From the incomparable T. Edward Nickens:

I cannot take credit for writing of this caliber but am aspiring to this kind of ability. Enjoy this today! -Dustin

The Hunter’s Moment: Blessing

Give us this day our daily bread…

I’m the last one out of the kitchen. When I step into the dining room the lump that has been inching toward the top of my stomach suddenly vaults to my throat, and I have to shut my eyes for just a passing few seconds. Let the wave of emotion settle down. This happens every year.
Every Thanksgiving.

Give us another dawn with golden light in the decoys, light that lifts our hearts toward heaven…

Family rings the table—half of us half mad from a half day spent toiling in the kitchen, but somehow laughter still rings across the room. There is an embarrassment of food on the table. But my eyes move over the country ham and collard greens, the sweet potatoes with their crown of caramelized marshmallows. Oddly enough, the food hardly registers. It’s the sheer, incalculable weight of blessing that rocks me back on my heels. Every face reflects a memory of time outdoors: My wife hanging on to the console, the boat bucking in a horrid blow, lightning crackling. A little girl asleep on my shoulder, as the first deer steps out of the woods. My mother beside me at the base of a squirrel tree, white-gray curls barely controlled by a camouflage cap.

Give us a sunset whose promise is tomorrow. Give us a hunger to taste the wild places that yet remain…

And also the blessings left behind by those no longer gathered here, the ones who have gone on to where they are either eternally thankful for a life marked by a pursuit of grace, or eternally not. But they still have their place at the table: In the cranberry salad, still prepared by consulting a ragged slip of paper, the recipe scrawled in faded pencil. In the slight dimple of a granddaughter’s chin, the green eyes of a grandson. Tracks of the ancestors. Seeing this, sensing this, I shut my eyes again.

Give us this day a glimpse of the glory found in the quiet pool of a stream, in the wild cackle of a goose…

Then we join hands, child to child, husband to wife, man to man—generations linked by intertwined fingers and futures—and I sneak in one last look, a quick glance beyond the turkey and the table to the faces lined around. I bow my head to pray.

Give us this day. —T. Edward Nickens

Attn: Any Readers that might be left…

I just renewed this domain for another year. My aim is to improve on the consistency of my posts. I’m thinking about doing some different and varied material as well. Thanks for visiting!

Puppies

I think I was 5 years old the first time I went rabbit hunting.  Rabbits, as you would assume, are abundant and make a great first animal to hunt, especially if you have a pack of beagles, which, without question, make the best first dogs to have.  Such was the case for yours truly.

Percy was a little male I had along with his sister Annie.  I raised them, cared for them, fed them, took them to the vet, (mom drove), and hunted them.  These two hounds were born under my watchful eyes in the dog room near the basement of our house back on Spruce St.  Tamer, their mother was of impeccable blood and shy as a hoot owl in daylight.  She would cower at the approach of any man.  She made exceptions for children like my brother and myself.  I remember the first time I saw her she sniffed my outstretched hand, licked it a little and generally proceeded to make over me with much tail-wagging and whining.  She was man-shy, made that way by her previous owner, who, as a friend of my dad’s, was kind enough to give Tamer and her pedigreed blood to me, the carrier of the beagling torch.  It was heady stuff for a 12 year-old.

Tamer took up residence in our kennel with no qualms.  She was bred but looking back, I cannot remember the stud.  Anyway, I started counting the days of the puppies’ gestation.  Puppies had been raised in our home before but this time was certainly a little more meaningful to me as plans had been arranged for me to retain two of the pups. They were going to be my lion hounds. Well, rabbit hounds actually, although at the time you couldn’t have told me any different.

Fall turned to the cold of winter and Tamer showed signs of impending labor.  It is always a curious and amazing thing the way a soon-to-be mama prepares.  In the world of dogs, she nests.  That is, she makes a whelping nest, using the know-how the Good Lord gave her to construct a cozy, sensible refuge for the miracle of puppy life.  We assisted her with the basic construction of a wooden box, newspapers for her to shred and arrange, and a roof over her head.  There was also, if I remember correctly, a thermostat-adjustable electric baseboard heater over on the wall.  This was January after all.

