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I’m up here in Alabama around Auburn doing some job hunting and some camping.  Here is the story I posted at my other site about my attempted ultra-light camping trip.

I’ve not had a chance to do much as I am in Alabama looking for some employment opportunities and trying to re-connect to the outdoors.

This post is cross posted by a outdoor site as well.  However, I where I am staying has no cable TV.  I have watched the local news over and over.  I understand now why people are horribly uninformed in many parts of this nation.   If you did not have the Internet or cable you really would have very little national information available.  It is quite amazing how local stations simply refuse to cover news outside their local market.  A station like FOX that is over the air would make some serious cash.

Here is the story I sent my daughter about the attempted camping trip I made the other night.

—

Girl,

You would not believe the night I had at Trimbles.  It was full of rain, no wind, spiders, locusts and SPIDERS.  Did I mention spiders?

I’m sitting by a small fire, it’s nice.  There is a little wind and plenty of firewood at hand.  I’m cooking some tomato soup on my cooker while sitting in one of the green chairs.  Life’s good.

I need some bigger pieces of wood so I get up and walk down to the creek.  My headlamp picks up the far bank and I see dozens and dozens of little green dots glowing in the light scattered all over the leaves on the ground and on the trunks of the trees.  I look up and down the bank and as far as the light can go green dots are reflecting back at me.  I turn my headlamp off, thinking the bugs were fireflies.  But the green dots disappear.   I turn the light back on and the bright green dots are back.  Hmm….

Now I figure if they are on the far side of the creek, they have to be on the near side.  So, I turn around and start scanning the leaves around me.  Sure enough, there are ten or so little green dots on my side.  I figure they have to be bugs of some kind, maybe ants to be so many.  So I walk over to one of the dots, which doesn’t not attempt to scurry away at all, rather it boldly stands its ground.  I bend over, adjust my light and glasses so I can see and look down at what is giving off all of those pretty green lights.  It wasn’t ants.  It was spiders.  Hundreds and hundreds of little brown, unafraid green eyed spiders, just staring up at me like I was lunch!

I would be lying if I didn’t have a flash of that movie Arachnophobia!  All those hungry little green eyes glowing up at me “Go to sleep Ray.  Go to sleep.”   Yeah, and wake up in a cocoon hung from a tree?  Don’t think so.  I had brought a rake to clean out the area where I was going to set up camp.  I grabbed the rake and furiously raked the area around the camp, making the site larger by double.  No spider was going to use the leaves as a way to get to me.  I made sure I sprayed bug repellent all around the key areas.

I finally got the hammock up and running, slightly out of line because of the slant of the ground.  It is a lot harder than you think if you are a nubie.   Somehow I had managed not to pack one half of the hammock’s rope system and had to make do with another rope, one I knew had a recorded breakage limit of a hundred and twenty five pounds.  I doubled it up and wrapped it tight mentally calculating what twice that weight would be verses my fat rear end.  As an added safety precaution I also set it so it would be close to the ground.

I climbed in wondering if this was a good idea.  There was a slight rain falling but little wind.  It was hot muggy and frankly a little uncomfortable.  I squirmed around doing my best to get situated.  The rain increased so I got up and made sure all of the gear was secure under the tarp.  I checked the leaves.  Yep, sure enough, green eyes everywhere and they seemed to be closer.   As I stepped out from under the tarp something huge landed on my neck.  I swept my hand across my back and a spider the size of my fist, a brown long legged critter, flew off.  It landed on the ground and then scurried into my hat, which was on top of the pile of gear.  That would not do!  I grabbed my hat and beat it like an ugly step-child knocking the four inch spider back out.   It was extinguished with a quick stomp of my shoe.

As I turned to get back into the hammock, a little shaken to be sure, I was hit in the headlamp by a flying locust.  It bounced off the lamp, my glasses, my nose and into my open mouth.   Of course I spit it back out immediately, cussing the whole situation at the same time.  I got back into my hammock, settled in and then felt something like a prickly stick in my mouth.  I spit it out, it was a locus leg!

YUCK!!!

So there I laid, wondering what the nutritional value of a locus body part was, listening to the night, the coyotes and sweltering under the tarp that was protecting me from the light rain.  I remember a hundred yards up the hill to my truck, a short seven mile ride back to the trailer was an air conditioned room with an air mattress covered with a soft foam pad- like the astronauts use (according to the commercial anyhow).  I was stinking with sweat, which also reminded me of the fact the trailer had a hot shower.  I’m fifty-two.  I’m alone, not trying to impress anyone.  No kids, no women, no buddies. No reason to suffer!

It took me fifteen minutes to break the camp down; ten to walk up the hill and load up; fifteen to get home and another hour to clean up and get to bed.

Best camping trip I’ve had in a while.

I’m officially about a thirty something Cherokee.   In my opinion this gives me the right to give my hunting buddies Indian names.  Bob’s story about the amount of hens landing around him has now given him the somewhat dubious nickname “Raining hens” Reese.  He was covered up with girls all giving him a hard time when he tried calling in the tom.

At the end of his trip Bob calls me with a story of success, but not in the classic sense of the word.  Unlike the TV versions of turkey hunting where the magic decoy or call makes all the difference, real turkey hunting is a series of long hunts and missteps occasionally punctuated with enough moments of triumphs that it makes you keep getting up at zero dark thirty and walking miles and miles across some tough terrain to kill a bird that weighs twenty pounds.   One of my hiking buddies, a small game hunter, would laugh at me and say, “How much money do you spend on a turkey trip?”  I’d tell him, always landing on the shy side of the actual number- no reason to give the man too much ammunition- and he’d pull out a calculator and make a big deal of punching in numbers.   “Let’s see, that is about one hundred and fifty-five dollars a pound!” he would exclaim out loud.  “Would it not make more sense to go to the store and buy ten fat turkeys?”

Now I know he knows why we turkey hunters do it.  For the love of God, he  is chasing snipe and quail through the Florida low lands, kicking moccasins to the side with his boots! So, who’s the real nut!  However, if we were to look at this like it was a contract, we would certainly be getting the short end of the stick.

Bob is one of those hunters who shoots the best gear and tries the newest gadgets.   I used to do be the same way, but as I got older, I became used to certain things working well and stuck with them.  My Mossberg 835 I hand painted.  The Holosight it is topped with, which after two birds got away because I wasn’t used to the distance between the sight and the barrel, I learned to shoot with deadly efficiency.  The Knight and Hale Sla-tex slate, Primos and Quaker boy mouth calls and a Quaker boy box call.  Outside a Primos owl hooter and a crow call, I’m pretty much set.  Before that, every year for a long time I would purchase a new “trick” I would swear would turn the tide on my hunting woes.  Finally I realized there was just a lot of hunting, hoping and getting lucky when it came to killing gobblers.

