O.D. and the 2 of 7 Rule
I mentioned the 2 of 7 rule a while back. I’ve had a bunch of people ask me about it. I have to come clean. It is not my idea. It is not original. I cannot even say I fully believe it. However, I know the man who seems to have invented it. That fellow is O.D.
I have mentioned O.D. before. He’s related to O.T, my turkey hunting buddy that owns the mower shop. O.D. is one of the regulars at the store in Browningsville and I frequently find myself propping my feet up next to his, drinking the coffee Mister Browning puts out. O.D. is getting on in years. The best years of his hunting career are behind him, but he still is full of freely given advice. He holds court regularly, usually with his poodle sitting underneath his chair. The poodle is smart, perhaps somewhat smarter than some of the people who join us around the stove. O.D. tells people she’s his service dog. However, it has never been made perfectly clear exactly what service she performs. Shopkeepers and restaurant owners just let Babette come in, because they don’t want to face the consequences of tossing out O.D.’s dog. In return, O.D. does not take too many liberties with the dog. If she follows him into a diner, O.D. has her sit in the booth with him, but keeps her on the inside where she is not so obvious. Babette may get a scrap of bacon, a spare pancake or the crust off a sandwich, but it is not so you would notice. Her one true love is coffee with milk and sugar.
The other day I was down at Browning’s store listening to O.D. tell yarns. Babette was underneath O.D’s chair, coddling the new squeaky toy O.D. bought her. One of the semi-regulars was trying to get O.D. to opine on where he thought the action was going to be on The Opener.
In the oaks or out in the fields? That is the question that fascinates every deer hunter as Opening Day of Rifle Season approaches. That is one of the biggest fascinations with The Opener, and sets it aside from other major holidays. With Thanksgiving you pretty well know it’s going to be turkey for dinner. The Lions are probably going to lose at home. You pretty well know our Savior is going to rise from the dead come Easter. You don’t have to go to church to find out how the story turns out. The Opener? That is considerably different. If the acorns stay up, then the deer are in the oak groves. If it turns cold and the acorns drop early, the deer will be out in the fields munching what is left of the weeds. Everyone wants to know: In the oaks or out in the fields? It can mean the difference between a big buck on The Opener or tag soup.
So what’s it gonna be, O.D.?
O.D. really eats up the attention he gets every year. He is the great local oracle of deer hunting. Folks around these parts make the pilgrimage to visit Browning’s Store once a year, find an open metal lawn chair next to the stove and brave contact with the fickle poodle to find out where to set their stand. It is this reputation, O.D.’s perceived knowledge of deer, that keeps shopkeepers willing to put up with the dog, put up with O.D’s puckish practical jokes and put up with a fellow who never puts a quarter in the jar for coffee. O.D. is good for business, and if the dog bites you, the general consensus is that Babette had a good reason.
A semi-regular, a heavy set blow hard who wears a lot of Mossy Oak year-’round was pumping O.D. for the skinny. I came in late to the show, but I could tell immediately what was going on. O.D. was doing his best to ignore him, preferring to take in deep inhalations and remarking how good it smelled to have a wood fire in the stove again.
“So, I’ve been seeing deer on my Trail-Cam like crazy, O.D. Is that a good sign or what?”
“That depends, Dick.” said O.D. ” The blowhard’s family name is one of those that you’d least like to match up with the name “Dick.” Out of sympathy, most people have always called him Richie. However, O.D. always calls him Dick and has done so since Richie was in High School. For anyone else, that would be cruel. With Richie, it is just accurate. “That could be good news, and might not.” You could tell O.D. was playing with him.
“I put out a corn pile.”
“That may not work this year.”
“Why not?”
“It’s hard to say.” said O.D. “Dick, how often do you see those deer on your camera?”
“Oh, I’ve got pictures from them most days. It takes good pictures at night.”
“And that’s when you’ll see those deer most nights.” said O.D. “You probably won’t see them coming to that pile during the day.”
“I’ve got a food plot out too.”
“That may be good.” said O.D. “Then again. . .”
“It’s the acorns, ” said Richie. “I learned that from you. They won’t come out in the fields if there’s acorns dropping.”
“Look, ” said O.D. “I’m going to set you right, Dick. You got all these ideas about deer, and you think I’ve got all these ideas about deer, and I’ll tell you one idea that takes all the other ideas about deer and throws them in the ash bin. ” O.D. kicked the ash bin for emphasis.
“Really?”
“Yep.”
We were all sitting up. Even I could not help it. It was enough to get Babette a bit riled and she started to growl. You did not want to upset Babette. O.D. might get the idea that Babette was in a bad mood and decide to take her home. Once the growling started, you needed to take that as a cue and chill out. Even Richie knew not to make Babette growl.
“So what is it?” asked Richie. O.D. responded by making another deep inhalation, and smiling as if he had just sampled a vintage wine.
“That’s a really good smell.” said O.D. “I’ve really missed that.” We then watched O.D. settle down and stare at the fire blankly. I could tell that we’d been had. O.D. had built us up for a big revelation and then let us down. This was theater, and we were being put on by an old man and a poodle. Just about the time the youngest among us were starting to fidget, O.D. released the tension. “Have I ever told you about 2 of 7?”
