Time For My Time

The Thanksgiving holiday weekend is coming to a close, and I find myself ending it much the same way I began it:  sitting on the couch in front of a football game.  In fact, the couch and I used the last four days to become very reacquainted with each other...and I have no regrets about that at all.

Thanksgiving is a great holiday for teachers.  Oh, who am I kidding?  Every holiday is great for teachers.  While most of the rest of the working world trudged back to work on Friday we teachers, as we do every year, did whatever the heck we wanted to do on Black Friday.  This teacher used Friday, and Thursday, and Saturday and today, to rest.  Rest my body as well as my mind.  Going into the weekend I had plans and to-do lists and goals....but when Thursday morning dawned I cancelled the plans and tossed the to-do's.

I wasn't completely unproductive, and I did way more than just sit in front of the TV.  My house is a little bit cleaner than it was on Wednesday.  Most of my hunting stuff is cleaned and packed away.  The clean laundry now out-weighs the dirty laundry.  My freezers are defrosted, cleaned, and organized, as is my laundry room.....well, I didn't need to defrost the laundry room.  But I also did some pleasure reading.  I watched a lot of football.  I slept in, daily.  I did NOT go to school or do any teacher stuff here at home (until about 20 minutes ago).  This afternoon I even took a nap - I never take naps!

While I dozed today I kept having cognitive dissonance about my choices over the weekend.  I compared my accomplishments to my goals, the accomplishments falling far short of the goals, and wondered if I'd wasted four days.  My gut and heart told me "no", and they still say the same.  I feel rested, mentally and physically.  I feel ready to go to school tomorrow.  I feel prepared to endure the holiday season.  I'm as thankful now for these last four days off as I was last Wednesday when I walked out of school.  Maybe more so.

Teaching is a really hard job.  Life is an even harder job.  Day after day of both becomes very draining, and I'm not even a real teacher anymore!  I hope my teaching colleagues found a way to do what I did this weekend, take a little vacation from both.  If not, why not?  Why do we, teachers and others, have such a hard time stepping away from outside needs so we can concentrate on our own needs?  It's frustrating, sad even, that life has become so all-consuming that we feel guilty or lazy when we choose to be unproductive with our allotted hours in a day.  I'm not suggesting we all just toss aside our responsibilities and go through life as a sluggard.  I AM suggesting we remind ourselves, and each other, that it's ok to step away from those responsibilities once in a while and recharge ourselves with some "me time".  But maybe not for four days at a time......

And that's gonna be an abrupt end because this final football game of the weekend is just fantastic!

Day 11 - Endgame

And just like that, it's over.

With one last whimper the 2016 hunting season came to a close today.  Two weeks ago, on the eve of Opening Day, I wrote about the feeling of culmination as the months of preparation and anticipation gave way to two weeks of hunting.  Those weeks got here slowly but left way too quickly, and have left behind a thick mixture of melancholy, regret, and disappointment....made bearable by the plans and strategy already forming for next year.

Today's hunt was spent with an eye on the future; after ten days of seeing very little deer activity I decided one less eye on the lookout for deer wasn't going to matter much.  I again walked out to hunt rather than take a 4-wheeler.  Sixteen degrees this morning with no wind, so my trek across the field was much warmer than yesterday.  I arrived at a stand I've walked or drove by for two years and have never stood in; today I stopped and spent an hour in a spot I've decided needs to be hunted more.  As I stood I began to build a list of next year's needs:  stands that need to move, trails that need to emerge, food plots that need to be created, habits that need to change.  This was our second poor season in a row - once is an incidence, twice a coincidence, three times a pattern - and I am not allowing a pattern of struggle to emerge.

I walked for an hour after standing an hour, seeing a deer hop out of and back into the woods ahead of me on the trail as I walked.  Collected a trail camera at what used to be called the Slaughterhouse and is now known as the Dead Zone.  Not a track has been made anywhere near it since the snow ended Friday evening.  Walked back out to the fields and made my way through our spruce and pine plantations to an opening that sits above the river bottom.  An opening that right now holds little nutrition for the deer but will become a clover patch next year.  Sat on a log for another hour, thinking and watching and planning...and then I called it quits.  I thought I'd hunt until noon, but at 11:30 I knew I wanted to be done.  Two weeks of bad weather, bad decisions, and bad hunting had beaten the desire to stay longer right out of me.

I ended yesterday's post by hoping for one more memory on the final day of the season.  Today's hunt lasted only a few hours but they were enough to give me that memory, though it has nothing to do with deer.  While I was on that stand (that doesn't have a proper name) to begin the morning my dad came riding across the field to begin his final hunt.  He parked at the gate to the hayfield and began to trudge towards the Dinner Pail Road, which was several hundred yards straight east of where I was standing.  I knew he'd be coming and where he was going, but he didn't know I'd be where I was.  I watched every step this old hunter took, the man who used to fill our freezers with meat every year and most years would put a set of antlers on the wall.  He was a little younger than my current age when I first joined him as a hunter, and those were his prime years in the woods.  He's long past his prime now - his daily hunting hours have decreased, he doesn't see bucks very often, he doesn't shoot as well as he used to - but this morning he moved like the guy I followed through the woods in those prime years.  Or maybe I was trying to see that guy from so long ago, and be that kid, and have those years back.  Somehow the seasons have slipped by and turned us both into different versions of ourselves, in some ways better, but in others not so.

As I stood on that stand and watched my hunting hero head north again....it's hard to say how many hundreds of times he's walked that road....I wondered how many seasons he has left, how many walks he'll be able to make, how many of these mornings we'd get to share.  Even now, over 30 years after my first hunt, it's comforting to know that Dad is still out in the woods with me.  As if called by my thoughts he suddenly looked west and saw me, and immediately threw his hand in the air and gave me a big wave (I'd love to say that three deer took off behind him when he waved because that would be hilarious...but no) which I returned with the same enthusiasm.  That gesture, that simple wave,  crossed more than distance; it crossed generations and memories to silently symbolize the lifelong connection these hunting seasons have given a father and his son.  He resumed his walk, I continued my stand, and in minutes he was gone from my view.  Someday he'll be gone from these woods.  But I will never forget that wave.

This hunting season has already started to slide into the symphony of yesterdays that plays through my mind.  The rifle is wiped down and oiled and placed in the gun cabinet, its home for the next eleven months.  Shells are back in the box.  Trail cameras sit in drawers rather than hang on trees.  A pile of orange and red clothing awaits laundering.  And the hunter in me returns to dormancy, allowing the father, teacher, and coach to resume their roles.  The greatest days of the year have ended, and though hopes and dreams were left unfulfilled this year the time was still precious.  As are the memories these last eleven hunting days have given me.  The days end, the seasons end, but the memories live on to connect those seasons and, more importantly, the people who enjoy them.

Day 10 - A long walk in the woods

I love living in Minnesota for a variety of reasons, but the extreme differences between our seasons is probably the thing I love most about this state.  We can have temperature swings of over one hundred degrees in just a few months.  The same piece of land has four distinct looks as the seasons pass.  And, of course, the widely varied seasons allow for a wide variety of activities throughout the year.  I shudder to think of the boredom that would set in if I were to live somewhere that lacked seasonal changes.

I've done quite a bit of shuddering today.  A week ago I was sweating in sixty degrees; today was a little cooler.  It was twenty six degrees with a single digit windchill at 7:00 a.m. today as I trudged through snow that was anywhere from an inch deep in spots to over my knees in others...due to drifting....due to the whipping northwest winds.  More than once I had a brief longing for the warmth of last week.

Cold, yes, but a really nice day for a walking hunt.  So walk I did.  My inner odometer tells me I logged about four miles through fields and trails, over flat land and hills, and all in that soft, silent snow.  Thinking the deer would be up and moving in the first snow of the year I hoped walking would do two things for me:  improve my odds of crossing paths with a deer while giving me a chance to scout deer movements.

At 10:30 I settled into the Tree Rocker stand.  Three-and-a-half hours of slow, steady walking had taken me through almost all of our western hunting area; the Tree Rocker Ravine looked like a cattle yard.  Tracks everywhere, like maybe a buck and doe meandering around.  Two runways beaten into the snow within sight of the stand.  Part of me felt like moving on, knowing it's hard to get a lot of nutrition from tracks.  But often a doe and buck combo will wander back through an area they've already been in, and I was really tired.  I decided to stay in this spot until noon.