As the labor proceeded, the anticipation increased, culminating in the birthing process.  At a mere 12, I knew something of birth, and placentas, and amniotic fluid, but not much.  Needless to say, I was impressed.  Not only with the sheer amazement of the miracle playing out before me, but at the calmness with which Tamer took it all.  Not a whimper, not a whine.  Only the serenity of a saint, her big, brown eyes focused on whelping her children.  It was beautiful.

One after another, the slippery little things emerged.  I thought, “Okay, this is over,” and then another one would squirt out, eyes closed, nose pink.

Tamer made quick work of the afterbirth, and she snipped through the umbilical cords.  She licked her brood, cleaning and drying, and generally fussing over them much like the proverbial mother hen.  Never had there been a better mother.  Puppies latched on and drank colostrum and I sat back and blinked, stunned at what had happened before my unsullied eyes.  Dad, I remember, checked things over, but really there was no need.  Tamer had done what countless others before had done, unattended, off in a swamp somewhere.  God had prepared her and she executed with precision and aplomb.

They say that all children should witness the birth of an animal, be it dogs, or cows, or whatever.  I would wholeheartedly agree.  It opened my little mind up to the possibility that just maybe I wasn’t the only thing in this universe.  The responsibility of caring for something other than myself was a good fringe benefit.

Puppies, like children, require discipline and training.  Lordy, that’s a subject for another time.

The trout dreams are made of…

It’s late July and I’m standing waist deep in liquid Montana.  Mayflies, ephemerella, swirl in the air currents around my head.  It’s been a hot day, peaking at 100 degrees, but with no noticeable humidity, it’s tolerable.  Currently, it’s getting late, close to 9pm, but there’s still daylight.

I pushed a nice brown off the bank as I was wading into my current position.  Shoving water out of his way, he moved with surprising speed to the middle of the Madison.

Noses are poking through the film as far as I can see both upstream and down.  Slurping sounds fill my ears and bugs fill my eyes and nose.  I look upstream and the wind throws a fresh volley of thoraxes and wings into my arms as I try to cast.  It feels like raindrops bouncing off me.

I cast my comparadun into the fray, letting it ride the current, hopefully headed for destruction.  Presently, my fly disappears into the maw of a current-strong rainbow and I lift the line tight.  Electricity.  The fish pulses through the heavy current and amazingly bulldogs upstream.

The fish tires and it is now circling at my legs.  I slip the net under it and reach in to remove the fly.  The fly slips out and all of a sudden the fish starts ringing.  Seriously.  I’m thinking, “what in the world?”

I can’t think of anything else to do, so I gingerly place the fish to my ear, tail flopping wildly about my chin.  I am perplexed at this ringing fish, especially it’s ability to transmit sound, for from the trout springs a cry for help.

“My furnace quit this morning!”

“Did you reset it?” I calmly ask into the trout.

“Sure-I think the condensate is frozen.”

“Okay, we’ll get a Technician by this morning.”

I release the trout and wake up.

Time to hit the shower.

Doldrums

In the afternoon, the sunlight flits through the cold window here by my desk, it’s filtered, shallow light passive in its warmth.  I raise an eyebrow and glance out over the rooftop and see a sky that is cobalt, shell-like.  Winter.

My mind drifts lazily to the South Holston in July, with the sulphurs hatching in the evening as the water rises slowly, released from the dam.  The day was hot, sweltering even, and fog condenses on top of the river creating a mist where you cast blindly to percieved dimples in the surface- evidence of rising trout.

One sips your feathered imposter and your rod surges with life, bowing low, pulsing. It’s a small one, released with a twitch of your hand, twisting the hook out, swimming, gliding underwater back to a rock midstream.  Who cares that it was a small one.  The barn swallows are dipping low, skimming sulphurs and craneflies.  The bats wing crazily over the riffles, fluttering high then low.

The day has let go and the world sighs and the moon rises and the trout continue sipping.  And there is peace and stillness.

So I think about all this as I sit at my desk and I try to figure a way to capture the feeling of it while sitting here.  The closest I can come is to write about it.  Well, daydreaming gets me pretty close too.

A Marker in Fleetwood

The Israelites, faced with the challenge of entering the promise land, had come to face the river Jordan.  Its mighty current formed a seemingly impenetrable wall in front of them.  To their backs lay the parched wilderness.  On the far side of Jordan, milk…and honey.

