Tis the Season

Yep, tis the season. Hunting season that is. Sorry ladies, (unless you are one of those ladies who don the camouflage and belly crawl in the dirt just like, or better than, the fellas do). So if you are a wife or girlfriend left at home waiting for the smell of fresh blood and bad body odor to return home sometime after dark, then for you I am sorry, but to everyone else - Yippee, it’s hunting season.

Of course, most of us hunters have been preparing for months. Whether it was some scouting trips or looking over maps into the wee hours, the preparation started a long time ago. As a matter of fact, the bow hunters have already been out there, some filling their tags, eating back straps as I write this. (My stomach just growled as I typed that and thought of the delicious meals at elk camp last year - comes back like an old holiday tradition into my mind and gut.) Others of us are just getting started.

The farmers are out posting their signs and making their approved hunter lists. They are fretting at the continuous 4x4 trucks that are about to start driving around the county roads non-stop until the season passes. They are also practicing their speeches for the inevitable “NO” that they will have to give a hundred and one times to the passing truck that just spotted a group of deer in their pasture by the house, a truck loaded with hunters of various ages and sizes who appear to have been cramped in the cab of the truck ever since last hunting season.

There is also the hunter that has permission and walks his approved ground like a Roman soldier guarding the tomb. He has done the pre-work. He got permission months ago. He knows the boundaries, but unfortunately the deer know the invisible markers too. They never get close to him and stay near the farmer’s home. Snickering and laughing until a gunshot rings out in the distance and the laughing is over and it is time to head to the thick cover.

Every hunter that failed to bag a buck last year inevitably says at the end of the year, “ That’s it, I am done with this. Next year I am going to use a bow or muzzleloader, or I am hunting somewhere else.” But as the season approaches, old habits are hard to break and he heads out to scout the old stomping grounds again. This time will be different.

Yes, this time will be different but I hope some will be the same. Like spending time with the people I love, in the woods or on the farm. Chatting with the old timers that have hunted that area since way before I was born and watching them teach their grandsons and sons the art of the stalk. The young blood mixing with the old dusty trails, learning the secrets and the jokes and stories that legends are made of. The legend of the monster buck that outsmarted us all. The legend of the two hunting divas that out-hunted us all. The jokes that have been laughed at around the campfire for generations. The meals, the misses and the filled tags. New chapters ready to be written by another hunting season.

Yes, I will be out there. Sometimes driving, sometimes walking, hoping to drag a deer out of the brush this year. But if not, I still enjoy the time out there in nature with my comrades in camo.