At 11:30 I thought I saw some movement across the meadow, but with grasses moving in the wind and snow falling off branches it was hard to tell.  No, something besides grass and snow was moving over there, so up came the scope in time to catch a deer in the brush.  I got one quick glimpse of its head, enough to see antlers rising above its ears.  And then it was gone.  I got to the ground and moved south along the meadow, hoping he would keep moving along the edge to give me another look at him.  When I saw two deer moving up the ridge opposite my side of the meadow I knew my move was wasted.  To make matters worse, a different deer entered the meadow heading towards the stand I used to be sitting in.  I headed back that direction and managed to quietly walk up on the deer I had seen only to discover it was a big fawn.  I watched her pass by and got back in the stand, sure that I had seen the buck and doe responsible for all the tracks around me.  The fawn had been chased off by the buck, so I was going to bank on the doe to eventually come back this way looking for her offspring and leading the buck right to me.

By 2:30 the confidence in my plan had dwindled, as had the feeling in my toes and fingers.  I walked back to the field on our main woods road and was relived to find no tracks; I had strongly considered spending the day walking and sitting along that road and was thankful to not have to deal with yet another "should have".  I followed my morning tracks back to the Bald Knob and again was pleased to not find any deer tracks in mine.  Until I got to my oat plot.  That had been track-less this morning. And was now crisscrossed with tracks.  With a deer bed along the edge.  I sat in my stand knowing it was pointless to do so, what with a bad wind direction and the track-makers long gone.  But at that point in this frustrating season it didn't really matter what I did anymore.  So I sat in the stand until the sun dropped below the tree line and then began my walk home.

Dear Self:  Do NOT enter the woods after the first snowfall of the year.  Stay in the pines and wait for the deer to come to you.  Sincerely, Me.

On my return trip I couldn't see my morning tracks in some spots, due to the high volume of deer traffic that had obliterated them.  We've seen this before after a big snowfall - the deer spend a lot of time roaming in and out of our pine groves.  I suppose the exposed grasses above the snow are a quick food source in good cover with protection from the wind.  This being the first snowfall of the year I thought the deer would be moving in the woods, too, but it wasn't the case.  So, I should have hunted the fields today.

Tomorrow morning is forecast to be in the single digits temp-wise, but with very little to no wind.  I think I'll walk again, maybe take a little different route but stay close to the fields.  Or in the fields.  I've got three cameras still hanging out there that I need to collect, and with a little luck maybe there will be one more memory out there, too.

The month of "should haves"...

I drove north again tonight for the final weekend of rifle season, hoping to take down at least one adult deer to go along with the two small deer I've already shot.  You remember the north country - sunny, warm, gentle southerly breezes.  Yeah, that stuff is history.  Tonight there are six inches of new snow on the ground and a northwest wind that makes the 26 degrees feel at least ten degrees colder.  My three hour drive took five hours.  Most of my journey was through more than six inches of snow; the worst area had well over a foot of snow, unplowed roads, and heavy snow still falling.  Gas stations were closing early.  State highways were shut down.  Only fools would dare travel on a night like tonight.  I should have stayed home.

This whole month has been a frustrating series of "should haves."  Should have hunted Stand A on the opener instead of Stand B.  Should have taken the second week of the season off instead of the first.  Should have shot the big doe I saw on Opening Day.  Should have drove up here last night instead of tonight.  Should have left a couple of hours earlier today.  Should have stayed home this weekend and come up next weekend to bow hunt instead.

I can't stand "should haves", especially when others use them on me.  Nothing easier in the world than to be a "should have" adviser - not much risk in looking backwards and making claims on something that can never happen or be proven effective.  But now I've got myself so tied in knots over all of the things I should have done differently these past couple of weeks that I can't figure out what to do tomorrow.  Should I walk or sit?  Go north, east, or west?  Hunt fields or woods?  Every time I think I've made a plan I second-guess it....I'm starting to wonder if I should channel my inner Costanza and do the opposite of whatever seems like the best idea.

Despite my confusion about tomorrow I am quite sure of a few things right now.  I'm very thankful to be safe and well with an uncrashed car after a terrible drive.  I'm thankful also for another opportunity to hunt for a couple more days.  I'm excited....excuse me, cautiously enthused for tomorrow's hunt.  For whatever reason the first snowfall of the year tends to really get the deer up and moving.  Throw in the predicted sunshine and some lighter winds - tomorrow could be the day.

As I wrap up this short post an idea has emerged from the churning confusion about my game plan for Day 10 - I'm going to let history be my guide.  I'm going to consult my Deer Diary, read up on the entries I've made on days of new snow, and make my decision based on what I should have done on those days when I found fresh tracks in fresh snow.  I've filled a small notebook with hunting details for over a decade...it's time to make a data-driven decision based on those details.  I'll be back tomorrow night with the outcome.

Day 9 - Results

I love it when a plan comes together....

This was it, the final day of my nine-day hunting marathon.  Half-day, really, since today was leaving day.  So far my hunting efforts had resulted in only one tag being filled during this week of warm windy weather, a major disappointment considering the high hopes from a week ago.  Since eight days of hunting on stands and fields and trails had resulted in despair, it was time to try a new tactic.  Not a preferred tactic, mind you; I left the house with the intent of shooting a deer out of The Sanctuary.

As mentioned in an earlier post this week The Sanctuary is several acres of lowland woods that we do not enter, ever.  Every good deer property is supposed to have a safe haven, closed to hunting, that deer can use for cover; ours is perfectly situated near water and food with good cover for traveling to both.  We go by this hiding spot every day that we hunt, on foot or on 4-wheelers, but we never go into it.  However, nearly every day this week, either in the morning or evening or both, we have seen deer along its edges.  My plan this morning was to head north by foot at daylight, hoping to catch a deer still feeding along the edge of The Sanctuary.  Kind of breaking one of our hunting rules with this plan, but my dad agreed that it was something we needed to try.  He also hoped I could pick off one of the two garden thieves that we know live in those "forbidden woods."

I left the house a little before the light was strong enough for shooting, which was fine since I had a quarter-mile to cover before reaching the hunting area.  After rock-hopping across Armstrong River I silently crawled over the fence (rather than clanging open the gate) and into the field that surrounds The Sanctuary.  As I walked I used my rifle scope to scan the edges of the woods but saw nothing (except woods).  No surprise or disappointment there; the deer generally like to feed in one of three dales along the northeast side and I was still a hundred yards from the first one.

My walk slowed to a single step at a time as I neared the crest of the first hill.  Peering over the top and into the first low area I again saw nothing.  Same thing on the second hill and dale.  As I hit the bottom of the final empty valley I had the sinking feeling that once again I had zigged when I should have zagged.  Forcing myself to stay disciplined I eased my way up the slope to the flat expanse beyond its crest and one more time found no deer along the woods.  I could now see all the way to the northern tip of The Sanctuary and into the field beyond....and in that field was a deer.

I rarely hunt on fields.  I've always thought that someone who hunts on a field might as well be hunting cows.  Yes, I do hunt over a couple of small oat plots and I struggle with the ethics of that at times, but shooting deer off of a hundred acre opening seems less like hunting and more like...shooting.  However, this situation was a little different - I wasn't waiting on a field for the deer to come to me, I had to go get this one.  It was currently about 175 yards away, and while my rifle can handle that distance my shooting skills can't.  I needed to cut the gap in half at least, if not more.  It was time to stalk.

A fence line surrounds The Sanctuary; I was along the north/south line, she (I could see through my scope it was not a buck) was feeding fifty yards beyond the east/west line.  Between us were scattered  Norway pines and wild field grasses.  The pines were from 3-6 feet tall, the grasses knee-high to waist-high.  I had about 100 yards of fence line between me and the corner where I could have a firm brace and a much closer shot.  I considered crawling to use the grass for cover, but realized I would be too slow and probably not concealed very well.  I decided instead to move while her head was down and stop when a pine was between us, checking her status before moving to the next pine.  Worked like a charm.  In less than a minute I was leaning on the corner post with my crosshairs on the deer.  During my move she had turned away from my direction which allowed me to get in position undetected.  It also meant the only target I had was her butt.