The answer is an emphatic “Yes.” However, nobody wants to answer, because it won’t change things. When 2 of 7 gets mentioned, you know that is going to be the text of the sermon. Some unbelievers get up and get some more coffee, or check their watch and decide they had an appointment. 2 of 7 is one topic that you cannot get O.D. to discuss if he does not wish it, and you cannot get him off of it if he has a mind to speak it. It is his one unshakable belief beyond the certainty of the Resurrection. Me? I always like to listen when it comes up. You can tell O.D. really thinks a lot about his pet theory, and there is always something new added, something old deleted, something spun another way. For a dedicated deer hunter such as myself, it is like going to a Grateful Dead concert– always the same, always different.
I am not going to attempt to give you all the details of 2 of 7 Theory. A lot of them are lost on anyone who has not sat next to O.D. for a long, long time. To O.D. 2 of 7 explains everything you need to know about deer. In a gross over-simplification, 2 of 7 comes down to the propensity of deer to visit a given spot at a given time of day approximately two days in a given week. I know. That statement is too simple to give proper meaning, but you have to grasp that as truth if you are going to get anywhere in understanding O.D’s perspective on whitetail deer.
2 of 7 means if you see a buck come into a field on Saturday, and you can’t quite get a shot, don’t expect him there on Sunday. He may come any day of the week thereafter, but you won’t be there.
2 of 7 says that if you sit in the same stand, looking over the same trail for a week and you see a deer on Tuesday, but don’t get a shot, and then don’t see him again, that means you screwed up somehow and changed the deer’s mind. He’s now somewhere else, because he was due 2 of 7 days.
It goes much farther than that. 2 of 7 means a good treestand is good for deer 2 of 7 years. 2 of 7 means you get two years of drought out of every seven. It means you’ll have rain on the Opener about 2 out every 7 years, and if it doesn’t rain, it’ll even out eventually. We’re due. There is a good acorn crop about two years out of every 7. About every 2 years the acorns fail and force the deer to forage in the fields early.
O.D. will tell you the reason for 2 of 7 is that it is precisely the ratio that creates the greatest frustration in Man. The Almighty, therefore, puts it into everything so that Man does not get to feeling too uppity. 0.285714 is not quite 1 in 4 and not quite 1 in 3, and even though it repeats it does so with a clumpy rhythm.
2 of 7 grates on a contemporary man’s vision of the world. If it does not grate on yours, that’s okay. It grates on mine. It should not be that way. Still, I’ve been at this over 35 years, and I can think of exactly less than a dozen times it rained Opening Weekend. Go figure. I’ve also caught myself making excuses to myself for not seeing deer based on the 2 of 7 rule. It’s an infectious idea– enough that one of the Baptist deacons felt moved to decry it in open church a few Novembers ago, claiming that it was a sinful attempt to short circuit our relationship with Christ. O.D. laughed when he heard the account, and said the deacon needed to learn more about electrical theory before he used the terminology so wildly.
Of course 2 of 7 is a gross over-simplification, but O.D. is a retired electrical engineer who was taught Physics before Relativity became a regular course of study. He still operates on the idea of the grand Newtonian World Machine, a clockwork Universe where every piece fits into a grand plan of an unseen Creator. 2 of 7 kind of fits that world view. O.D. thinks 2 of 7 is an answer for everything. In a way, he might be right
If you hunt on weekends and see a deer on Saturday or Sunday, you probably won’t see him again that weekend, probably won’t see him the next weekend. Chances are the next few times that deer comes by your stand will be mid-week when you’re at the office.
If you try your best to hunt every day of the week, but miss that one day to take the wife into town to shop– that’s the day the deer comes back.
Start watching a field. How often do the same deer come out to browse forbs. Usually you have a good spot if the deer are regularly there two days a week. “But wait!” you say. “I see deer every night in this one field.” Wait. There’ll be days they miss. They’ll go off and eat somewhere else. If you see the same deer every day for a while, they’ll start missing sooner or later and by the end of the month it will be 2 of 7.
So Richie is sitting there next to O.D. lapping this all up for the better part of an hour. He thinks he has found the Secret of the Universe. Coming from O.D., you can see where the uninitiated might get that idea. O.D. kept the poor fellow on gut hooked and line for quite a while, before cutting him off, a lot the way you might cut the line on a snagged-up catfish.
“. . .Or not.” said O.D. “It just might be all a pile of manure. I’m just an old man who can only count to seven.”
“No! No!” Richie replied, “So how does this all figure into whether the deer will still be in the acorns on the Opener?”
“2 of 7 ” replied O.D. “Dick, if the acorns were good last year, they probably won’t be so hot this year, but then again. . . you never know.” As he said that, O.D. looked at his watch and decided it was time to get home to Charlotte. He snapped his fingers under the chair and Babette got up and trotted out behind him to his truck. He left us to ponder his pontification. We always do. Even saying O.D. is right, that it really is just manure, only fans the flames on 2 of 7. 2 of 7, therefore has a life of its own around Browningsville. I caught Richie counting on his fingers after O.D. left.
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