Bob told me one of those stories.   For a week “Raining hens” Reese was surrounded up to his neck in henned up gobblers. They were hammering the woods sometimes until four thirty in the afternoon.   He would start out before daylight trying to get to the birds before they hooked up with the hens and wandered off.  In one area, what we call the “400″, Bob spent three days humping the hills around the area, which is a combination of select cut pines and cutover, ending up only minutes behind the birds as they met up and wandered off our lease to another property.  He sat in the rain, the wind and cold only to have the bird walk away from him to a boss hen, or slip by him, refusing to come down a hill or slip out of cover.  Finally, nearing the end of the hunt, Bob gets back onto the perimeter road and works his way to the back side of the property.  The flock of birds liked to roost right on the edge in the pines and then fly down into the oak bottoms a couple of hundred yards off of us.  He can hear the tom that won’t come back across the bottom hammering the woods.   But he also notices that after the light rain just quit there was fresh scratching along the road heading from one back greenfield to another on top of a hill about three hundred yards away.  “I could tell they were ahead of me, going for the open greenfied because of the rain.  So I decided to ease up, but first I stopped and pulled on my 3D leafy wear.”   Bob eased up, the wet ground allowing him to move silently, and managed to close another twenty or so yards until he spotted a gobbler poking his head over the lip of the greenfield.  Bob froze until the gobbler went back to eating and took more steps.  He was mostly in the shade and the 3D leafy wear seemed to be confusing the birds.  Three times they looked over at him, three times he froze.  Finally, they moved back from the lip and he slipped up quickly covering about forty yards.  He was within range but stuck in the sun.  The gobbler he was after must have heard the footsteps and after hearing the clucks earlier must have been expecting another hen to be making the faint steps he was hearing.   Bob figured he was about forty yards out. He slowly raised his shotgun and fired. The bird rolled over like he was hit by a 2×4.  Bob raced up and saw him trying to get up and fired another round and the bird was down for good.  He took photos and picked up his bird for a very long walk back.

Of course “Raining hens” Reese’s bad luck continued as his photographs were deleted by a faulty camera.  Good memories, no photos.

I’m home this season. My wife is ill and running the woods hunting turkeys would not be a good idea unless I wanted to find out when I got back my keys didn’t fit and my bank account was emptied out.  So, I’m home and so is my daughter.  As she said, it is the first time in about eleven years I didn’t drag her into the turkey woods.  So, we are living vicariously through Bob, our hunting buddy.  He is unmarried and collects all the advantages that come with it, like extra time and money.

Right now he is trying to chase turkeys all over our lease in Alabama.  He calls us to give us the updates and let us have a little fun living through his experiences.   So far, the gobblers are henned up and he is suffering a little.   Today he called with this story.

“Ray, I went to the Meadows like you said.  I set up behind the cabin (not what I said to do, just for clarity) and I had a gobbler banging before dawn right across the creek.  (Just like I said)  So, I sit down right behind the cabin on the long ridge and start calling.  I hear the bird hit the ground and I could also hear something coming.  I get ready, thinking I’m in luck and suddenly this jake runs by, hauling ass so fast he runs right by me.  Ray, he was so close I could have cloth-lined him with my barrel!  He ran past me, went up the hill a little and started putting looking for the hen.”

I said, “Bob, why didn’t you shoot him?!”  Bob goes, “Well, I wasn’t ready to kill little birds yet. Besides, I could see the big dog about ninety yards away. He was in the bottom. He would stick up his head, gobble and then put his head down.”  I was cool with his decision.  Then he said, “But it got worse.  Right after I see him easing up the hill, I hear all these birds flying out of the trees all around me.  Hens came flying out of the pines and landing within fifteen yards of my setup!  They never reacted to me being there, just started yelping and putting and then they ran down to the gobbler and off they went!”  I asked how bad it was and he said.  “Ray, there were so many flying down, it was like it was raining hens!”

For all of you who hunt turkeys in the spring, you all know what it means when Bob said, “Ray, you know. I get why you say you hate turkeys!”

I managed to spend some time hunting the rut in Alabama.  I saw or heard a number of bucks, sadly most at night as they started dogging does seriously about the time I left.  However, this buck came in, downwind, of my stand, went through my scent trail and STILL answered the Primos doe bleat and Harmon’s doe scent I used at the edge of the greenfield.  There is no doubt during a normal period he would have went the other way when he crossed the downwind side.  But, as we all know, women can get you killed.  And so it was for him.  My favorite weapon for deer hunting is my scoped MIA in .308.  The round caught the deer at about ninety yards just behind the right ribs and lodged in the left shoulder.  He went about twenty yards and piled up.  The damage was devastating.  He didn’t bleed beyond a few drops out of his nose.  Luckily for me, he ran directly at my stand and dropped dead about forty yards away.

It’s been years since I’ve hunting Florida.  I live here, but my hunting heart belongs to the great state of Alabama.  People are good, the weather is good, the land is exceptional and the hunting is solid-good deer, good turkeys, good small game, just good.  Back in the late nineties to around 2005 I hunted a public piece of land up the road from me called the Yucca pen.  The land was open, filled with ATV’ers and mudders.  People shot, hunted, goofed around and basically just “ran the woods” on the weekends.  There was a small population of pigs and a smaller population of deer on the land.  I ran a feeder or two and usually hunted in the mid-week.  It was fun, but not very productive.  I killed a few pigs, no deer but spent a good deal of time in the woods, which is where I would prefer to be.

Several years ago the State of Florida bought the area up and sealed it off.  I pulled my stands and gear and left.  Years passed, finally I broke down and decided to try to hunt it with all the rules and regulations the State demands (I have a basic dislike for bureaucrats telling me where, when and how I hunt.  Who are they?  Most aren’t even outdoorsmen.)  But I bit the bullet and signed up.   I went on Google and printed down an aerial map of the area.  I quickly noted a series of flag ponds situated in the back corner of the property about a mile from the main road.  A friend of mine said most of the hunters stayed close to the main roads, so I figured this would be a good place to hunt.  Kaley-Ann and I made a quick scouting trip and I had to eat a little crow.  Whoever set up the area did a good job.  The staff and the rules were laid back.  I was surprised and pleased.  Kaley-Ann was even more pleased.  We jumped a number of small game and a couple of hogs, which was the goal.  We also saw deer- silly, stupid, non-afraid deer.  On the way back to the truck around dusk, a young spike refused to get out of our way.  In another time, my dad would have put him in the cooler without a blink of an eye.  But times change and we think about QDM a lot harder today.

Kaley-Ann really wanted to take a hog with a bow.  She had built her own bow from Rudderbows from a bamboo backed hickory blank.   It is a fine shooting bow, but a little heavy and she is working on trying to master it.  As a backup we decided to bring along her Remington .260.   On our first trip we walked to the back of the hunting area.  It was about a mile in.  Most of the other hunters tried to stay closer to the road.  We pulled along a game cart on the off chance we got something we could pull it out.  We went to the area we scouted and worked slowly into the wind.  We circled the slough where we had jumped pigs before.  About a hundred and fifty yards out, we heard the squealing and popping of teeth coming from the tall grass and palmettos surrounding the slough.  Kaley-Ann’s eyes opened wide in awe as the sounds of pigs fighting with each other echoed across the slough.  It was hard to tell if the pigs were in the palmettos on the far side of the slough, or in the slough itself which was covered with chest high thickets of grass under which the pigs a burrowed dozens of trails.  We both crept closer, Kaley-Ann readying her rifle.  It took about twenty minutes to circle downwind and come up from the south.   The pigs quit fighting so we were still a little confused as to their location.   We eased up to the edge of the slough with me a little to the inside.  I figured the pigs were so loud because they were in the palmettos on the far side of the slough so I kept an eye in that direction.  As we snuck up I caught Kaley-Ann looking past me to my right so I turned my head and to my surprise saw about a hundred pound boar walking along with us only fifteen yards away!  He didn’t see us because of the tall grass and thickets but we could see him from about the shoulders up.   Here I was between Kaley-Ann and a pig.  I backed up and drifted towards her and away from the pig, but I still could see both at the same time.  Kaley-Ann raised her rifle and fired.   The pig squealed and took off.   I figured he’d be DRT (dead right there) but he jumped into the slough and was gone.  No blood, no hair, no signs at all.  We circled the slough and even went through it on a grid search, nothing but other pigs complaining about us disrupting their day.  Kaley-Ann scratched her head, fifteen yards and a clean miss?  She finally admitted the adrenaline dumped when she saw the pig so close may have gotten the best of her as she tried to shoot through the tall grass.  (I think she overcompensated trying to shoot “through” the brush trying to hit the shoulder.)