As I stood braced and ready for a shot she suddenly turned towards the tip of The Sanctuary and began trotting across the field.  She wasn't scared - I believe she suddenly realized she was pushing her limits of safety by being out in the open in this much daylight.  She wasn't moving fast but she was moving, and I was looking at an 80 yard shot.  I'm not a good enough shooter for an 80 yard shot at a still target, let alone one on the move.  But she was starting to disappear down a gentle slope, and if I didn't touch off a shot in the next two seconds I'd have no shot.  Crosshairs behind the shoulder, exhale, squeeze but don't jerk...

The roar of the gun was followed by a noticeable stagger as the deer accelerated.  Another stumble as she slowed for the fence told me I'd hit her well, but a deer on its feet is never hit well enough.  She went through the fence and got behind some young spruces where I was sure I heard the telltale crash of a dying deer.  As I walked west along the fence I saw some movement followed by the wheezed breathing of a deer shot in the chest.  She was down and she was dying.  And I was shaking.

If a hunter isn't shaky with adrenaline after making a kill then he/she shouldn't be hunting.  The same goes for feeling remorse.  I never like pulling the trigger on a deer - ever.  It's my least favorite part of hunting.  Taking the life of such a beautiful creature is not something I ever celebrate - so please don't judge me as a hunter by comparing me to the fist-pumping idiots on TV who act like they've won a lottery every time they shoot a deer.  I've shot a few nice bucks that I feel proud to have taken, but that pride is, even now, matched with remorse.  Happens on every deer, I guess.  When I knew this doe was down I was proud to have hatched a plan that worked, impressed at my own ability to get in position for a shot and make the shot, and elated that I finally had filled another tag.  But I had sought out a peaceful animal and violently killed her, and that's a very sobering reality.

When I got to her she was dead.  I could see a small exit wound from my shot, placed perfectly behind her shoulder - a heckuva shot.  I stood over her for a minute, apologizing to her for what I had done, thanking her and Nature for the gift of meat.  Scolded her a little, too, since I was quite sure she was indeed one of the two yearlings that had helped themselves to my parents' gardens and fruit trees all summer.  Then I spent a moment soaking in the moment.  The sun was nearly up, there were geese lifting off from the bog lake to the north, and our efforts to create a deer hunting paradise had been rewarded once again.  I had taken my 26th deer, and for the 26th time I felt shaky, remorseful, and thankful all at once.  If those emotions ever stop, so too will my days of hunting.

*********

My dad and my daughter joined me an hour later so we could head west to hunt for the last few hours of morning.  They were both impressed by my tale of stalk and shot, and thankful for another delicious pile of steaks and burger.  We each took a different stand - my dad at the Slaughterhouse, my daughter at her favorite stand that still doesn't have a name, and I went to the Maples.  Dad saw a small spike that somehow ducked under the bullet thrown at it.  My daughter saw a small doe that she didn't even aim at because she wants her first deer to be a buck.  I apparently used up all my luck on my earlier adventure because I saw nothing.  At noon we met for lunch under the towering old spruce that we've been eating lunch under for decades, and then headed out of the woods to take in my deer and get her skinned.  And so cometh to an end the best nine days of the year.

**********

I'm back at my house now, 180 miles away from where I'd rather be.  My morning commute the last nine days has been across an open field on foot or a 4-wheeler.  Tomorrow I have to navigate the morning traffic rush into St. Paul for an education workshop.  For nine days I've eaten lunch in a tree or on a log, usually by myself.  Tomorrow I'll stand in line for a plate of food I'll have to eat at a full table in a full room.  No more 10:00/3:00 cookie breaks; I can't even say when I'll see a cookie again.  And bathroom breaks?  Since last Saturday I've been able to let fly at any time and any place that was convenient - I'm so hopeful I don't accidentally do the same tomorrow.  It's odd that life is built this way - long periods of doing what we have to, short bursts of doing what we want to.  I suppose the "want to's" wouldn't seem so wanted if we got to do them more.  I'd like to find out, though.  Folks didn't think nine straight days of hunting sounded enjoyable.  I think the days went by way too fast, that another nine would be perfectly fine and very enjoyable.  But the hunter now takes a break so the father and teacher can emerge for a few days before the hunter makes one more appearance next weekend.

The blogger will take a break, too, for the rest of this week.  I hope you've enjoyed learning a little bit about my hunting and the land I call home.  I appreciate having so many of you stop by and read my posts, and I'll return with a few more next weekend.  Have a great week!

Day 8 - Breaking Point

This will be a short one.  Same story, different day.  Too warm, too windy, not too many deer.  None, in fact.  Wait - one deer.  At dawn, as I rode by the Sanctuary, one of the two yearlings we always see around the place was feeding among the pines.  Other than that we saw a few grouse, one weasel, some geese heading south, and a whole lotta nothin' else.  Didn't even take a picture of anything today.  Walked out of the woods about as down as I've ever been as a hunter.  Even having my daughter hunt with me wasn't enough to overcome just how badly this week has gone.

So, just like that I've gone from writing with excitement on the eve of the opener to barely mustering a couple of paragraphs on the eve of my final day of this week-long hunt.  In a nutshell, this has been (so far) the worst hunting season ever.  I've already written about how quickly the fortunes of a hunter can turn - but tomorrow is forecast to be more of the same weather-wise.  And since tomorrow is leaving day I won't be hunting for more than five or six hours.  It's hard to believe my fortunes are going to change at all.

The needed weather change is coming, though.  On Thursday.  When I'll be 200 miles away.  Thursday the rain starts, Friday the snow starts, and on Saturday the fun starts.  I'm putting it in writing, right here today, that Saturday, on the back end of that weather system, in new snow, the deer will be stampeding in all directions.  And that, my readers, is the most commas you'll ever see in a sentence.  The lovely October weather we've had this first week of November has been horrible for hunting.  But the November weather system that's coming later this week will trigger some incredible deer activity.  Probably.

I'll put in half of one more lousy day of hunting in lousy beautiful weather, return to the town that isn't home, and count the hours until I can get back up here to experience at least one day of exciting hunting.

Day 7 - Same old, same old...with a new partner.

Had a new hunting partner today.

The hunting game changed today.  Daughter Two joined me in the woods for the first time this season.  Very happy to have her, but having a partner really changed my approach to the hunt.  Out an hour later in the morning, changed spots a lot more often, and the noise!  Four feet crunching through leaves might as well have been a herd of elephants draped with sleigh bells.

This morning finally felt like a hunting morning - for the first time the air felt cold; not cool, not chilly, but cold.  We started at the Slaughterhouse, where we promptly chased a deer away as we climbed into the stand.  The trail camera showed us it was probably a doe.  Finding the stand a bit crowded with two of us, I left her up in the tree while I went and stood on the meadow's edge.  A flock of swans flew overhead, heading south.  Half of the meadow was draped in sunshine while the shadowed half was still coated with frost.  No wind.  Another beautiful morning completely uninterrupted by those pesky deer.

After a couple of hours we left the Slaughterhouse and tried a new tactic: we set up a couple of camp chairs at a bend on the main logging road, which gave us a clear view of a long stretch of the road.  A view that was uninterrupted by those pesky deer.  So we moved again.  At noon we set up our chairs at a different spot along the road, a spot I have a trail camera (I TOLD you, I've got them everywhere) hanging over a scrape.  The camera has shown us several bucks that like to visit the scrape in daylight hours; seemed like a good spot to eat lunch and see a deer.

At 1:15 we were discussing our next move when Daughter said she heard something behind us.  I looked over my shoulder to see a deer approaching, not 20 yards away.  It stopped and lifted its head to reveal a solid 6-point rack.  As often happens, when we saw him he saw us.  He was upwind, though, so he could only use his eyes to figure us out.  He had a hard time.  He lifted his head up and dropped it down, turned sideways and around and back again, walked away and walked back.  And no, we didn't shoot.  He always kept an eye on us so we couldn't make a move to turn around, and to be honest I didn't really want to shoot him.  I've seen him on camera and had decided he would be a buck I'd let grow; his rack is really heavy for a young deer, so he seems to have the potential for developing a special set of antlers someday.  However, I whispered and told Daughter that if he came out into the clearing she could take a shot at him.  He didn't.  He finally decided that he needed to leave without figuring us out, so he bolted down the road that led straight away from us.

