Larry Foster with friend

I lost a close friend last month when Larry Foster died Feb. 12 of cancer. We knew this was coming, but it’s still difficult, a shock to the system when this happens.

Larry taught me a lot about hunting and fishing and about life in general. And he had a mathematical mind that made him very good at playing cards. He and his brother Mike, who died 10 years ago of a heart attack, not only taught me a lot but also had a special quality about them when it came to being outdoorsmen.

Larry was one of a kind, whose life experiences make him more unique then your average Joe. I have spent more time hunting and fishing with him in the last 33 years then I have with anyone else, so I knew him pretty good.

He grew up during the 1940s and 50s in the Purdy and Longbranch area in Pierce County. He worked hard as a kid milking the cows and doing other chores at the small family farm before school started each morning. His hunting and fishing skills were honed early in life. One of his Dad's favorite places for trout fishing was on the upper Dosewallips River and Larry caught thousands of wild rainbow trout there over the next 50 years. He took me up there one time in the late ’70s and I quickly found out that my trout fishing skills were a joke compared to his.

Larry began learning his commercial fishing skills as a teenager fishing for perch, herring and salmon. One day in 1960 while beach seining for perch on the south end of Anderson Island they made a set around some perch and were pulling the net close to shore when they saw they had also captured a giant king salmon. One of the fishermen was a strong 200-pound young man. This guy grabbed what appeared to be a 100-pound monster by the tail and started pulling it up the sandy beach when all the sudden the salmon knocked the guy on his butt, hit the water and jumped over the net never to be seen again.

When Larry was twenty-something he bought his own 40-foot herring purse seiner with a huge live tank in the middle. He made a living fishing herring for bait in Puget Sound and Hood Canal for the next 35 years.

One time in the late ’60s Larry and his crew saw a salmon gill-netter in distress in northern Hood Canal near Foulweather Bluff. The crew had accidentally set their net in front of a huge school of migrating 15-20 pound dogfish. There were so many caught in the net the boat was in danger of getting pulled over and sinking to the bottom. Larry and his crew helped them cut the net off, saving the boat before it headed for the depths of Hood Canal.

In the early ’70s Larry had some temporary net pens on the south end of Whidbey Island for holding herring. During the summer the herring have so much food in their stomachs they need to be starved for two weeks to improve the quality before they can be sold. So nearly every night they would fish for herring and put them in the net pens.

After weeks and weeks of fishing the net pens were almost full. Late one night they were adding more herring to the net pen and they heard a strange noise off in the distance. Larry turned the spotlight on and saw thousands of glowing eyes as far as he could see. A gigantic school of dogfish was headed right for the net pens at full speed. Within an hour they ate tons of herring plus most of the net. Larry said it was such a feeding frenzy that if someone would have fallen in the water they too might have been eaten.

Larry's favorite pastime was sport fishing for salmon, starting in the 1950s when there were still lots of salmon. He was really good at catching them and cooking them.

One day many years ago a seal was about to get into the herring pen in front of his house. He grabbed a rifle and shot it in the head. He then called me up and said we were having seal for lunch. I said, “Cool! I'll be right over.”

I was surprised how good it was and was amazed that it wasn't fatty and didn't taste fishy. His brother Mike showed up and ate some, and he thought it was good, until we told him what it was.

I started hunting elk and deer with Larry in the ’70s. He was the best elk hunter I have ever known. He seemed to kill an elk every year and usually with one shot to the head.

Larry would sneak through the woods like a cougar for a close shot, and what a shot he was. The first time I saw him shoot we were deer hunting near Tahuya in the ’70s and came across a two-point buck a 100 yards away, running through the Christmas trees. Larry shot it right in the head.

Another time we were elk hunting on Owl Mountain above the Hoh River on the coast. He was borrowing my 30-06 Mossberg and shot a bull elk in the head at 300 yards. I asked him if that was a lucky shot and his reply was “Well that's where I was aiming.”

But things didn't always work perfectly. One time we were hunting whitetails in northeastern Washington and he shot a three-point buck. He walked up to it and put his gun down, got his knife out to start working on it and it got up and ran away, hardly hurt at all. He didn't think that was as funny as I did.

We killed a lot of fish and wildlife together over the many years and none of it went to waste. We ate it all.

I could go on and on. We had a lot of outdoor fun over the years. The stories and memories could fill a book, and maybe they will someday.

Mike Foster and Larry Foster are both gone now, but will never be forgotten by their friends and family. I'm not a religious fanatic but I believe my two dear friends are somewhere together traveling through timbered rolling hills with beautiful blue skies where there are lots of deer and elk to enjoy and streams full of trout.

God-speed my friends.

I miss you both.