God told Joshua to have faith and cross the river.  He instructed the Levite Priests to set up stones, one for each tribe of Israel in the middle of the miraculously parted river, to serve as markers.  When a future Israelite, curious about the nation’s origins, would ask their grandfather about the circumstances and events that brought their people henceforth to the Holy Land, the grandfather would smile and squint, recalling the miracles and tell the grandchild of the stones in the middle of the Jordan, upturned and anchored, a testament to God’s faithfulness.

The morning stars blinked through thebarren treetops as I made my way through the November woods.  It was one of those walks to the treestand where you’re breathless, not from the hiking uphill, but the anticipation, the nervousness of spooking a deer, hearing that all to familiar snort and blow, seeing the white flag of their tails bounding up and over the hill.  Game over.

Frost slicked up the leafy forest floor.  Greenbriars pulled at my bootlaces in the darkness.  I looked overhead and saw the form of my treestand, a few ragged leaves clung to its frame in the stillness.  Anchoring my foot on the first step, I climbed to the stand and shifted onto it, easing gingerly, then aggressively tested its soundness with my full weight.  Good.

I clipped into my safety harness and zipped up my coat.  I sighed and saw my breath in the first rays of morning, the vapor fleeting, fading, gone.  The sun was splitting the east by now and when I looked skyward a hawk screeched, startled from a branch.  First flight of the morning, destination…breakfast.

Behind me lay an open field hilltop.  In front of me, a greenbriar thicket that stretched all the way to the ridgeline.  To both sides of me, narrow valleys filled with pines, oaks, hickories.  Hollers, we call them.  I thought to myself, and said to my Dad when we hung this stand, that this would be a successful stand.  Those words have held true so far in that to date, we have killed 4 deer from this location.

As the woods around me started to warm up I couldn’t help but notice the squirrels.  One simply cannot not notice squirrels.  Of course, squirrels are rodents, but to me, it seems they have quite vivacious personalities.  Busybodies they are, never still.  Why, even if the weather is cold and rainy, snowing even, it seems like the woods are full of bustling squirrels, storing nuts, barking…flirting.  Seriously.  From my perch in the locust, I observed one big gray, rather full of himself, put the move on a sleek little lady squirrel.  Of course, all this romancing took place 15 feet below me so I’m not completely sure, but reasonably sure that this was indeed his first rodeo with the ladies and it turned out rather disastrous for the fellow.  It seemed to me, that she wanted no part of his advances and did not hesitate to tell him so, for the awfulest scolding proceded forth from her squirrel lips as I ever did hear.  She ran that poor chap up the nearest maple stump and left him there, cowering, quivering and rejected.  He pouted there awhile until the next minky little thing came along and he was at it again.  Evidently, he fared better the second time around for the last I saw of that pair, they were trotting towards the nearby thicket.  I think I saw him wink at me as he passed.

I really wasn’t expecting the deer to appear when he did.  I never do.  It just happens that way.  One instant, no deer.  Next second, deer present.  He was a spike with two slender, branchless antlers.  I expect he was a late dropped fawn, as most yearling spikes are, their brains more concerned with putting on weight for the impending winter rather than mess with antler growth that will do nothing for them come February.

He slipped in quietly, puffed out in the frost, tested each step, glanced side to side, antsy-like.  A doe trailed him, likely his sister, possibly a girlfriend, but I doubt it looking back on it.  Eighteen month old yearlings typically run together, especially twins.  Anyway, that’s just a guess on my part and not really important.

At this point of the season my freezer was still empty and quietly entering archery range to my right was the remedy for that.

Anyone who knows me really well knows that moments like this excite me greatly.  It seems that something in side me goes a little haywire when a deer walks in.  I missed the first deer I ever shot at because of this.  I missed a few more since then too.  I try to keep this in check by reminding myself to pick a spot, focus, breathe.  Sometimes it works.

My first shot dead centered a tree trunk not 15 yards from my stand.  THWACK!  The arrow waved back and forth like a bucksaw blade.  The deer hopped and darted but didn’t spook.  I nocked another arrow.

I would like to say at this point that my second shot rang true but the mere fact is it didn’t.  I choked.  Tree trunks 2, me 0.

Believe it or not, the deer didn’t go anywhere.  He was having trouble pinpointing exactly where the maniacal shots were zooming in from, and the crazy hunter in the tree, not 30 yards away, never registered on his radar.