When we caught our breath we moved on - sat at the Bald Knob for a while and heard a deer but saw nothing.  We finished our day along the hayfield up north, seeing two deer on the eastern horizon followed by one old hunter (my dad) trying to catch up with them.  And that was that.  Yet another day with limited action and no results.  But another day with a beautiful sunrise and a spectacular sunset.  Another day with a spotless blue sky.  And an entire day with my daughter, sharing lessons about hunting and creating some special memories for her.  I have to keep reminding myself that the journey of hunting is more important than the destination; today it was a lot easier to enjoy the journey.

But if we don't get another deer soon I'm probably going to cry.  And starve.

The meadow in front of the Slaughterhouse stand, with Spring Crick running through the middle.

Day 6 - Finally, some excitement! (and a really long post)

Saw a buck today.  First thing this morning, in fact.  Sat along the Dinner Pail Road at dawn after pulling my camera card last night and seeing a nice 8-point walking by in the daylight yesterday.  Got in the stand at 6:55 - at about 7:10 I turned to the south (where you're looking in the picture below) to see a deer standing in our clover plot at the mouth of the trail.  Big deer, seemed like there might be more on its head than ears.  Pulled up my scope to get a good look and yes, there were antlers!  Not a huge buck, but a nice buck.  He started walking east along the fence line so I started hitting my grunt call.  He stopped and looked my way, then continued on his eastern trek.  I kept grunting, and finally he started angling towards me.  Still out of my accuracy range and blending perfectly with the grey saplings in the grey light of dawn he was really difficult to keep in the scope as he walked.  Eventually he entered the thick brush on the edge of the slash and disappeared.  I kept a close watch on where I thought he might come out of the brush into the open woods but after a half-hour decided he had walked out of my life forever.

The view from my first stand this morning.  When I saw the buck he was standing where the sunshine meets the shadows.

This is the stand I started my day in.  It doesn't have a name yet.  Yes, that is a spruce tree growing in midair.  My dad's idea of concealment.  Sigh.

The Dinner Pail Road, looking south from the north end.

 I asked some questions tonight about the history of our hunting country.  I knew most of what I needed to know but had to get some accuracy on the details.  For instance, my great-grandfather began hunting around here about 85 years ago.  In yesterday's post I mentioned the Hangman's Tree stand and thought it had been a hunting spot about 75 years - I was off by a decade.  I found out tonight it was his favorite spot.  Isn't it interesting that after 85 years it's still a really good spot to see deer?

I asked historical questions because I spent the day wandering around Memory Lane.  Rather than stay in a stand all day I sat for a while, walked for a while, sat, walked, and walked some more.  I headed up to the country that we used to hunt when I first started hunting and continued to hunt until it was destroyed by the paper industry.  The land is owned by Blandin Paper Company in Grand Rapids, and about ten years ago they clear-cut thousands of acres north of my folks' land, acres that used to be filled with a variety of mature trees and interesting landscapes.  Now it's an ugly collection of aspen (popple) saplings as far as the eye can see.

My writing this proves to you that I survived the Death Trap stand, pictured below.  I sat there to eat my lunch.  I didn't really hunt; the deer sign was scant and old.  And I was scared to move.  Yes, you are looking at a stand that is nailed to a broken-off ash tree that's barely connected to the trunk.  The ladder is nailed to the small ash tree because that leg of the ladder is rotten at the bottom.  It broke as soon as I stepped on it today, so nailing didn't do any good.  The stand itself has to be nearly 15 years old, which is pretty old for a stand.  I carried it to this spot from it's original home at a place we call Crockett's.

My great-grandparents used to run a deer camp on their homestead, which was right next to where my parents live.  They had hunters come from all corners of the state, paying for a place to stay, meals, and the privilege of hunting in the Great North Woods.  It was one of the biggest sources of income my great-grandparents had.  They hosted the hunters, who became like family, from the 1930's until the 70's when my great-grandpa died.  Each hunter usually had their own special spot to hunt, and many of those spots became our spots in the 80's until the country was logged.  Bill Crockett was born in Tennessee, moved to Minnesota as a young man, and was a direct descendent of Davy Crockett.  He was a yearly hunter in our woods, as were his sons when they became old enough to hunt.  His spot, Crockett's, became a favorite spot of my grandpa and is the spot my dad shot his biggest (by weight) buck ever....a really nice 8-point that walked by me before being shot by my dad. I didn't feel like I had a good enough shot on him, and as he walked away in the brush all I could see were his wide, heavy antlers swaying back and forth.  Ten minutes later my dad shot, and the 210 lb. brute was on the ground.

The Death Trap stand.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

 After not falling out of the Death Trap I walked quite a ways to the west to a spot called Boning's.  Vern Boning was a hunter who never used a stand, he always just sat on the ground with his back up against a tree.  Most days he built a small fire.  I drench myself in scent killing chemicals, he sat next to a smoking fire.  Times have changed.  Boning's was a great spot due to the lay of the land; two swamps converged on either side of a narrow ridge, so if deer were on the move and didn't want to travel through a swamp they had to pass by Vern and his fire.  My family has quite a bit of history at this spot - both of my parents shot their first deer, an uncle shot his first deer, I shot my first good buck, and my sister shot her first buck, all at Boning's.  Today I decided there will never again be a deer shot at this spot, at least not by anyone in my family.  The swamps have dried up, the mature timber that offered cover to deer is gone, and there just aren't many deer in these woods any more.  As I walked out of the clearing where my nice 8-point went down I felt more than a twinge of sadness that the book has been closed on such an interesting hunting spot.

What's left of the stand my sister and I each shot bucks from at Boning's.

My plan for the day was to wander in the north until late afternoon when I would head to the west end of our northern hayfield to hide in our Jack Pine plantation and cover a clover plot we've seen deer on several times in the evenings this week.  I got there a little early, so I sat on the ground and leaned against a pine with a forked trunk, in honor of Vern Boning.  After visiting the "old country" I was stuck in the past, wishing I'd have been able to hunt a generation earlier.  Those woods, these woods, used to be filled with family each November - my parents, my two grandfathers, my great-grandfather, many uncles and some cousins, and even a few neighbors would walk or pile into a wagon behind a tractor and head north for a day of hunting.  The stories that have been told about those days....you can't imagine what used to go on each season.  I could fill a dozen blog posts with Uncle David and cousin/hunting buddy George stories alone.  Now it's just me and my dad...and usually just me.  Don't get me wrong, I cherish my time in these woods and the freedom to go where I want and be human-free all day.  But those stories...I don't have those.  I won't ever have those.  I take memories from each season, and an occasional doozy of a hunting story, but compared to the side-splitting antics that develop when a group of hunters goes stomping into the woods my stuff is blah.

My hunting partner (Dad), heading east to check out a couple of spots.

As I sat in the pines and watched another day slip away I couldn't figure out what was more frustrating about this tough week of hunting - the lack of deer or the lack of stories and memories I'd been able to create so far.  This thought, piled on top of the sorrow at not being a part of the greatest days of hunting these woods had seen, was the final nudge I needed to slide down in the dumps.  I work my tail off preparing for this activity and I'd waited two years for this week off, and for what?  Six days of horrible weather and even worse hunting.  I was sick of seeing cloudless blue skies, sick of getting too hot every time I move, sick of listening to the wind whipping through the trees, and sick of dragging nothing home each day.  It was a full-fledged pity party in the pines.

The shadows were growing longer (for real, not just on my mood) so it was time to get positioned for the stampede of deer as they headed for the clover....he said sarcastically to the pine as he grabbed his gun and stood by the fence.  A half hour of nothing made this idea look as bad as all the other ideas this week.  I took a look to the east across the hayfield, a view that looked like this (only darker):

That tiny white speck in the sky is the moon.  The woods on the right is The Sanctuary.