About three days later we tried it again.  This time we brought a climber on the cart and wheeled it back into the same area.  Kaley-Ann climbed up a tree about eight feet which was all the tree would handle.  I left her and went to another area to sit and watch a game crossing.  (It was more her hunt than mine.)  The day was breezy and just a little warm.  The kind of day you’ll find yourself dozing instead of paying attention.  Around dusk, I got up and went for a little walkabout.  As I approached a large pond a heard a rustling and two large pigs jumped out about ten yards away.  They didn’t stay long enough for me to get a bead on them, but I wasn’t that interested because Kaley-Ann had just radioed me and said she was covered up with pigs.  She was just trying to pick one that wasn’t surrounded by piglets.   A few minutes after my encounter, I heard her rifle bark.  She radioed me she had one down.  I walked over and sure enough a nice fat sow was lying dead on the ground.

It was easy money.   We went and grabbed up the cart, pulled it back and loaded the pig.  We started out.  That was when I learned a valuable lesson about weight, thin wheels and soft Florida mud.  To say it was easy to get out was an understatement.  Six hundred yards of pulling that fat pig through the slough and I thought I was having “the big one Elizabeth!”   I’m not twenty-five anymore.  I decided to lighten the load and gut the pig right there.  I did and it was a little easier, until we loaded up the rest of the gear including the climber onto the cart.   There are moments when we look back and say “this was a special time.”  The struggle to walk out with her prize, pulling side by side, talking and laughing about how weak we looked as the sun set and the moon began to rise was a special moment for me.   Towards the end, Kaley-Ann tried to persuade me to go and get the truck.  “Dad, they won’t care if we drive a couple of hundred yards!” she panted as we pulled the cart across another rut.  I said to her, “Rules are rules, and it would be my luck the game warden would drive by just as we were coming out.  Let’s just stay the course and we’ll be okay.”  We did and finally made it out.  The funny thing was by the time we got out of the woods and back to the check out station everybody had gone home!   I could have driven all over the place and nobody would have known or cared.  But it was still a good lesson.   However, one my back and arms reminded me of for several days afterward.  Now I see why all the other hunters hunted closer to the roads.

Life is good when you spend time hunting with your kids.   This hunt was no exception, except for the fact that about half way out I had this great idea for an invention- a motorized game cart for old farts like me that tend to forget I may think I’m twenty, but my body is on the back side of fifty and has all the dents and dings that come with it.  Motorized carts, a sure money maker.  I’m just saying…

It was deer season again which meant a trip to Alabama and a stay in our wonderful single wide trailer on our fifteen hundred acre lease. Not many members were hunting as it was the last week of archery and muzzleloading season. Before I left I dug out my old .54 caliber Renegade and tried to sight it in. I hadn’t shot it in almost fifteen years, instead opting for bows and rifles. We had some trouble sighting it as it jumped from left to right and back to left. At one point, my buddy, Bob, wondered if the sights were loose. I pulled on the rear sight and it was fine. I pulled at the front sight and much to my dismay it moved back and forth easily. That explained the wandering groups! Several quick taps from a hammer and a punch rolled the dovetail down and the front sight was working again. We didn’t have a chance to sight it back in before the trip so we grabbed up all the gear and hit the road.

Now I love bowhunting in any form including crossbows. I don’t like wheels so I took along my Excalibur. It is a tack-driving weapon and I have the shaved and Robin Hooded bolts to prove it. However, it is an awkward weapon. Sorry guys at Excalibur, but it is what it is, and this creature can get in the way. Especially when sitting in a tree stand or trying to move around inside a shooting house. (Shooting houses on my lease are built on the basic 4×4 design. Good for rifles, bad for anything oddly shaped.) I knew my daughter would have trouble with it, so when we got up to the lease I had her shoot my old black powder and I’d use the crossbow. I should say that I may gripe about the crossbow’s design, but it is a deadly weapon. I killed a nice sow with it one year, hitting the pig at better than thirty-five yards in the near dark and nearly knocking her over. It sent a bolt with a Fred Bear Razorhead through her ribs and out the other side in a blink of an eye.

With a quick sighting in session and a few lessons on how to handle the rifle like how to     prime it with caps and the safe removal of the same, I sent my daughter out to a shooting house on our “400” property while I climbed a pine tree with my Summit at another food plot. As I struggled up the tree, it had been a year and my biceps were not used to pushing me and my gear up, I realized that being on the wrong side of fifty was starting to take a toll on me. Next year, God willing, I’m getting one of those sit down/pull up stands. Anyway, I get settled in and start to relax. It’s a good clear day and a good wind. I ranged a couple of trees and got ready for that six point I was after last year. It was only a matter of time. About thirty minutes later I hear BOOOM!!! from the area where Kaley-Ann had set up. I waited a minute and she radios me (we use radios to communicate when set up separately) “Dad, I got one.”

I was grinning under my face mask “What was it?” Hoping and not hoping it was that six point we both were after.

“It’s a doe.”

“Is she dead?”

“Oh, she’s dead!”

I figured as much. Getting hit with a 230 grain lead ball a half inch in diameter had to put the dinky-dink on that deer. So I realized my hunt was over and I got down so I could go back to the truck and drive down to Kaley-Ann’s location. When I showed up she had already tracked and recovered the deer. It was a small doe and I could see the lead ball hit her right through the chest. Kaley-Ann smiled and said it was right where she was aiming. However, she didn’t like the gun that much. “Dad. I’m not sure about this black powder deal.”

“Why? It seemed to work.”

“Because when the deer showed up I followed your instructions and pulled the hammer back. When I pulled the trigger the hammer fell but nothing happened. The doe looked up at me but luckily didn’t move. I so quietly pulled the hammer back again and pulled the trigger a second time. That time the gun went off! I couldn’t see the deer! The smoke was everywhere! Then I see her run off. When she did I saw my right hand trying to work the bolt like I do on my .260. But there’s no bolt, I’m out of bullets!!

I was laughing out loud imagining my daughter frantically waving her hand back and forth working a bolt that doesn’t exist. I pointed out the rifle did exactly what it was supposed to do, hence the dead deer on the ground next to the truck. She had to admit I had a point and we loaded her trophy into the bed of the truck and drove back to camp. We later figured out she didn’t have the primer set square on the nipple and the first strike set it up correctly. It went off on the second, as it was designed. Had it been a nervous six point, I think I would have lost a future black powder fan. As it turned out my Dad, who is failing steadily and giving away his things, told her he would give her his old .50 caliber Hawkins when he got back to Florida. That is a tack driving old style rifle, fully decorated in brass and wood. The old way for sure. It’s a hard way to gain a prized possession, but if he lasts till she shoots a deer with it, the moment will last forever in the stories told by our family. Isn’t that really what hunting and family and loving is all about?

