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Barry Kidd understands that you just can’t go around “shooting people,” but he also knows that what is his, is his, and that he works hard, and that people coming onto his farm in rural Saskatchewan and looking to steal something — or worse — are people he is not about to back down from.

“Most farmers are armed in the field,” Kidd says. “It has always been that way for us — you don’t want a skunk to go through your combine (harvester) since, when you ask a skunk to move, he won’t — so for that reason we have always carried guns.

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“But now that has been added to something altogether different: We have guns. We carry guns, and we want the criminals to know it.”

Around noon on Sept. 19, a farm labourer on a property near Fiske, a rural crossroads with an old curling rink and even an older grain elevator, saw three men in the road and a black SUV parked nearby. He slowed his vehicle. Drawing closer, he realized the men were masked — and armed. One levelled a pistol at the windshield of the truck, whereupon the labourer ducked and barrelled toward the trio. No shots were fired, an RCMP manhunt ensued.