The wind had been howling out of the northwest all day so I wasn't very confident that deer would actually come out to graze at all.  I thought it more likely I could see a deer on the back side of The Sanctuary where I would have the wind in my favor and the deer would be more likely to eat close to cover.  And my 4-wheeler was there.  And home was that direction.  And there was a deer crossing the field.  Wait - what?!?  A deer had just emerged from the northern tip of woods in the Sanctuary and was heading north across the open field.  I pulled up my gun and threw myself against a fence post (tip: don't throw yourself against a metal fence post strung with barbed wire) to get a good look at this deer.  A buck.  Not huge, maybe even the same one from this morning, but a no-doubter even at this distance. He was nose down, zig-zagging, definitely on the prowl for a doe in heat.  I followed his path until he dropped behind an incline and into the woods.

A buck doing what he was doing won't stop until he finds a doe.  He'll also (usually) move into or across the wind.  There was a pretty good chance he might end up coming my way.  He was at least 400 yards away when I last saw him, which meant I might have about five minutes before he got to me.  I decided to get into the stand we have a little ways from where I was standing (Remember, 25 stands means we've always got one nearby....it's almost like Clark Kent always having a phone booth) so I could see him coming sooner.  It was 50 yard dash to the stand, so off I went.  As soon as I was in the stand I realized this was a mistake - I was now farther away from a good shot and I really couldn't see any better.  Climbed back down, dashed back to square one.  I didn't like my pine location, but there were young spruces along the route I thought he might take, so I moved into those.  Yes, that was much better.  Better sight lines, better concealment.  As I was patting myself on the back for my ingenuity (and great hustle) I heard a deer snort out on the field - I turned to see another buck, a bigger buck, looking at me from about 200 yards away!  He took two jumps, leapt over a fence and stopped behind a young Norway Pine, giving me a clear view of his antlers and nothing else.  He waved his rack around a little bit to make sure I saw it, then snorted again and disappeared over the hillside.

Now it was decision time:  Do I stay put for the first buck I saw that I'm hoping is coming my way, or do I go after the bigger buck whose location I know?  I was running again, this time back to the pines to grab my bag of gear (I just knew I'd be needing my knife soon) and then to the rock pile that overlooks the river bottom where all big bucks travel when they want to head west.  At this point I wasn't thinking very clearly so I'm not sure why I thought he'd head west.  The rock pile area was perfect - I could snuggle up with a young Norway Pine and see everything below me.  The wind was a problem, though - it was blowing right to where the buck had run to.  It was warm today and I had walked a lot - my de-scenting efforts had long since vanished.  After ten minutes I decided he probably wasn't coming my way due to the large nose-full of my stink he'd been able to suck in.  And then I saw my dad.  He was heading home, towards The Sanctuary, probably having no idea any of this buck stuff was going on.

I was running again.  Two years ago I ruptured the Achilles tendon of my right foot; I had not run a single bit in the 26 months since it happened.  In the last 20 minutes I had run two 50 yard dashes, a 200 yard sprint, and now was on a 400 yard gallop across the field.  Less than 100 yards in I ran out of gas; the old cardio-vascular system ain't what it used to be.  But I had his attention so he stopped and waited for me to stagger up and bring him up to speed between my gasps for oh-two.  We agreed that our best chance at seeing that second buck was to creep along the east edge of The Sanctuary with the wind in our favor, hoping he'd be on the move again.  About halfway along our path we heard a deer snort behind us; we turned to see a doe coming up the incline I had seen the first buck disappear behind.  She was out of range for a good shot but she kept taking single steps toward us; with this deer, too, the wind was in our favor.  She was nervous, though, and before she could step close enough to get herself shot she whirled and headed back towards the woods....where another deer started snorting, most likely the first buck I had seen.  We finished our walk along the Sanctuary and decided that we had been beaten.  Dad headed home, I headed back up to my 4-wheeler.

I stood on the field until dark, hoping for one more look at any one of those deer, knowing it wasn't going to happen.  What did happen, though, was my story.  Less than an hour earlier I was moping, now my heart was still pounding from the excitement (and all the dang running).  A season that was a dud suddenly had its moment, its memory, its story.  I didn't need to kill anything for it, I didn't need a crowd for it, I just needed to be present for it.  Had I not stood up, had I just sat under that pine tree and pouted, I'd be writing an entirely different, and ridiculously shorter, post.  And that's hunting; a whole lotta nothing creating a whole lotta frustration that gets all washed away by one lucky decision.  And suddenly, I can't wait to hunt again tomorrow.

Day 5 - More Standing

Another dawn that was better than the picture.  Couldn't help but wonder if that jet heading north was full of Hillary lovers or Trump haters.  One in the same I suppose.

Well, I saw some real, live deer today.  Went back to my Slaughterhouse stand for another ten hours.  Had a doe and fawn run by at about 9:20; not sure what spooked them but they were moving fast with tails waving.  A doe with two fawns came walking by at 10:30 - thought I might have a chance at taking the doe but she stopped two steps short of a clear shot.  I've been bathing with scent free/scent killing soap for two weeks, use scent killing deodorant, wash all my clothing in scent free detergent, and spray myself with scent killing spray each morning when I leave the house.  That doe got downwind of me and threw her nose in the air - despite my de-scenting efforts she still smelled something.  She didn't smell a human or she'd have been gone, but she knew something wasn't quite right.  Instead of taking the two steps forward I needed her to take, she turned and took two steps away from me so she stood under and amid the branches of a spruce tree.  Smart deer.  Terrible mother, though - she left the two fawns standing out in the open.  They eventually all wandered away up the draw to the east.

I walked by this spot at 7:00 this morning.  Guess I should have stopped.  This guy came by at 10:40; hadn't changed the camera time since Daylight Savings kicked in.

I saw my timber wolf again today.  I was walking, it was walking.  I stopped, it stopped.  We locked eyes for a split second before it turned and loped away.  Hunt for most of my life without seeing a wolf, now see the same one twice in five days.  The wonders of spending time in the woods.

Yesterday I wrote about the stands we build....but only wrote about one of them before running out of energy.  We currently have 25 different stands.  I think we had 29 at one point but discontinued a couple and had trees fall on a couple others.  My dad and I love finding the next "great spot" for a stand - my mom wonders how the deer can even move through the woods without bumping into one of our stands.  With that many different stands/spots to choose from one of the most crucial elements in stand creation is the choice of the stand name.  Without a proper name it becomes almost impossible to describe a stand location.  My attempts at doing so usually go something like this:

Me:  Sign looks good around your stand this year.

Dad:  Oh yeah?  Which one?

Me:  That stand we put along the edge of the swamp. (we have 35 miles of swamp edge)

Dad:  Edge of the swaaaammmpp......

Me:  By the clump of spruces. (we have 35 different spruce clumps)

Dad:  Spruce clump?  To the north or west?

Me:  East.

Dad:  East?  There aren't any spruce to the east.  You mean balsam?

Me:  Probably.  Edge of the swamp, green trees, east.....you shot a buck fawn there. (he does that everywhere)

Dad:  Ohhhhh, you mean that stand.

Me:  Yes, that stand.

See?  At that point we still aren't thinking about the same stand and we both know we never will.  So a stand needs a name.  You've read about the Slaughterhouse and the Bald Knob stands; when you hunt with us (which, again, you probably never will) you can also choose from:

**The Bing Stand - The last stand my grandpa (who absolutely LOVED building "scaffolds" as he called them) ever helped build.  Never been a deer shot from it...in fact, it hardly ever gets used.  We maintain it and keep it usable in honor of him.  You can hunt here.

**Tree Rocker - I came upon three deer at this spot along Spring Crick.  As I was trying to get closer to the deer I could see, I noticed the top of a young popple tree swaying back and forth on a non-windy day.  When the deer I could see spooked and ran a fourth deer, a buck, joined them.  He had been rubbing the rocking tree....and the Tree Rocker stand was built in that spot a couple of years later.

**The Maples - We have very few areas of maple in our country.  This stand is built into a sugar maple.  Very pretty in mid-fall.  One of my favorite and most productive spots.  You won't hunt here.

**The Secret Stand - I built this without telling anyone else.  It's so secret the deer don't even know about it; haven't ever seen a deer from it.

**Dad's Metal Stand - This one is my dad's stand.  It's metal.

**The Crossroads - Nestled on the west edge of Vance's Swamp, this stand is at the end of a north/south walking trail that crosses the east/west trail a few hundred yards away.  Shot a decent buck here once that was chasing a less decent buck.  Exciting couple of minutes.