I think it is.

P.S.- With this deer, Kaley-Ann has taken game with every type of weapon except a bow.   Although she did hit a running bunny with a blunt, just the wrong arrow head. Pretty good for a fourteen year old girl who has to travel 600 miles to hunt.

Everybody has a pair of boots they love. Usually, as in my case, the boots were at one time waterproof, but now can no longer hold that claim. My favorite pair of boots is a set of upland Danners. They are the best fitting pair of boots I ever owned. It is like wearing a pair of custom leather gloves on your feet. For the first couple of years the boots were waterproof because of a Gore-Tex lining. They were great! I wore them on duty as an anti-crime detective and in the woods hunting and hiking. But, eventually I wore them out. I had them resoled and somehow during the process they began to leak. It was heart breaking.

Worse, the wet boots led to wet feet and that led to some foot problems during the long hunt. I vowed to get a new pair of waterproof boots when I got home and I did, but they do not fit as well. I missed my Danners, no other boot felt the same way on my feet. I think every hunter/hiker knows where I’m coming from. So, I began to think about how to seal the boot. I tried Mink oil and all its cousins with some success. I figured the leak wasn’t actually through the boot, but along the seam around the sole. No matter how I worked it, I couldn’t seal the seam and a small leak always started shortly after hitting water. Then I got an idea. For years I had been using a product called Plasti-dip (http://www.plastidip.com/) to recoat certain metal items including parts of my tree stand. I knew the product was extremely waterproof and had some stretch built into its makeup.

So I took my Danners and a pair of leather Irish setter boots and did an experiment. I taped off, using painter tape, the edges of the boots below the stitched sole and just above the leather seam along the foot pad. With a brush I applied several coats of black Plastic-dip to the areas I felt were leaking.

After a period for drying, I put my son to the task of testing the boots-much to his dismay. (Hey, I was busy working on something else and he was just sitting there during homework, so it seemed like a good idea!)

The end result of the experiment was a waterproof pair of boots with only a small black line of Plasti-dip along the soles. Now, I tried the same method on a much bigger scale on an old pair of snake boots that leaked almost since the day I owned them. Those boots are made of ballistic nylon and I basically had to paint the entire sides and top with Plasti-dip. That task was more difficult because of the material, but I managed to get one boot waterproof and the other almost the same. Since I started out with a pair of snake proof sieves, I know I’m the right track.

When I looked up Plasti-dip online I was surprised to find the product comes in many different colors, including clear, which should work for those of you who worry about appearances. I’m tickled; my boots are back in action and I think I’m on to something here!

Update: I figured out why, after a number of coats of Plasti-dip, my snake boots refused to stay waterproof. As I stood over the wet pair I noticed that the soles of the boots were wet. Not the rest of the boot, but water was definitely seeping out of the bottom. What?? So I reversed the process and filled the boots with water. I watched as water poured through the soles of the boot. Apparently, my boots have soles that do not deflect sharp objects very well. One stick, not a sharp one at all, had rammed its way into one sole and left a 1/4 inch cut. Each sole had at least three holes in it. Back to the drawing board. I’m going to have to find a material waterproof and tough enough to withstand me walking on them. AAGGH!

Update Two: I bought Shoe-Goo and put it on the boots. We’ll see. It does harden to a tough coat. I think I got all the holes. A couple of layers of plasti-dip and another test is in the offing. Update:  Success! The snake boots sat in water for nineties minutes with no leaks. I’m using the rest of the spray to cover the rest of the boot. If it works, I’ll be as waterproof as a rubber boot with snake protection. Total investment was less than fifteen dollars.

I shifted uncomfortably in my climbing stand as I studied the surrounding Florida cypress head.  I tried to shake off the nagging mosquito that hummed in my left ear.  The whine would cover any subtle noise of approaching hogs.  I glanced around, looking over the short cypress and palmetto thickets.  All was clear, so I gave the mosquito a quick swat and it was quiet again.  My seven year old daughter’s voice echoed in my head, “Mommy says Daddy sure loves his hunting.”

My wife was right, I sure did.  She reminded occasionally, and not always sweetly, that I liked hunting a little too much.  But I had no choice; it was the way I was raised.  My dad introduced me to hunting when I was just big enough to be carried on his back through the swamps of the Florida Everglades.  I shot my first rifle, sitting in my dad’s lap because I wasn’t old enough to hold it by myself.

I leaned back against the scrawny pine tree I managed to squirrel up using my API climber and thought about my dad and what he had helped me become.  I have been thinking about that lately because my dad is getting older, his body is slowly winding down.  He can’t get around much anymore between the diabetes and his bad hips.  The diabetes has taken its toll and his health prevents him from doing too much too often.  A far cry from the man I remembered humping a young boy through waist deep swamp water while proudly wearing his “gookie” boots.  “Gookie boots” was the nickname his best friend AJ “Squeak” Allen gave the new moose hide snake boots my Dad bought.  Dad would walk around challenging rattlesnakes and water moccasins by stomping on them, daring them to defeat the thick hide with their fangs.  One day, Dad and Squeak ran across a rattlesnake that was well over seven feet in length.  Dad killed it with a pistol.  Squeak took one look at the snake which was longer than a man was tall and said “Ray, I wouldn’t stomp that snake if I had gookie boots up to my armpits!”

God, it seemed like it was just yesterday I would stay up all night anticipating the trip to the Everglades and the times my Dad would hunt the backwoods with me in tow.   Hunting was a blessing because it held us together through all my rebellious teens and early twenties.  Funny thing about getting older, I swear our parents get smarter the older we get, go figure!  Too bad we don’t listen when we are young men.  I could have avoided some painful lessons.

A couple of years ago, when my daughter was just a baby, I began to notice something happening to me.  I would glance in the mirror in the morning and just for a second I would see a face of a man who looked a lot like my Dad.  I also began catching myself studying my hands.  They seemed like they belonged to someone else.  My hands were weathered and wrinkled, with a good number of scars scattered across the knuckles from assorted briars, errant knife cuts, and stubborn nuts and bolts from rusty stands or truck parts.  You know what I mean.  My hands had been around for some time now and it took me awhile to realize I’d seen them before, they were my Dad’s hands.

They were the same hands that held the rifle for my first shot; the hands that picked me up and put me on his back when we had to wade some swamp deep in the Everglades.  They were the hands that built hunting cabins we stayed in or fixed that old workhorse ‘65 International Scout we drove.  They were also the same hands that held me in a viselike grip when I was being scolded for the times my mouth overloaded my-you know what.  They also pulled me to him for his demanded bear hug every time I came around, regardless of whether or not I as a young boy, or a grown man.  It didn’t matter if I was alone or with my buddies and the embarrassment was overwhelming.

They were the same hands that held a Winchester model 88 for more years than I have been around.  He bought the rifle in 1955, two years before I was born.  The tack driving .308 accounted for dozens of deer, hogs and turkeys while being held in those steady hands until he finally laid it down several years ago.  Last year he surprised me by giving the rifle to me after years of my good-natured hinting I would sure like to own such a fine weapon.  I took a deer with it last winter and it was a special moment for me.

