Briar Archeology

I left a cheese wrapper on the ground this past weekend. I did not mean to. It slipped out of my hand at Lazy Boy and it fell to the ground and joined the leaves and such. I did not pick it up either. It’s my property and if I want to leave a cheese wrapper on the ground, I can. I’m like that. I leave shotgun hulls on the ground too. I used to hunt a place where the landowner told me before my first time out that he had thrown the previous bunch of hunters off , because he found a spent shotgun hull in the woods. That is not me. To me, finding a spent hull in the woods is a good thing. I will be out squirrel hunting and find an old #6 hull and remember that was where little Mooseboy and I took a squirrel back during his first season hunting with me. To me, that is priceless treasure.

Do not get me wrong. This is not what you would call a pristine environment to begin with. I don’t want this to sound like I have a 200 acre trash heap, but folks out in this part of the country did not seem to be all that impressed with the anti-litter campaigns of the 60’s. I have an amazing collection of beer and soda cans scattered across the property, mostly from the generations of hunters that used this property as an unofficial WMA before I moved in. Occasionally I’ll be moved to pick something up and cart it back, but most of it is of such an age that it is somewhat nostalgic just to keep around. I may run into a beer bottle from a brewery that has not been around since my Grandpa’s time. I am pretty sure these are from deer hunters, too. You don’t see anything from before the advent of modern deer seasons.

Now of course, you might say, “Shaman, why don’t you pick it up?” Well, there are a couple of reasons. First off, it give me something to ponder. Second, if I picked up all these vintage cans and bottles, and brought them up to the house, I’d probably be more likely to get robbed. I suppose I could sell them on Ebay, but that seems like a lot of trouble and it really is nice to see someone come out to visit and go on a hike and find one of these things and ask me “Shaman, can I keep this?” Sure. See? Now I have a friend for life.

There is one other thing I will mention, and this is a secret deer hunting strategy. If you find a few beer bottles out in the woods, it is always a good idea to stop and figure out what that fellow was doing when he sat there and drank them. These weren’t stupid people wandering drunk in the woods (well not all of them) . Occasionally you get some insight. There have been a couple of places on the farm, where those telltale clues led me to see where these guys were sitting to do their hunting. Furthermore, you can see that there are different cans and bottles in the same area. That means multiple people used this spot. If you find a beer bottle from the Sixties, that’s golden!. That means even with the deer herds at a tiny fraction of what they were now, someone thought enough of this spot to sit and hunt.

The result of all this briar archeology has jived with all the other scouting: deer sign, topo reading, etc. The bottom line is that the old beer bottles and Pepsi cans are amazingly good indicators of current deer activity. If I find old litter, I usually find current deer sign. Beer equals deer. The converse is mostly true as well: in an area filled with old hillbilly litter, if you find a no beer, the deer will usually be non-existent as well. There are a few spots on the farm that look like they would be great for deer hunting from a structural point of view, but in 10 years I have never seen a deer– never saw a bit of litter in there either.

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