**The Hangman's Tree - The tree that gave the spot it's name is gone, but we still have a stand there.  In fact, it's a spot that's had a stand for close to 75 years.  My great-grandfather hunted the same woods I now hunt....I'm pretty sure he had a stand there.  I'll have to check on that.

**George's Swamp Stand - Hunting buddy George's favorite spot.  It's by the swamp.

**The Crap Stand - One of my dad's favorite spots.  He tries to call it "The Green Timber" stand, which would be a nice name for it if my Uncle David hadn't provided the alternate name.  He was hunting the area when he was struck by the urgent need to evacuate his bowels.  Which he did.  Right in front of Dad's stand.  He claims he had no idea Dad had a stand right there; he takes full responsibility for the "slight change in topography" (his words) he left behind.

Remember, I said we have 25 stands, so obviously we have a number of unnamed spots.  You can't imagine how many times my dad and I have the conversation I wrote out for you.

Switching tactics for tomorrow's hunt: I'm going to try to shoot a deer.  No more fooling around.  I'm heading north and east for the first time this season.  Probably start out at that stand Dad and I just put up a couple of weeks ago.  That one by the slash.  No, the other part of the slash.  By the grassy strip. No, no, no - not the grassy strip, the grassy strip.  With the taller grass.  Yeah, we really need more names.  If that's not productive I'm going to continue north to an historic spot we call Crockett's, and maybe even try the other "new" stand we put up recently that I actually have named.  Just in case this becomes my last post I want to thank you for following along with my adventures this week.  Why the last post?  I've named the "new" stand "The Death Trap."  Wish me luck.

These birch trees and I have gotten to know each other really well the last two days.  I liked the white on the blue.

Sunset.

Day 4 - The Art of Standing

Dawn over the Sand Flat.  The spot of light in the distance is "home".  The fog is along Armstrong River.  I wish I had a better camera...this picture doesn't do justice to the real view.

Another beautiful day to be in the woods.  Today actually almost felt like hunting weather - temps climbed into the 50s but took a long time to get there and quickly fell with the falling sun.  So thankful to have these days.  Oh sure, ten more hours without seeing any deer, but who's counting?

I spent the entire day back at the Slaughterhouse, site of yesterday's lucky/unlucky deer kill.  The Slaughterhouse has been a favorite of mine for a long, long time; I'm pretty sure I've killed more deer at this spot than any other (thus the name).  It's located quite a ways back in the woods alongside a 40-60 yard-wide meadow that follows the path of Spring Crick.  The area is the base of a draw that connects to a swamp to the east (a draw is a long, low strip that runs between two ridges).  This draw is filled with ash trees and very little brush, making it an easy travel corridor for deer.  Not only do the deer travel this draw, they filter into the Slaughterhouse area from all directions to cross the meadow which is a bit more narrow here than most places.  An added bonus (to the deer) is a stand of evergreens on the meadow's edge that provides good cover and shelter.

I call this "Whitetails in the Mist."  Except there were no whitetails.  And it ain't mist.   This morning's foggy view in front of the Slaughterhouse stand.

Our current stand at the Slaughterhouse is pictured below.  It's back from the meadow about 100 yards, meaning I can't see the meadow at all but I can cover multiple runways to catch deer approaching from all directions.  The original stand at this spot was on the edge of the meadow, nestled nicely between a group of three huge popple trees.  I was just beginning to really fall in love with the spot when I wandered in to scout the area and had my heart broken - all three popples had been cut down.  By beaver.  They didn't even use the trees or branches, just cut them down to spite me.  Beavers are pure evil.  For a few years I sat on a fallen tree on the edge of the meadow and had a little success.  Then I just stopped hunting it; wasn't seeing much sign and even fewer deer.  But the last few years have looked better so last year we built a new stand.

I was thinking about stands quite a bit today, as I stood in a stand, seeing nothing.  The stand you see is the stand you get when you hunt with us...which you will probably never do.  We are open-air hunters; no boxes for this hunting party!  A platform built from scrap lumber around the farm, a ladder built from ash taken at the spot.  Build the platform in the garage, haul it to the woods and attach it to the ladder, nail the whole thing to a couple of trees.  My dad prefers a seat, I do not; I fall asleep if I sit too long.  The railings have always been a matter of contention between members of the hunting party over the years - my dad and I and my uncles are rather tall so we make the railings high enough for us, but a little too high for some of the shorter hunters in the family.  My grandpa used to complain about "sunburning his armpits" when he hunted in certain stands that he had not built.

With stands come stories, especially if a stand is placed in a spot that lives up to its expectations for hunting success.  Two Slaughterhouse stories come to mind:

1)  7:00 a.m. on a foggy, drizzly morning.  Climbed into my original popple stand (pre-beaver) only to remember I'd forgotten to put scent out around the stand.  Climbed down, scented, and climbed back in.  I'd no more than stood on the platform when two deer came streaking at me from the east.  And I do mean streaking - I've never seen deer run like that before or since, like two missiles with legs.  They screamed right past the base of my trees, right on the spot I'd been standing not a minute earlier.  I am convinced I'd be dead had I not climbed up when I did; those deer would have skewered me.  As they crossed the meadow I heard a third deer crashing towards me - the buck in "chase mode."  He wasn't on the same line as the first two so he crossed the meadow farther away from me but on a pretty fast pace; with the poor light and precip I had no good shot.  All three deer entered the woods on the other side of the meadow where the buck continued to chase the other two back and forth in front of me for about five minutes.  Finally one of the two ran straight away with the buck on its tail while the other came back to the meadow and lay down.  It laid there for over a half hour; when it stood up, I shot it.  Never did see the other two again.  The deer I shot was a yearling buck, so I think the other was a yearling doe that the larger buck was interested in.

Our stand at the Slaughterhouse.

 2)  A few years later I was sitting on my fallen tree (post-beaver) and had a doe and fawn come out of the woods on the opposite side of the meadow.  As they got to the edge of the stream I shot the doe which dropped immediately.  Feeling pretty good about my clean shot I walked up to where I shot her and found tracks, blood, and no deer.  I was flabbergasted until I noticed an ear floating down the stream; she had fallen into Spring Crick and was now headed towards Red Lake.  So off I went, running alongside my floating dead deer, desperately trying to find a spot to reach her.  The stream isn't wide in most places but before I could get to her she floated out into a large pool above the beaver (pure evil!) dam.  I had to go find a long enough, light enough, dead enough tree to reach her with so I could guide her to a shoreline.  When I finally got her out of the water I realized the fawn had been standing in the meadow watching this whole debacle.  I'm pretty sure I saw it shake its head and roll its eyes before it ran away.

Had so much more I wanted to write about tonight - the importance of naming a stand, the cycles of success and failure at stands, and maybe a few more stand stories.  But somehow 10:30 gets here way too fast every night....and 5:00 a.m. is going to get here even faster.  I'll be back tomorrow evening, hopefully with a story from the present rather than the past.

The hunting has been disappointing, but sunsets on the farm rarely disappoint.  I still wish I had a better camera.

Day 3 - Failure, Success, and Frustration

Things are never so bad they can't get worse.  Because then they get worse......

Day number three of this 2016 hunting season found me back at the Bald Knob, but today in a different stand.  Two days of staring at the same trees starts to affect the sanity just a little, so I moved a few hundred yards east to sit on the edge of the slash and cover a lot of territory.  A lot of open territory.  A lot of deerless territory.  Two days ago I referred to the Knob as a "deer magnet"; somehow the magnetism seems to be repelling the deer instead of attracting them.  Five more hours today and not a single deer to be seen or even heard.  Did I mention the howling wind?  The heavy grey clouds?  The morning was so bad that I sat thinking about politics for a long time....I HATE POLITICS!!!  Plan A for this season had been to spend three days hunting the Knob before commencing with Plan B.  At 11:30 a.m. I flushed Plan A down the toilet (where it had been floating since midday yesterday) and headed back to the house to collect my thoughts for the afternoon.  (Remember, I almost never leave the woods in the middle of the day, and I've now done it twice in three days.  That's how frustrating the beginning of this season has been.)

A mediocre panoramic view from today's Bald Knob stand.

Lush clover, hand planted on the trail I raked by hand last spring.  Deer love clover.  See them eating?!?  Me neither.

But then things get better....