My wife just doesn’t get it.  She sees me take my kids out into the woods, to experience what I had experienced when I was a kid. She thinks it’s just an excuse for me to get out, but it’s not, it’s a rite of passage, a link from my grandfather, to my dad, to me and now to them.  I’m showing them something they can pass onto their kids when they grow up.  It has been the one constant that has always kept my father and me together.  When I’m out in the woods, I think about the times we had and the things we did.  I thought about him as I looked down at my hands cradling the Mahaska recurve.  Several years ago, I rediscovered the beauty of traditional bowhunting that my dad had shown me when I was in my teens.  For some reason, picking up a bow had brought me full circle to a time when a middle aged man traveled the woods with his youngster in tow.

But times are different.  Just recently, when he was with me on a turkey hunt in Alabama, he spoke of growing old and how thinking about his life had changed.  At seventy, he was a more cautious and worried man.  I had noticed his wariness and occasional confusion with a deepening sadness.  As to make the point, one day when he was driving his truck with me next to him,  he started to turn the wrong way at an intersection and I had to remind him the property we were headed to, the same he visited the day before, was in the opposite direction.  I bit my lip and smiled as he apologized.  I stared out the window at the blue spring day and pretended to study the passing pastures.  How long would it be until the cycle would be complete?  First the father and his son, then man to man, and someday the son becomes the father.

I thought about that moment again as I studied my right hand covered by my leather shooting glove and I realized my eyes had become bleary.  I tried not to think about a season soon to come where he will not be there, waiting to greet me with a bear hug and an “I love you son.”

Truth is I don’t mind those hugs as much as I did when I was younger.  I even start a few up myself these days.  My kids sure get tired of them though.  My five year old son begs off a lot, but I think he’ll get over the embarrassment in forty years or so.  Heck, he might even get to where he likes giving them himself.  I think about what my wife said.  Yes, I do love hunting, but more than that, I love my Dad.

I love sitting by the fire and watching it burn.  I think there is something basic, almost instinctive, in the relationship between man and fire.  My father loved to sit by a open fire, as did his father and his father’s father.

Tonight I spent time building and sitting by a fire in my backyard.  As a matter of fact, I had two going, one in a stone pit and one in a homemade tin fire pit.  The stone pit is made up of stones from my second home, the great state of Alabama.  For a while I collected rocks every time I went up and put them around my home as decorations.  With hunting on hold for me I spend time in the backyard chopping wood, gardening, building a fire to ward off bugs and give me a little peace.

Now today’s fire was a little different.  My wife was doing what wives do best, which is going crazy every once in a while.  So, I found it safer to sit- no hide- in the backyard!  I chopped some wood, built two fires, lit a Citronella candle (which doesn’t work by the way) and brought a water bottle full of Jim Beam with me.  I was a very happy backyard camper until the bugs ran me out.

As I stood by the fire I began to wonder if the relationship between man and fire has something to do with how the fire burns.  When you first light it, the fire starts out small and weak. Add too much wood and the pressure causes it to go out.  Too little wood and it starves, but if  you treat it just right a fire will grow and burn brightly.  The young fire burns with an energy that gives off light and heat, it seems like it will last forever.  Soon though it slows, but it leaves you good coals, coals you can cook on, stay warm by, coals that last a long time, steady and strong.   After a while the coals begin to cool, their light begins to fade, although they still give off lifesaving heat, but their time is nearly over.   In the end, they quietly go cold, leaving only ashes.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that a fire mimics man, or is it that man mimics the fire.  As children we thrive the best if we are given just the right amount of encouragement, not too much pressure, not too little attention.  When we grow into young adults there is nothing we can’t do, nothing that can stop us. We burn bright with energy and hope.  But as we get older, we learn the meaning of life, that providing a solid, steady place for others to feel warm and secure is our job, our destiny.  In the end, we grow older and weaker.  We have less and less to offer, but if you huddle closer, listen a little harder, we still have something to offer.  Even as ash, long after we have grown cold, we offer the elements that the future can be built on.  A fire gives ashes to the earth that add nutrients so the new growth can flourish.  We give memories and lessons that our children and our children’s children can learn from and prosper by.

Those were the thoughts I had as I watched the fire slowly grow dark and cold.  I didn’t mourn the loss, as I know it is the same for all things including us.  I hope that in the end I’ll provide the warmth and comfort to my family and someday my words will guide my children to a good life.

A long time ago, I had promised myself if I ever retired I would spend a month hunting deer in the great state of Alabama.  The plan was originally set for seven years down the road but fate stepped in.  Our department offered a buyout for a number of senior officers. So, after over eighteen years, most of it as  detective, I felt it was time to hang up catching bad guys and spend more time with my family.

A few days after I retired I took my two children, Kaley-Ann and Jacob, to our lease, which is northwest of Auburn, for a long hunting vacation. On the way up we visited another retired detective for a day and then set our sights on our new home, an old trailer next to a lease my father and I had. Unfortunately since the last time I stayed there the trailer had lost its well and the overall condition had fallen beyond repair. We struggled for a week until we could make other arrangements. Both my kids kept a good attitude as we carried water from a neighbor to take showers and cook food. When we did manage to find another trailer and secure the water, we settled in and started to seriously hunt deer. The weather was cold and I mean cracking your pipes cold. For a while they expected snow. We didn’t get the fluffy white stuff, but we dealt with everything else freezing solid. Before I left Florida I stuck my Columbia Gallatin Range wool bibs and jacket into the truck just in case. That was a good move. There was more than one day where the set saved my bacon, and other sensitive parts, from freezing solid. In preparation for the hunt I scoped my Springfield M1A. I know, heavy, awkward and there are better rifles out there. I’ve heard it all. But that wasn’t the point. I owned the rifle for

almost twenty years and killed a number of critters with it. In the past I shot the rifle with iron sights only and it was a tack driving weapon. (One time I shot a three round group at less than an inch and a half at 150 yards. Two of the rounds were almost touching. And that was done by resting the rifle against my truck bed.) But I never scoped it and one time I missed a doe at over a hundred yards in a clear cut. She was loping along so it was not a great shot anyway. However, my hunting buddies gave me a hard time and persuaded my wife to get me another rifle. That Christmas I ended up with a Winchester .300 Win. Mag. It shot great and I killed a number of deer with it, but I didn’t like it that much. It was just too much gun for deer here in Alabama. Besides, it just wasn’t sexy. I’d seen the M1A scoped out and it looked like something special. In addition, I wanted to try some long range shooting with the setup to see just

how accurate the rifle was with me behind the trigger. I set a goal of two hundred yards or better in the clear cuts. I should mention that as a .308 weapon system the M1A, with its extra weight and good balance, is phenomenally stable. I had no doubt I would be able to put a round on a target if given the opportunity. But as chance would have it, I had trouble when I first set the rifle up and didn’t get a real opportunity to get her tuned in right. It was shooting high but I didn’t know it. It shouldn’t have been, but the high mount on the M1A caused some issues I didn’t anticipate. I finally tuned it in while up in Alabama but not after missing a deer. After that the rifle was a good to me as I could ask.

