Cyndi's Two Cents

Just a girl and her guns

It is almost time for deer season. If I close my eyes, I can almost imagine myself breathing the crisp, clean air of a November morning:

Saw the first one. A small buck – just a notch above a button buck. I could have reached him with the 243, were it not for the single tree draped with wild grape vines standing right in my line of fire. My gun of choice is the Winchester 30-30 that was a gift from Grandpa Ralph. I like the gun, but more importantly, using it gives me the opportunity to honor the man who selected it and gave it to me.

It is now daylight. Minutes after settling into my stand in the pitch black of the early morning hours, the powerful screech of an owl cut through the darkness. Not once. Not twice. Three times. A reminder that I am not the only hunter in these woods.

Soon after daylight first began to give substance to objects unidentifiable minutes earlier, I watched through binoculars a possum on the other side of the creek waddle back and forth between trees, crunching leaves and moving with determination, although I am unsure of his mission. My presence here has not altered the universe for the wildlife with work to do in this little piece of heaven on earth.

A Downy Woodpecker is hammering away on a small tree just west of my stand. A Pileated Woodpecker, whom I have named “Woody” flew low minutes ago, landing almost within my reach. He will continue to hover over this creek and my stand for the remaining hours I wait silently in my stand.

The Red-tailed hawks are hunting this morning. I am hopeful we all find success. Squirrels are hunting, too, for acorns. They move swiftly along the branches in the trees surrounding me, scurrying across the tin roof of my deer stand on their way to the limbs we have stacked for wildlife cover. As hard as they are working today, I have to wonder if they know something about the upcoming winter.

The heavy morning air in the creek bottom carries the sound of gunshots fired in the distance. Perhaps this will chase some well-antlered buck my way.

Wild turkeys are making their way across the hayfield on the other side of the creek. Hens I believe, but from this distance, unless I look through binoculars I cannot determine if they are bearded hens or jakes.

Water is rippling over the rocks in Howard Creek below my stand. Soothing and constant, I feel it reaching out to me, calming and restorative. In a world of smart phones and tablet computers where it seems that you only have to touch a screen to do almost any task, it is a relief to be “unplugged” for a few hours.

One of the best things about being alone in this deer stand is the time spent doing nothing else but watching, listening, thinking, waiting – hunting.

Maybe if we all spent time in a deer stand, the world would be a better place.