An hour of couch therapy - staring at the ceiling, dozing a little, munching cookies - brought clarity to my afternoon plan.  It was time to head west to my Slaughterhouse stand.  My dad was heading west, too, so we thought we might stir up a little deer movement between the two of us.  The Slaughterhouse was to be my destination for Day 4, but desperate times...

The Slaughterhouse was a red-hot location for about five years about ten years ago, and then it cooled off.  The last couple of years it's been heavily traveled by deer again so last year I resurrected a stand.  The sign was even better this year - several scrapes and a lot of chopped up deer runways.  The stand site is about a quarter-mile off the northwest corner of the Sand Flat field.  An old logging road, one of the two original trails on our property when we moved here 30 years ago, provides a nice walk for two-thirds of the distance; I've cleared a smaller trail for the last third.

As I walked the logging road I was kicking up grouse left and right.  Walk with a shotgun, see no birds.  Walk with a rifle, birds galore.  The fourth grouse I saw took off out of a tree, so I started checking the treetops for more birds....even though I was hunting for deer.  Note to deer hunters of all skill levels:  You'll rarely spot deer hiding in the upper branches of trees.  I know, I was stunned by this news, too.  After rounding a corner while still staring at the tops of trees I brought my eyes back down to earth and found a deer standing in the trail 50 yards ahead of me.  I didn't have a clear view of it, though; someone (ahem) purposely left several willow trees hanging over the trail so bucks would scrape under them...which they did, but now those trees were blocking my view of this deer.  I dropped to a knee, and then to my belly, but with a guffaw and a jump the deer was gone.  Towards my stand, though.  So I continued, much slower, and spent much less time looking up.

After spooking several more grouse and one more deer I never saw I arrived at the Slaughterhouse.  Deer tracks everywhere.  Two fresh scrapes.  I quickly changed the cards in my trail camera (I've got cameras everywhere, by the way.  Don't stop for a pee break anywhere in my woods.) and got in the stand.  2:35.  About three hours until sundown.  The sky had cleared since morning, the wind had switched, I had seen one deer and heard another....I had a really good feeling about this spot.

I faced east for a couple of minutes until it dawned on me that east was downwind now.  So I turned to face west.  After a couple of minutes facing west I peeked back to the east in time to see a deer move through an open lane in the trees.  24 hours on stand at The Knob with zero deer sightings; six minutes at the Slaughterhouse and I've got a deer in my back pocket.  I was turned with gun up in time for the deer to stop behind two big popple trees.  I could see its nose and its tail.  I was pretty sure I was looking at a doe, but possibly a small buck; I'd seen enough of its head to know it didn't have a big rack.  I was also sure it could smell me despite my de-scenting efforts over the past couple of weeks; its tail was twitching and it was bobbing its head up and down.  I found its nose in my scope and was now ready for it to move.....which it did.....rather quickly for about two steps.  It stopped and gave me a clear view of its chest so I lined up the crosshairs and pulled the trigger.  It flinched, ran for three jumps, stopped and shuddered, and fell over.

And then things get worse....

I stayed in the stand for about ten minutes, hoping the giant buck that was sure to be on her trail would show up.  He must have gotten lost.  So I climbed down and walked back to where "she" had fallen.  My steps were light - two and half days of frustration are washed away when the first hunk of meat hits the ground.  Frustration made a quick return as I approached the deer, however, due to three  obvious problems.  Problem one:  This doe's head was awfully small....and her body sure looked bigger when she was standing.  Ugh - I've shot a fawn.  Problem two:  What are those little knobby things on her head?  Double ugh - I've shot a buck fawn.  (Full disclosure:  I said something other than "ugh" both times.)  Problem three:  Why are some of its insides on its outside?  Triple ugh (Again, not "ugh.") - I've gut-shot it.  I said not "ugh" a few more times before beginning the least fun part of deer hunting.

My dad arrived just as I finished gutting my not-so-great deer.  I shared my story, got info on his travels, and headed back to the field for a rope and a 4-wheeler.  I drug my little deer by hand up my short trail, threw it (literally) on the rack of the 4-wheeler for the trip home, and headed out of the woods.  At home I hosed it off to get rid of the gut yucks, hung it in the garage, skinned it and split it and left it to cool overnight.  In the end it's a decent sized fawn, nice and fat, and will be really tasty.  All seven-and-a-half pounds of it.

So, a deer hangs in the garage and a tag is filled.  A buck fawn is not what off-season dreams are filled with, but as always I am thankful to nature for allowing me the opportunity to take one of her creatures for my own survival.  The kill was quick if not as "clean" as I would like.  But that was my "something new" for today:  I've never gut-shot a deer before.  And as those kinds of shots go, this one was pretty mild.  I've heard horror stories about badly hit deer and the mess that awaits on the inside.

There are many unanswered questions here, I'm sure.  What's the terrain at the Slaughterhouse?  How about its history?  No pictures?  Why so upset about shooting a fawn, and more upset about a buck fawn?  Really - you looked in the tops of trees while deer hunting and stood facing downwind once you got in the stand?  Hey, I've never claimed to be good at this activity - I only claim to love doing it.  And everything happened too fast to take pictures.  Maybe tomorrow.

And with that I wrap up Day 3's adventures.  Thanks for reading.  Good night.

Day Two - Why do I do this?

Would have had this up sooner but prior to writing I spent some time watching nature documentaries on whitetail deer; kinda forgot what deer look like.  As expected this was another slow hunting day.  Temps were far too warm (71 degrees again) but at least today there were gale force winds to carry away any slim hopes of deer movement.  Went right back to the Bald Knob stand that was completely barren of deer yesterday to make sure no deer would disturb the area today.  Mission accomplished.  I did see a nice doe prior to sun-up as I walked across the Sand Flat field but she was a long ways away with very low light and nothing to brace on for shooting; a situation assessment told me there were too many negative outcome scenarios to risk a shot.  Side note: The Sand Flat is the southern half of the field that runs adjacent to the Bald Knob area.  The northern half of the field is rolling hills, the southern half is flat.  And sandy.  After days of creative brainstorming we decided to call it the Sand Flat.

So day number two was completely void of action, which gave me plenty of time for uninterrupted thinking.  The main topic today was the question "Why do I hunt?"  I spent nearly every day of my first decade of hunting contemptuously asking that same question - I hated hunting when I was younger.  But now when I ask myself why I hunt it's a calming strategy for days like today; knowing it was going to be a slow day I used the time to remind myself that, even on the slow days, hunting is a terrific way to pass time.

Most importantly, I hunt to feed myself and my daughters.  I grew up eating venison and I'll die eating venison (not literally, I hope).  I want my girls to do the same (again, not literally on the dying end).  Venison is lower in fat and cholesterol than beef while being slightly higher in iron.  And venison is chemical free, guaranteed.  I shoot it, I process it, I cook it.  I do my best to feed myself and my girls as much food as possible that has never touched a grocery shelf or anyone else's hands.  Putting 100 pounds of venison in the freezer goes a long way towards achieving that goal.

Getting meat is the destination of hunting; why do I endure the journey?  This is the deep question, the one I spent much of my day pondering.  There are a variety of reasons, including:

**Total freedom to have total control - I walk out the door in the morning with nothing, nothing, but my own decisions to dictate the day.  Time is irrelevant (other than the magical 9:00 hour, also known as "shootin' time").  No meetings, no deadlines, no contracts, no demands, no stress.  No messages in need of response, no questions in need of answers.  I am in total control of how my day plays out.  I can't always control the results, but every second of the day belongs to me.  I spent my first ten years or so as a hunter who didn't take control of the hunt.  I was told which stands might be good (they usually weren't) and where the deer were traveling (they weren't) and when to meet for lunch.  I remember the specific day hunting changed for me - I got out of the lousy stand I'd been put in and started wandering around, eventually stumbling upon an old stand that hadn't been used for years.  I got in it and shot a deer about an hour later.  My choices, my stand, my deer.  I've never hunted anyone else's way since.

**Solitude - I am so very lucky to hunt where I do, to have the land we have.  I can hunt all day any day without seeing another human if I so choose.  No offense to my readers, but escaping all human contact is very therapeutic.  Being alone allows for mindfulness and deep thinking.  Being alone removes conversation; talking is the enemy of thinking.  Being alone is a good reminder that being alone is ok.

