My favorite time of the year

My pick is the fall.

It offers some relief from the heat, and everything seems to return to normal.

The tourists have thinned out, school is back in session, and the football season is upon us.

I also like the fall colors. We don’t have a lot here in the coulee, but what we have is great.

I’ve been to the New England states, but never at the right time of year.

I moved to southern Idaho when I was in my 20s and always anxious to see new things. I discovered the South Hills, a splotch of hills and forests just south of Twin Falls.  

There were large colonies of quaking aspen and it was in the fall.

The colors were blinding. I have never since seen anything like it. There were yellow, reds, orange and browns. The yellows were blinding.

We parked and just wandered around. I found an Indian arrowhead while there.

The road from the hills took us down to the highway between Twin Falls and Nevada. 

When we started to leave the South Hills we drove along several beaver ponds scattered in the stream there.

At the time I had no idea that a year later I would return to this area.

The Idaho Fish and Game announced a special hunt in the area. The deer were so plentiful there it was really an emergency hunt.

My wife’s two brothers and other family members encouraged me to put in for the hunt along with a number of them. For this hunt, you could put in as a group.

We succeed in getting tags.

I had never hunted deer before and didn’t have a rifle, but my in-laws fixed me up with a gun.

When the group went hunting they did so in style. They set up a huge tent that even had a stove. No need to get cold. 

The day of the hunt, I headed down a draw after seeing several deer running down there. After several hundred yards, I got my first deer. Now I had to carry it out. It was all I could do to get it on my back. However, the terrain was so steep that I collapsed with the deer still on my shoulders. I lay there until another hunter came along and got me to my feet.

I learned not to shoot a deer so far downhill. Only once did I hunt again — this time when we first lived here in the coulee. Since then, I have been content to enjoy just watching deer, not shooting them.