So Now What?

Good question. Season is over for us. I still have a pile of stuff to do before calling it quits.

The Guns

One thing I learned over this season is that storing rifles in padded cases is bad Ju-Ju. I guess I was lucky all these years. I never had a problem. However, this year was particularly wet– record setting rain. We had water in the basement. The foam in the cases probably soaked up a bunch of humidity. After I found rust on some of my rifles, I made a point of bringing the cases upstairs and letting them stand open in the back bedroom before using them again. We also had a bunch of rain the last weekend of Camp, so I have already uncased all the rifles and got the cases open to air. Remember that slings hold onto a lot of moisture as well. Make sure everything is dry.

I’m getting low on Ed’s Red, so before I get started on putting all the deer rifles to bed, I’m going to mix up a fresh batch. Here’s the recipe.

http://www.frfrogspad.com/homemade.htm

All the bores get a quick once-through with Ed’s Red, and I also hit the outside as well. Then I let them sit a couple of weeks and do it all over again. The nice thing about Ed’s Red is that it keeps working. In fact, it is still pulling out grime in the safe. When I start to bring out the deer rifles in June, I usually find extra gunk that has come loose over the winter. Just before going into the safe, I use the Kero/ATF component that the recipe discusses for a last coat.

Ammo? I keep the ammunition in an airtight ammo can. The can stays at deer camp from when we begin sighting in rifles in August until we finally pull out of camp. Again, it was wet this year. I’m leaving the lid open a few days and also going over the magazines with an oiled rag.

The Clothes

Go back and refer to my piece on the shamanic baking soda method. That is how I treat the clothes. The ones with deer blood get sent through the washer once with ALL Free & Clear first. Some of the clothes I wore the last week of season will be the ones I can use the first few weeks I’m back at camp for turkey scouting, so I do not give them as rigorous a treatment.

The outer layers are still drying at camp. When I get back down to close up, I’ll sponge off any stains and then pack them in sodium bicarb in a duffle bag. Over the next nine months, the sodium bicarb will get any remaining stench.

I put a pinch or two of sodium bicarb in my boots before leaving camp.

The Gear

All the remaining gear will get sorted and stashed before I close up camp. Last summer was hard on gear. We had mold and mildew in a bunch of spots. Best thing to do is to make sure everything is bone dry and then stash it in airtight tubs.

The Stands and Blinds

I have to make one last trip out to the stands. I’ll cut down all the skirts that were tied on the shooting rails. While I’m out, I’ll make some quick mental notes on any cedar trees that need to be cut before next season. The more elaborate ground blinds get a healthy dose of rat poison.

Deer Camp

As I’m leaving camp, I drain the water from the pipes and put antifreeze in the traps. The mowers go over to my buddy O.T. for storage. I have some sacks of concrete and rock salt I need to move off the floor. They leach moisture out of the concrete and if I don’t watch it, I’ll have bricks when I get back in the spring. Rat poison gets spread all around. I am really getting to like the bars, bricks and slugs rather than the granulated stuff. I invariably come back in the spring and find a few ounces of rat poison in one of my boots. Rats? No, but plenty of mice. Food gets either carted home or put in a closed cupboard. I make sure the matches are stored in a mason jar before I leave to prevent the little boogers from setting the house on fire.

When I leave in December, I expect it to be the last time until . . . well, the ground rules for coming back at the end of the winter are a forecasted high of 50 F on Saturday and no rain from Friday to at least sunday afternoon. Usually that is about the first of March. Sometimes it is mid-February. We set that as a minimum, because usually by the time it gets that warm, the power is back on– sometimes it goes off in January and stays off for as long as six weeks due to ice and snow. One year we did not make it back down until the last weekend in March.

I try and do as good a job as I can. Twice I have been bitten by changing forecast in December. Once I hadn’t purged the water, and the forecast for New Years went from sunny and 50 to a foot of snow over the course of 6 hours. I had to run down at after 10 O’Clock at night and close up. I made it back home just as the freezing rain hit.

The Venison

Our stock of fresh venison is a bit lower than usual– we left 3 tags unfilled between us. However, we’ll have plenty. I’ll pick up that last doe this weekend and stuff it in a place we already have cleared out. Shortly I’ll start making jerky– that’s a great way of using up any residue from last year. We have been known to eat 3 meals of venison a day in the winter. With 5 people in the house on the weekend, we end up consuming 20 lbs in two days.

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