January 9^th- With the hunt for shelter finally over, I sent Kaley-Ann down the back side of the property we were staying on. The club leased the land where the trailer sat. It was part of an eighty-five acre old farm that had been clear cut three or four years ago. The brush had grown up quickly and the deer began to work back and forth across the three main ridges the farm contained. Each ridge had one greenfield at the end. The one where I sent Kaley-Ann was at the end of the ridge near a swamp. Originally, the farm was usually good for a doe or two, but as the surrounding brush began to thicken, bucks were being taken more and more. I escorted her to the shooting house and helped her settle in. For safety, I used small handheld radios. My daughter was instructed to radio me when she was on her way back. From time to

time, we’d check in with each other. While she hunted I stayed at the trailer with my son cleaning the inside to make it habitable. I got sidetracked working and when I glanced outside I noticed it was almost dark. The day before Kaley-Ann had gotten a little cold so I was worried I had left her out too long. I keyed up the radio just as I

walked out and began to ask if she was ready to come down. When I stepped out I realized there was about five minutes of shooting light left. I quickly shut up after a few words and hoped I didn’t screw up her hunt. Less than a minute later my question was answered with a loud boom from her direction. I waited on pins and needles until the radio crackled with her voice. “DAD, IT WAS A BUCK, A HUGE BUCK!!” Kaley-Ann’s voice was bursting with excitement. “He ran up by the shooting house and I saw him fall over, I think he’s dead.” It was dark by then, so I grabbed my son, my dog and a flashlight and started heading down the muddy road. Kaley-Ann’s voice came over the radio again, “Dad, I’m not sure he’s dead. I think I can hear him moving around, but I can’t tell.” I stopped and retreated back to the trailer where I grabbed my .45 Kimber, a bigger light and had Jacob put my dog, Chloe- our Golden Retriever- on a leash. The last thing I needed was my dog chasing a wounded deer through the woods at night. We started

back down to the road better prepared. When we got to the bottom, Kaley-Ann met us at the base of the shooting house. She pointed to where the deer was laying. We carefully walked over but caution was not needed, the buck was dead. The funniest moment was when Kaley-Ann was describing what happened as she walked over. She whispered, “Dad, I was up in the shooting house when I saw this doe run into the field. She busted me almost immediately and turned and ran off. Just about dark I heard something in the woods off to the right and out pops this huge buck. He runs right to the tree in the middle of the greenfield. Just then you called, but I had put the radio on the floor of the house to muffle any sound. The buck didn’t hear a thing. I tried to put the rifle on the window but it made noise and he looked my way. I froze and then I heard another deer in the woods behind him. The buck looked over his shoulder and then jumped up on his hind legs and put his front hooves on the trunk of the tree. He started chewing on the branches. After he was finished he dropped down and started to go to the bathroom. That was when I shot him!” Kaley-Ann seemed tickled about that timing. “I wasn’t going to risk anything. When he first came out and I tried to move the first time I thought he was going to run. So, when he started to go he was standing still and that was all I needed. Dad, the buck is HUGE!” Kaley-Ann made a motion with her hands, holding them apart by at least twenty-four inches. I was curious to see just how big this buck was. So, we walked over in the dark to the tree where he had fallen. Sure enough he was dead, and he was big, but not as big as Kaley-Ann remembered. She was in front of me when we walked up on the deer; her hands were up and out showing the size of the rack. The farther we walked the wider the gap between the hands grew. The flashlight beam hit the buck’s headgear. Kaley-Ann paused. She studied the deer’s rack for a moment. I

heard what we all have said many times before. “I could have sworn it was bigger…” Kaley-Ann just suffered what we call “ground shrinkage.” I broke out laughing but told her the truth, this was a big deer. The buck’s antlers were also very unique with twists and turns at the tips and a small sticker on the back side of one antler. There was fresh wood still stuck to one beam. He had a very stocky build and was obviously the big dog in this part of the woods. Kaley-Ann was so excited I decided to video her telling the story. For no reason other than to be funny, Jake decided to act out the story like the sign language person you see on television. It was so funny I nearly dropped the camera as Jake imitated deer sneaking, gun shooting and finally a buck peeing on a scrape. God knew that boy needed charm, and he sure gave it to him in spades! I had the kids drag the deer out by themselves. I stood by with a video camera and encouragement. My son, a good hearted twelve year old, protested more than once. But I explained to him that everyone has their time, and this was their time. I drug many a deer or hog or whatever across different types of terrain in my day, now I’m the designated camera holder. I watched as the kids worked out the best way to drag the deer. I had to remind Jake a couple of times that pulling in the same direction as his sister would work better. We finally got the deer out and back to the cleaning shed where Mike, David and Bob met us. Mike had gotten a nice eight point only two pounds lighter than Kaley-Ann’s buck.

January 19^th, I carried a climber onto a hill behind a green field in an attempt to catch the deer staging in the select cut pines surrounding the area. Another hunter shot at a huge buck on another field about five hundred yards to the east. The buck was scent checking the fields for hot does. The rut in this part of Alabama was in full swing. But, as it happens to me frequently, the best laid plans seem to go astray. The weather was unstable and the wind was kicking up. Usually, the wind lays down in the evening, but not this time. I sat in the climber clinging to a fairly stout pine tree as the trunk swayed back and forth under what turned out to be twenty five to thirty mile an hour winds. It was super cold that day, and the wind chill from the gusts made me put on every scrap of clothing I had. Thank God for my Columbia wool bibs, they were to only thing that kept me up in the tree for any length of time. In the end, I managed to stay aloft until dark and get out without suffering any serious damage beyond no feeling in my fingers and face. 

January 23- What can I say? It’s windy and cold-again. I finally got the wind to go in my direction so I could hunt the draws in this huge cutover. The first time I tried it the wind was coming from the northeast with gusts up to 25 miles an hour. Even with that I was able to sneak up on two young deer, a small four point and his teenage girlfriend. The young buck got up less than twenty yards away and stared straight at me. He refused to move because the doe he was hooked up with didn’t want to leave the sunny side of the ridge. She finally got up and hopped away with the buck quickly followed. I figured I’d come back when the wind switched and hunt the draws and thickets below. There had to be deer laid up in the thick brush along the ridges. When the wind changed directions I went back and set up in the same ridge top, which was really part of a long saddle. The wind direction was fairly stable, somewhat unusual for my area. There is a saying around here, if you don’t like the wind directions, wait five minutes. But this day the wind held steady and I

could cover about 270 degrees without giving myself up. I waited for an hour and hit the Primos can. About every twenty minutes I’d hit the can with two calls and let it rest. Now I should tell you up front I’m about deaf in one hear with any sound in the range of a woman’s voice or a deer or turkey walking in brush. Being married for almost twenty years, I count the first as a blessing, but curse the second as it causes me trouble. Add that if there is any background noise, like road traffic or a creek bubbling, and it’s all over for me to hear anything walking up on my left side. The reason for the loss is years of shooting guns without hearing protection. This is something I corrected in my children’s habits. As I sat on the ridge on a small stool I fought hearing through the constant roar of passing traffic including logging trucks. One truck was especially bad, with a low thumping noise repeating over and over. As the truck noise faded I realized the thumping noise was still there, but now it was a steady grunting and it was getting louder. To my horror the grunting was dead behind me, directly downwind and just over the lip of the hill. I just hung my head as I heard the grunting hesitate and then stop- “grunt, grunt gru…” Quietly I swung down to a knee and pivoted, I heard one more grunt but it was farther away. I stepped over the rise, knowing all along that I was out of luck. The brush was way too thick to pick out any buck sneaking away.

