I’m back

Sorry I’ve been away. The day job has been rather hectic, and there has been a lot of other stuff going on as well– none of it particularly bad. For instance, the shamanic home computer died. I had to get it rebuilt. It was going on three years old in it’s present incarnation, but there were parts going back to 2001. I figure it had lived a good life. It’s just been busy. I saw this thread, and it’s been begging me for a response for a couple of days. Now that it’s before sunrise on the day after, and all the children, KYHillChick, and the dogs are still snug in their beds, I’ll take a stab at rejoining the campfire. BTW: Hope y’all had a good Christmas.

I shot a piebald doe that was only piebald on one side on opening weekend. Does that count?

The weirdest thing I saw in the woods this year?

Well, for starters, it was the shear number of deer. Normally I consider myself blessed if I see more than one per trip. However, I had mornings with ten or more coming by the stand. The oaks were particularly prolific this year, so if you were near a stand of oak, you had deer in profusion. The acorns were dropping well into Thanksgiving weekend too. That is an extreme rarity in these parts.

There was this one herd of does I watched from mid-October on out by the Campground. There was a small buck running them back and forth through a ravine from morning until night. He was relentless. That wasn’t particularly weird, not for deer, but it was fun to watch.

There was the radiosonde. One afternoon, I was hunting garbage pit (It’s actually a very pretty place) and I noticed a string hanging down about eighty yards out. I could not make out what it was, so I got down from my stand and found a small cardboard box with some electronics in it attached to a long string that hung down from the top of a tree. The sonde was degraded past the point of usefulness, but I could still make out some of the return information. It belonged to NOAA. That was neat and interesting, but not particularly weird.

Did mention Madge? Madge is weird. I think we shot either her son or daughter from the stand at Garbage Pit. It messed with Madge’s mind. Now, when Madge comes up to feed on acorns in the evening, she perseverates on the stand and whoever is in it. She makes a wide circle around the stand and then goes and stands in a small group of cedars about 40 yards to the right side of the stand and snorts relentlessly. This goes on for sometimes the last twenty minutes of light. All of her compatriots, mostly does, don’t pay her any attention anymore, and just go about their eating. I had a chance to put an arrow into Madge this year, and I muffed it. That has her all the more worked up. I’ve never seen a deer so permanently distraught.

Weird? There was the herd of turkeys we saw out in the field two weeks ago. I had gotten worried for the turkeys this year. None of the regulars were around, and the overall numbers were way down. I figured the bad snow the previous Christmas had done a lot of the old timers in. After breakfast the other morning, we looked out and there were eight gobblers out in the field at about 300 yards. There was Mister Natural, and Silent Bob, and The Two Jakes– all of our old friends along with some newcomers. Jake and Jake are all grown up now. Natural is still as awesome as ever. His beard nearly drags on the ground now. Silent Bob is still– well Silent Bob. I have no idea where they all were for the past year, but it’s good to see them back. Once they were out in the field, they were joined by another all-male flock, and soon we had eighteen gobblers in the pasture. Weird? Well, maybe, but you’d have to have been there to understand all the plots and sub plots going on.

There was one instance this year that got me going. It was Saturday of Second Week. I was up at Campground, hoping a big buck might have chased the smaller one out and taken over with the does. Nope– no such luck. However, around ten that morning, I got a real treat. The does were out in the field next to the stand playing. I’ve never seen such playing. It’s a long narrow acre-and-a-half plot that I’ve let go fallow. All the does and the young buck and a few visitors were in the field running. One or two would go bounding off in one direction and then turn around and streak back to the other end. The main body of the group stayed in the middle and gamboled and danced on their hind legs and rolled in the weeds. Sometimes the does would race down to my end of the field and then turn around at the fence just a few feet from where I was. They would look at me for a moment and then tear off, only to be back a while later. I’ve never seen wild animals so happy and filled with playful excitement.

Weird? Well, no. There were no three legged does, no two headed turkeys. I didn’t stumble on any rug munchers in the woods. I guess it was just a plain old boring year. Oh well.

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