I caught myself counting the months to turkey season this morning on the way to work. I like how this works. Four months of getting ready. Two months of doing it. Four months of getting ready, etc. I’d never really thought of it before. That’s comforting. Deer, Turkey, Deer, Turkey, wash, rinse, repeat. I look at it another way: after two months of deer hunting, my blood lust is pretty much quenched. There is something about a full freezer with which one cannot argue. Along about Mothers Day every year, I start to feel the same way about turkeys. I am ready to hang up the shotgun. My ego has taken all the laughing turkeys it can handle. I go fishing.

Then you have the lousy weather of December to contend with. I thank God that I live close enough to a state like Kentucky that I do not have to put up with my native Ohio’s deer season. Mid-November is a perfect time to be hunting deer. December in the Greater Ohio Valley is usually cold, rainy, and miserable. There you sit, on your stump, with your slug gun, freezing off obscure parts of your anatomy, when the guys on the opposite side of the River are safe and warm in their homes, chowing down on their venison steaks. Can you imagine the nerve of those guys complaining that their deer season was too warm?

Deer. Turkey. Repeat. Four months off, Two months on.

So what’s next? For me, I’m pulling down all the skirts on my treestands and packing them away until the end of March. Then I’ll go out and hang them up in the woods and make ground blinds. The deer rifles get put back in the safe and the shotguns come out. I’ll sit on the couch until that weekend before the Super Bowl and then I’ll start practicing my calls. I’ll start to yearn for the woods. I’ll go hike for antler sheds. I’ll start listening for gobbles in the morning.

The madness will start anew. By the time I pull the trigger on my first bird in April, there will be enough room in the freezer for at least one bird. By the time I throw up my hands in frustration and march out of the woods in May, it will be time to start maintenance on the tree stands, and work on new deer loads.

Ah! The Eternal Cycle of Life!

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