Jan 25^th- The Primos can. It works. It worked twice today. But again, I was sitting in a shooting house which had the wind working into my face; great for covering the green field and the huge open cutover beyond it, but not for the small knoll behind the shooting house. The area I was hunting was a five year old cutover with new cutover along the edges. The land behind me was too thick with brush to hunt without using the green fields and the few old logging roads that crisscrossed the land. There were no treestands along the roads so greenfields were the best option. I hit the can several times during my setup, about the third series I could hear the buck grunting as he came in downwind and knew he was looking for the doe he heard. Instead of a girl, he smelled me. There was nothing I could do, again. AAAGH! A little later I coaxed another single grunt from a thicket in a bottom as I snuck along a scrape line. I did the same thing several years ago and killed a nice six point which had run full speed up a hill to the sound of the call. Even after he saw me and hit the brakes, he refused to leave and I shot him from less than fifteen yards. The call works at certain times during the rut. It works best when the bucks are running around looking for does. It will definitely bring them into range, but you better be set up to take advantage of the situation. A bad setup will stop any chance you have to take the big guy.

January 26^th- Success! Well, kind of. With Kaley-Ann’s deer already down and five big grocery bags full of deer meat, my goal was to kill one more deer for food. There was a call for extra meat from my extended family. If it was a buck then great, but I would be happy with a good sized doe as well. However, the weather took a dive as the temperature jumped up. The deer simply stopped moving as much. Mike, a real bad to the bone deer slayer, mentioned that the swamp behind the ridge top greenfield in the middle of the farm usually held deer. I remembered the area, last year’s spring turkey season found me easing along the briar infested swamp wondering if I could pull a hog or two out of it. (On a side note, I hate briars and thorny vines. When I say I hate them, I cannot overstate the feeling. I HATE briars! Like the mosquito in Florida, I can find no real reason why God put them on the earth other than torment people like me.) Despite my feelings I took Mike’s advice and signed out for the swamp area. I took my Summit climber and pushed my way

through the outlying briars into the swamp below. Once inside the swamp I chose a straight hardwood tree which overlooked a small creek and two trails coming off the ridge behind me. The area was thick with brush saplings and briars, so I climbed, and climbed until I could see over the limbs. (I am not a skyscraper tree climber. I am comfortable around twelve to fifteen feet. But you know the deal, you climb, look around and think, “Just a little higher and I can see all I need to see.” Before long you are watching planes go by at eye level!) I settled in, covered by my 3D leafy scentlok suit. I tucked my scoped Springfield M1A under my arm, got “quiet” and waited. My companions were squirrels and small birds which spent most of their time on the ground imitating walking deer. For those who hunt deer you know what I mean. “Crunch, crunch, hop, hop” you get ready and finally you see the offender, a small gray squirrel jumping up and down on the dry leaves, doing their best to sound like hoofs. After a while, one small squirrel made a point to run up a neighboring tree and give me the once over. I was invisible in my leafy wear until the squirrel spotted my eyes moving. He recoiled in horror and scrambled across the limbs of trees to a safe distance. There he paused and studied me for a long time, every once in a while letting out a small alarm “chuck.” A few minutes later a small rabbit hopped out and made circles around the base of my tree. He saw me shift my weight once and scampered away. I guess rabbits are sensitive to things moving above them, with all the hawks, owls and eagles that fly overhead. About five minutes before dark I heard a different sound to my left, a sharp snap of a limb breaking back in the thicket along the creek. I shifted but before I could move much a doe came trotting out of the brush. She walked quickly along the creek bed from my left to my right only about fifteen yards from my tree. She paused once behind a tree and then started up through the brush. I had to twist to my right and bring my rifle down on a sharp angle. This made seeing through the scope tough. I didn’t risk moving too much because I could see she was looking around. She was about to pass over my trail where I walked in, which meant she might bust me. I pushed my rifle as tight as I could into my right shoulder as I twisted as much as I could to the right. I looked through the scope and searched the brush for the deer. I got what I thought was a good look and pulled the trigger. The doe jumped up straight up like she was stung and took off through the brambles, briars and junk tree thicket. I fired again in desperation, stunned she didn’t fall with the first shot. The doe made it through to the other side of the briars and stopped for a second. That was all I needed, I centered the cross-hairs and fired a third time. The doe fell in place. This all occurred in less than four seconds; for all those with bolt actions, I rest my case. Now, I have to confess a few things. One, I’m a good shot, but the M1A I was using had just been scoped before I left, and anyone who has spent time with the weapon realizes the potential trickiness of the setup. I missed a deer the week earlier on a greenfield at one hundred and thirty-eight yards at dark. I had set the scope up to hit on the mark at 25yds, which should have made it about three high at a hundred and back on again around 225 yards. Yet, when I missed the doe I was high on the shot, too high. I went back to the drawing board and shot a target at a hundred yards and found the rifle was almost six inches high! I re-centered the weapon to be on at one hundred and decided to keep the range reasonable. Now, I have a second doe and I seemed to have missed her, even with the earlier correction. I was getting a little frustrated. Two, I am a horrible judge of deer in the dark or from a high position. I was in both at the time. The doe looked like a younger deer when I looked at her from my stand. I have shot a couple of “suitcase” deer in the past, so I figured it wouldn’t be hard to get her out of the swamp. When I got down I didn’t take the time to check the deer, I just went back up to the trailer, stopped by to see my dad and told the guys at the checkout station I’d be alright by myself. Idiot… never assume. I grabbed my gear and headed back down to the bottom. I walked down the trail back across the creek and eyeballed the tree I was in and dead reckoned where the deer fell. I started in that direction and quickly found myself entangled inside an eight foot high briar thicket with small game trails crisscrossing each other. I pushed through the cutting and slashing briars and around the thick thorny vines wrapped around the young saplings that made up the rest of the thicket. I finally made it to the other side and quickly found the doe… which was a wee bigger than I thought. This was no young doe; she was a mature deer, over a hundred pounds. That changes things. I took a look around and did that “dammit I’m a man” thing. I decided I didn’t need help and tried to drag her out by myself. I managed about twenty five yards before I gave up. It wasn’t the drag itself but the thickness of the brush that held me up. Every thorny vine or brush ripped at the deer and me as I pulled the doe along. I wasn’t wearing gloves so it didn’t take long before my hands looked like they had grabbed the wrong end of a blender! I decided to get some more gear and a machete. By God, if the briars were drawing blood, I’d draw some of my own. So out of the swamp I went. (After a couple of false starts, trying to find your way out of a thicket in the dead dark with a small light doesn’t work so well. Luckily, a dog kept barking from a home near the swamp and that gave me a point of reference. With that I managed to get out and back up to the trailer.) My dad came by and offered his ATV. Great, now we were cooking with gas! I strapped the game cart to the back of the ATV, grabbed a bigger light, some gloves and my machete. Game time! I traveled back down to the swamp, cut a path to the deer and then cut a path back out wide enough to accommodate the cart. I’ll admit I might have taken some extra time to cut a bigger path than needed, exacting a little revenge on some briars along the way. I loaded up the old girl, strapped her down and pulled the cart up the hill, out of the swamp and thickets to the ATV. There I roped the cart to the back of the ATV and pulled the whole thing out. It took a while, but I finally got her to the cleaning shed and processed. But by the time I got home and ready for bed almost six hours had passed since I took the shot! At the cleaning shed I

found out what had happened to the first shot. The deer had suffered a wound through her brisket, just behind her front leg. I figured out it was a combination of the sharp angle from the tree stand to the deer along with the twisting to the right to find her in the scope that caused the low shot. The gun was definite doing its job. That explained why she stopped after running through the thicket. The second shot hit her just behind her left shoulder and traveled along her length exiting high just before the right rear hip. An odd angle, probably caused by the way she was standing on the hill.