**Hunting is challenging - To borrow Tom Hanks' line from the movie A League of Their Own: "Of course it's hard.  If it wasn't hard everyone could do it.  It's the hard that makes it great."  His character was referring to baseball, but I feel the same way about hunting, especially with regard to the weather.  Which is why these last two days of warmth have been frustrating - it was too easy.  It's also why I don't hunt inside a box with a heater - again, too easy.  My dad and I have always said "If you aren't miserable, you aren't hunting."  Numb toes and fingers, uncontrollable shivering, stiff joints - within the first hour on the stand, mind you - are the usual symptoms of hunting on a cold, cold day. Finding the strength to keep standing for another hour, and another, and another.....well, that's part of why I love hunting.

**Connecting with Nature - I've spent 19 hours the last two days sitting in exactly the same spot.  I know the daily routine of a red squirrel (who was looking really tasty by sundown tonight).  I've heard nuthatches warble a different call than their usual murmured chirp.  Those same nuthatches come and go on an hourly pattern all day long.  These are things that can't be noticed on a walk in the woods.  Hunting provides an opportunity to be immersed in nature while stationary, giving time for true observation of a wide variety of natural phenomena.

**The chance to see something new - Yesterday I saw a wolf, heard tree frogs, and hunted in 70+ degrees.  Never had any of those things happen in over 30 years of hunting.  Today nothing new happened, which is the first time that's happened!  Some days are like today where yes, nothing out of the ordinary took place.  But most days, if I look and listen hard enough, I can experience something totally new.  Oh - the nuthatch call!  That was new today!  I heard it yesterday but today I figured out what was making the noise.  See?  Every day, something new.

**A renewal of faith - I'm not religious.  I have no faith in government or institutions.  I have little faith in humans.  But nature....in nature, I have faith.  Nature is patterned while being unpredictable.  Nature is fairly biased.  Nature provides but does not give.  Despite the humans' best efforts to destroy her, Mother Nature adjusts and carries on with a power we try, but fail, to fully comprehend.  I find comfort in the dependability of nature - every time the calendar turns to November the bucks are scraping the ground.  I spend as much time as I can throughout the year enjoying nature, but during hunting season I am able to consider nature while actually in nature.

Seems like I came up with more thoughts than this in my TEN HOURS on the stand today.  But even slow day of hunting is an exhausting day, so this empty handed hunter needs some sleep.  Back to The Knob one more time tomorrow, but this time to a different stand.  Yeah, I might as well mark my tag right now for the deer I'll be dragging in by noon.  Look at that - I'm already dreaming.

The Opener

Sunrise on The Bald Knob

 My 32nd deer hunting opener is history, and for the 32nd time I finish the day with an empty tag.  That's right - I've hunted for 32 years and have yet to shoot an opening day deer.  I've missed one, wounded one (still feel sick about that), and passed up many....including a beautiful eight-pointer that was just a hair smaller than the buck my wife-at-the-time had shot a year earlier.  Worst decision I've ever made.  Passing on the deer, I mean - not the wife.  Although......never mind.

 A doe and fawn were standing behind the spruces on the right when I took this.  You're looking at the top of The Knob.

As planned I spent the entire day on what we call The Bald Knob.  The Knob is the southwest corner of the 140 acre property my parents own.  Most of their property is open field; The Knob is the one wooded area on the property we hunt.  Less than ten acres, The Bald Knob is so named because of a round hill slightly west of the central portion of the land that for many years was treeless.  Surrounded by wetland meadows on three sides and open field on the fourth, The Knob provides deer with everything they need in a small space:  a water source, dense cover, browse, and grazing.  We've sweetened the deal by creating two small food plots planted to oats and we've built a figure-8 pattern of trails that are seeded heavily to clover.  Last summer nearly half of The Knob was logged, creating even more new-growth browse for deer to feast upon.  In short, it's a deer magnet.  I've shot a buck here each of the last three years and the deer sign this year is better than it's ever been.  Seemed like a no-brainer to start the season on The Knob.

 Trail leading to the west end of The Knob and my smaller oat plot.

6:20 a.m.  Left the warmth of the house in favor of the morning chill.  It was 33 degrees and still as death.  A light frost covered everything.  I rode a 4-wheeler half-way to my destination, walked the final half with nothing but the stars to light my way.  Silence.  Perfect.  In my stand by 6:45 under the cover of darkness and ready to roll.  Bring on the deer! (and the sunlight)

 Looking north from the top of The Knob.

7:50 a.m.  Five minutes after finishing a symphonic barrage of grunt and bleat calls I heard a branch snap in the meadow thicket to my south.  Surprised at how quickly I'd called in what was sure to be a Boone & Crockett buck, I readied my gun.  "Crunch, crunch, crunch" got my heart racing.  Not a second later I caught sight of movement - not a buck....not even a deer.  It was a long and lean timber wolf.  Not exactly the best omen; kind of like seeing The Joker show up when expecting Batman.  As quickly as it arrived it was gone, taking my confidence in this spot right along with it.

 The stand I spent nine hours in today.  As seen from the oat plot you'll see in the next picture.

10:35ish a.m.  After getting out of my stand at 10:00 I did some still hunting along our east/west trail.    Never have understood the term "still hunting"; how can it be called "still" when I'm on the ground moving?  It's one slow step at a time with a lot of stopping between steps, but hardly still.  But I digress....after still hunting my way to the east end of The Knob I picked up the pace a bit on my return trip.  Cresting a hill I was surprised to come face to rear with a large deer in the middle of the trail I had walked not ten minutes earlier!  A doe, joined shortly by her fat fawn.  Same doe and fawn I've seen all summer on several different cameras.  I put both in the crosshairs of my scope but never took the safety off the gun; after watching them all summer shooting either of them would be like shooting a pet.  Except I don't like pets, so if they keep crossing paths with me.....

 The northern view from my stand....

 and the eastern scenery.  Wanna hunt with me?  Stare at these two pictures for nine hours...you'll see what I saw today.

At noon I decided to head back to the house.  I almost never do this (leave the woods during the day) unless I've shot a deer or run out of cookies.  But I have a sick daughter I wanted to check on, and the batteries on my trail camera were in need of replacement, and my cookie supply was a bit low, so off I went.  I saw a small deer, maybe a yearling or big fawn, along The Sanctuary as I rode in.  Hunting buddy George came rolling in while I was home, nice young deer strapped to the back of his 4-wheeler.  He'd shot a 7-point buck a little after 11:00.

It was 65 degrees when I headed back out at 1:15.  Spent the entire afternoon sitting in my stand.  A gorgeous day for almost anything except deer hunting.  The official high was 71 degrees.  Unreal.  I've kept a deer diary for the last 14 years where I record daily temps and other weather notes as well as deer info for each day; 67 was the highest temp I had recorded.  Needless to say there wasn't a lot of action this afternoon for me or anyone else; between returning to the stand and sundown I heard two shots.  The wrap-up of the day is pretty bleak:  George has the only filled tag, his son Blue heard a few deer and saw some on fields at sundown but didn't get any shooting, my dad didn't see anything, and I saw only my pet deer and the wolf.

A great opener?  Nope.  Worst opener ever?  Nah.  The only bad opener I've ever had was 2013 when I wounded the deer we never found.  Four inches of snow on the ground that day.  71 degrees on this day.  Snow or rain, hot or cold, the opener is the opener - it's exciting, it's relaxing, and it's always unproductive (for me).  But rather than going to my standard "things are never so bad they can't get worse" line, I realize this about hunting season:  Getting into hunting mode doesn't just happen because the season opens.  The hunter thinks and moves completely different than the teacher; it takes me at least a day to make that transition.  I am convinced my 32 year deerless-opener streak is due in very large part to being a really bad hunter on the first day every year.  Tomorrow I'll be better, and by Monday the deer won't know what hit them.

Tomorrow dawns an hour earlier.  Warm temps predicted again, but this time joined by high winds.  If there's one thing deer like less than warmth it's wind.  Back to The Knob, to the same stand.  The oats that were knee-high two weeks ago are barely above my ankles now; the deer have been hitting them heavily and since they didn't come eat today.......look out tomorrow.

The sun sets on the 2016 opener.