at all?

Oh, yeah.

You know.

Yeah, yeah.

Exactly.

I, I got some on my DVD.

Oh, yeah.

Even though the bobcat is North America's most common wildcat, it is not often seen on the hill.

I got into my camo Full camo.

Even with the.

Even with the facemask.

Yeah.

And the whole work to.

And I sat there for 3.5 hours.

Sure enough, along came a bobcat.

Get sneaking in very, very carefully.

Yeah.

And so, you know, I started taping.

So it was fun to see, you know, they come to the sunlight is so beautiful.

Beautiful animals.

Yeah.

Unless you’re a rabbit you've got over here that you got everything here.

Just about just about everything.

Every animal in the northeast I've seen here.

You know, moose.

We've seen moose, coyote going to calf coyotes.

Bobcat.

You know, I see deer and a bear for sure.

You oughta, you know, raccoons, you name it.

You know, we've seen it.

Got mink.

Mink?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

They help themselves to my trout.

Yeah, they.

I'm guessing that this otter has called a horn cow.

Judging from the difficulty it seems to have, getting it to go down.

We're in a great spot.

We're right on the edge of this huge wilderness, you know?

I mean, it's not mountains over here.

This is land, but Ridge, you know, of course, the Appalachian Trail runs across that, you know, and it's pretty well protected.

Most of this land is in some kind of conservation easement.

Whoa.

Yeah.

So in a hundred years, this will be still forest primeval.

That they still here?

Yeah, they still here.

Great.

So it's great, you know, to be able to walk out the door and hits on any of these trails and, you know, see what I can see.

Well, you've seen a lot.

Yeah, seen a lot.

Are you going to keep at it?

Yeah, I plan to keep at it.

I'm going to shop and buy myself a new camera.

This camera knows, I guess you call it obsolete.

It's, It's a take the old tape.

It's had a few beatings It's had a few.

Yeah, I've dropped it.

So on.

Yeah.

And there's a deer right in the center.

And you were looking at the glass.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

This camera's done a lot for me.

The trilling of the American toad.

Another one of the beautiful musical sounds of nature during the spring season.

Well, we are back once again on Alfred's secret pond.

Last time we were looking for moose I guess we still are.

But this time we're going to get some bass.

Small mouth Right, Alfred?

I hope so, yeah, yeah, it's the last day of summer.

Tomorrow is the autumnal equinox.

So it's about time we do this because, the pond will be frozen.

What about two weeks?

A little longer than that.

We'll see how well we can do this.

You know, the rocks run out here quite a ways.

So probably about like this for now.

Right there.

Yeah.

Okay.

I got a birch tree coming out of the top of your head.

You know?

Yeah.

Okay.

We still got weeds here ahead of us.

Yeah, I might as well drag this along on the way over there.

I dragged mine, too.

If you want.

I mean, a doubling the chances.

Yeah, it wasn't too long.

Alfred had a fish on.

Yeah, yeah, a little guy.

Yeah, but scrappy, I don't know if I bother with the net.

All right, well, what's wrong with that one?

Yeah, it's fish, about the right size to eat Yeah.

Yeah, well, about a pound, maybe.

Well.

All right.

Pretty fish.

That's a good start.

Small mouth.

Nice.

Pretty red eye Yeah, well, we didn't get skunked.

Alfred.

Yeah.

Still looking for that 3 or 4 pounder.

That would be nice.

Yeah, especially on this little light rod.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that'd be great.

We get them eventually.

They may not be this trip.

We got a year or two left.

Maybe.

Okay.

I would say two reasons to keep fishing.

One is they’re biting.

The other is they aint.

We had pretty much poor luck fishing, but the guide boat makes fishing as comfortable as sitting in an armchair.

And you sit at opposite ends 12ft apart, not in each other's way, chatting as easily as in the drawing room.

Thank you for giving me this nice ride.

It's a pleasure.

It is entirely mine.

Think of what I be doing if I were home.

That's a great gift.

Before we left the pond, he said.

When we fished next spring, we'll catch some nice bass.

I almost hate to say it, but as lovely as it is to catch some nice bass, it almost doesn't matter.

Well, it's that time.

Once again, we have to say goodbye.

As much as we regret it, we really cannot thank Alfred enough for showing us his beautiful domain.

Your estate on the hilltop, as it were, and all your animal pals.

It's just been.

It's been great.

And I'll be back.

Let's go and be back.

I'm looking forward to having you come back.

And I've enjoyed it very much.

It's just it's great fun.

So we're going to hang it up here and, then sneak down to the field and see if we can see any more, bears coming out on the field.

I'm Willem Lange, and I hope to see you again on windows to the wild.