January 28^th- Tony Soprano moment- Forget about it. It rained and got cold- again. My plan was to head out to a select cut area where I knew a couple of bucks were running and try to set up a call in. The cold damp weather changed my mind. I wandered around in the afternoon with my bow looking for small game.

January 29^th- Life is about timing. You know what I mean. You walk around a corner two minutes later and you never meet your future wife. You stop at a light and hesitate a second when it turns green and a car going the other way runs the red and just misses you (that happened on the way up). Today I executed a plan I had in mind for two weeks. The area I wanted to hunt had been locked up by other hunters, but now it was free. The buck I was targeting was a good six point according to those who saw him earlier. But this buck had an attitude. He wore out tree trunks no smaller than my lower leg, unusual for this part of Alabama. Kaley-Ann saw the deer in the food plot early in the hunt but he never presented a good shot. The buck was running the length of the creek, almost a mile, making scrapes from one end to the other. My plan was simple. The bucks were not getting near the greenfields, instead they were scent or visually checking the fields for does from about a hundred yards out. Hunting pressure, even light pressure, will make bucks take a back road in a heartbeat. So, my plan was to get above the greenfield on a hill about two hundred yards out and intercept the buck as he makes his sweep. I got a late start due to some late night duties so I was about an hour behind my schedule when I snuck down the gravel road to the hill. I made two mistakes; one was walking up the gravel road-there is no quiet way to ease up a gravel road; the second was not being one hundred percent engaged. I was tired. Three nights earlier I didn’t get to bed until two o’clock after bagging the doe in the swamp. Last night I had some errands to attend to and didn’t get to bed until around one. So I’m walking down the gravel road and I’m just about to where I turn up the hill when a doe starts blowing in the draw to my right. I froze and tried to locate her in the brush at the bottom of the draw. I could hear her moving away. There was nothing I could do about it so I eased up the hill on my left. The woodpile I was going to sit behind was only forty yards away. I made a beeline to it in hopes to get set up before the big boy showed up. Just as I crested the hill I saw something move below me. I looked to see the buck bolt out from some brush into the open only forty yards away. For just a second he turned his head my way, then he gracefully leaped away. I saw him long enough to have the large six point rack burn a

hole in my memory. It was past his ears and tall. The outside tines took a solid ninety degree angle straight up from the main beams. It was like watching fence railings running through the woods. If I had a bat I would have given myself a solid whack right between the eyes. The truth is I forgot to “engage the mechanism” when I got out of the truck. Either you are hunting or you are taking a walk in the woods. I’ll blame fatigue, or the fact that I was really done hunting. I was hoping to take one big buck, and I screwed up the chance by not paying attention to my surroundings. I should have worked my way up through the woods, not the road. All the deer know the road means hunters. I should have kept my rifle off my shoulder and used the buck grunt as I walked to calm any nervous game. Should have, could have. The good news is I have two days left. The bad news is I have packing and other tasks to take care of. The deer have been pressured pretty hard in the last two weeks so getting an easy shot off isn’t on the table. I’m not really sure I have the gas left to put the time in to take one down. Today was the day and I blew it.

January 31^st – Going home. I spent the last two days really not hunting very hard. Truth is, after missing the big guy and collecting enough deer meat for the family for the year, I couldn’t bring myself to drop another deer. So, I spent the two days hunting small game for an elderly lady who owns one of our leases. However, even the little critters seem to be somewhat sparse. I saw a ton of squirrels and such while in trees waiting for deer, but when I showed up with my longbow or .22 the small game seemed to know the score. But I did spend some great time in the woods, took some photos and overall had one great time. Over the years I have learned what works and what doesn’t. Let me share with you what gear I have found to do the job. First and foremost, I wear Fred Bear type hats when I hunt. Yes, the other hunters look a little funny at you at first. However, you’ll be hard pressed to beat the versatility of the hat. I have one in brown and two in camouflage. The brown one I bought last year from 3rivers Archery. I have worn it almost exclusively on this trip to see if a brown hat blends enough so critters won’t see you. It does. It also protects you from the cold, the wind, the rain and anything else going on. If you wear glasses you can tilt it to keep rain off the lenses or to cover the glare so game won’t see the reflection. Wool military issue neck gaiter- I owned two and now have only one. If I lose this one I’m screwed. There are other gaiters out there but this particular style does several things well. One, it is light and it breathes. The fleece one I used briefly was too hot. Two, it stretches. I used it almost all the time for a face mask. Three, it is wool. You can’t get anything better that will fight the cold, even when wet. 10x insulated gloves- I’m not sure where I bought them, probably at Walmart a number of years ago. But these gloves have thinsulate and leather palms. The gloves are fairly thin but warm and tough. My hands got painfully cold only once and that was the day I spent on the cutover in the face of twenty five mile an hour winds and subfreezing temperatures. I think if I had stuffed myself in a sleeping bag and set it on fire; I’d still have been cold. So, I don’t blame the gloves. Primos “the can” call. The silly thing works. That is all I can say about it. Since Primos isn’t paying me anything, take it as you will. I’ll be using it again next year. But I’ll be a little smarter on my setups. The True-Talker deer call from Hunter’s Specialties. It also works well, even under cold conditions. It is simple and sturdy. The Columbia Gallatin Range woolies from Cabelas, which are part wool and part polyester, will keep you warm. They are rugged and quiet. The reason I ended up with them was the price when I bought them compared to other wool outfits. They have never failed to do what I needed, softly, quietly and warmly. The two boots I used while I hunted where a pair of ground sensing Irish setter leather boots with 600 grams of thinsulate. I’m not sure the company makes them anymore, but I found them to be as comfortable as walking across a soft couch while in the woods. They stayed dry and warm the

whole trip. I have had my Danner leather upland boots from a number of years now. They fit like a glove, honestly. They are the best boot I have ever put on my feet. I have resoled them once already and will probably again next year. I bought the Danner boots on sale through The Sportsman’s Guide website as a lark one year and they saved my sore feet from getting any worse. I keep both boots clean and treated with Mink Oil before, during and after the season. The small silver light you see in the photo was bought a number of years ago when LEDs were first the rage. The single bulb encased in aluminum housing gives out a surprising amount of light. Enough for you to find your way to and from your stand, around the camp at night or for that light night visit to the cooler for something to snack on. The single AA battery will last for an entire season of use, so you really can’t go wrong. I’m sure there are better lights outs there now, but for the money I surely didn’t go wrong with this little gadget. Next up is turkey season. There is an old gobbler that has beaten me and Kaley-Ann for two years now. I saw him on my way out the day I missed the big buck. He is in the same area doing the same thing. This year is going to be his last. No more Mr. Nice Guy!