The burly hunter with grey hair and a thick moustache had been searching for Schoenborn almost as long as the police, combing the thick bush around Merritt, B.C., ever since news broke more than a week ago that the father was wanted in the deaths of his three children.

"I hope if you were there you'd have been looking for him," Robinson said outside his house about half an hour north of Merritt, talking over the barks of more than a dozen dogs chained up behind him.

"If this had been Hicksville, U.S.A., every guy that had any jam and his dog would be out there looking for him, and we would have had him.

"I had the free time, I got the wherewithal and he's not the kind of fellow to make me nervous."

But after covering several kilometres looking for Schoenborn, it was chance that eventually led him to the accused father.

Robinson, who has long tracked cougars, bears and other large animals, was just outside town on Wednesday morning searching for Schoenborn for the 10th straight day when he fell off a bank and cut his eye.

He was on his way back into town to fix up the cut when a local resident, who had stumbled upon Schoenborn while walking his dog, flagged him down on the road.

Armed with his rifle, Robinson went into the woods with one of his dogs -- a massive dark-grey animal named Blaze -- found Schoenborn and kept watch until police arrived.

Schoenborn was in custody Wednesday night and the police had yet to announce charges, but Robinson said he was glad the manhunt was over.

"Well, I gotta find something to do tomorrow morning now," he said with a roaring laugh.

But he added: "You know what I'm happy with, it's a done deal."

When news spread throughout Merritt, a city of about 7,000 in the Nicola Valley about 270 kilometres north of Vancouver, many in the community had the same reaction.

Robinson's neighbour, Kurt Mohr, said he wasn't surprised his hunter friend was part of finding the fugitive.

"If Kim's looking for you, he's going to find you. He's like a guy stuck in time. He should be back in the wild west days."

Said Dan Robins who lives beside the mobile home where the children died: "If anyone would have tracked him down, it'd be Kim. He's good and strong. Lots of kill power on that guy."

Merritt Mayor David Laird put it this way: "Well, he did his job."

While Robinson called the RCMP and offered up his help in their search soon after the killings, he's had his own run-ins with the police in the past.

He was charged in 1999 after using his dogs to track and kill a nuisance bear in a Merritt trailer park two years earlier. He was acquitted of the charge.

Court documents also show Robinson was convicted in May 2001 of two counts of being in possession of bear gall bladders. He was fined $3,500 and lost his hunting license for four and a half years.

Possessing and selling the bear gall bladders, prized in traditional Asian medicine as a cure for everything from fever to erectile dysfunction, is illegal in Canada.

A document from the province's environmental appeal board shows the convictions resulted from an investigation in which Robinson sold two bear gall bladders to an undercover officer in 1998.

The documents say Robinson said he felt he had been manipulated into providing the gall bladders as an act of compassion, though he knew it was illegal to do so.

Robinson admitted that while he's well-known around Merritt, he's not always well-liked.

"Sometimes they like me, sometimes they don't," said Robinson, who, his son had warned, had been drinking port at the end of an intense day of dealing with police and reporters.

"Some guys think I'm a dink, and some think I'm a good guy -- I do what I do and that's that."