Finally, 3rd shot, I hit the deer.  I took my time, but still pushed it.  I took a shot I had no business taking.  The shot was too far.  It was though too many tangles and trees.  It was iffy, and I knew better than to do iffy.

The deer crashed through some briars and bounded to the top of a small rise.  It then hopped down the other side of the rise and vanished.

Quiet.  Stillness.  Now motion, wind, gentle…leaves falling, drifting.  Sunlight.  Blue sky.

I lowered my bow to the ground and climbed down.  I immediately went to the place where the deer was standing when I shot.  Nothing.  No blood.  No hair.  Only tracks and some upturned leaves.  My dad walked up.  Thinking perhaps it had passed through the deer we tried to find my arrow and came up empty.

I prayed.  “Lord, I need to prove to myself that I missed this deer cleanly.”

An audible voice, immediately, “You guys looking for a deer?”

It boomed up from the field below us.

“Yeah!”

“We saw one run past us a little while ago!”

It was the men who hunted the lease next to us.

We met them and talked a minute.  Turned out, they saw the doe that was with the buck I had shot at.  She bolted back their way when I released my barrage of arrows.

I prayed again.  “Father, I really need to prove to myself that I missed this deer cleanly, please.”

Once again, immediately, another squirrel, there, by that dogwood, thirty yards away.  God told me to walk there.

I walked to the dogwood, and there, among the leaves, was most of my arrow.  Bloodied, broken.

“I’ve got blood!”

I let the arrow lay as we took up the blood trail.  I figured, if we lost the trail, we could always return to the arrow to start again.

The buck, had waded into a thicket on the edge of a field.  Slowly we followed the drops of blood, some as small as the end of a pencil, none bigger than half a playing card.  Four of us trailed.  When we lost the blood we would circle until one of us located more and we would strike out trailing again.

The blood trail led us to the top of the ridge, winding, always uphill.  Odd.  Every deer I’ve ever tracked has always gone downhill after being hit.  Eventually, we topped out, blinking in the bright morning, sore from the scrutiny and concentration.  The trail turned right at the ridgetop and stopped at a blowdown, right at the edge of another field.  The blood drops, tiny now, abruptly stopped at the edge of the blowdown.

“This is great,” I thought.  “The deer has jumped this blowdown, exerting all of his remaining energy-we’ll find him dead on the other side.”

Nope.

No blood whatsoever.  We circled the blowdown.  No blood.  We plunged out into the field, carefully searching down both sides.  Devoid of any sign whatsoever.  It’s like that deer came to that blowdown and jumped on it and used it as a springboard to vault himself into the next county away from this hunter who had just launched an aerial attack on him.

I’m not going to lie.  That was tough to swallow.  I knew that in all likelihood that deer was out there dead.  More than likely I hit him too high, I’m thinking the loin, right below the spine.  The fact that I can’t tell you exactly where I hit him is a testament to my own poor judgement.

We parted ways with the two gentlemen who had so kindly helped us track and worked our way back to my treestand.  The sun was hot by now and I realized just how hot I was.  I had made a mistake and I knew it.  I simply forced something that shouldn’t have been forced.  I let my empty freezer stand in the way of good judgement.  I let loose when I should have held.

So why would God have driven me to find my arrow and track that deer for as long as we did to eventually end up empty-handed?  I believe it was so I could end up empty-handed.  To teach me a lesson.  Just don’t try to force something that’s not there.  It applies in life you know?

As dad and I walked back to my stand to pick up my things I veered a little.  I retraced my steps to where my broken arrow was.  When I found it I bent over and picked it up.  Some of the deer’s blood stained my fingers a dark crimson.  As I turned to leave for the truck, I found myself pressing the arrow deep into the soil.  I stood it upright, its bright fletchings reaching for the sky, the deer’s blood running down the shaft into the dark earth.

It’s a marker in Fleetwood.  Perhaps I’ll take my daughter there one day.  Perhaps the arrow will still be there.

 

Araneus spp.

Suspended between heaven and earth, walking a tightrope, she worked amidst the clatter of traffic, the blaring of horns and sirens, steeled against a November sky, oblivious to everything save the task at hand, catching prey.

She was clinging to a thread so thin that I could barely see it against the backdrop of the building.  Hair-like, the strands extruded from her abdomen.  She payed out the gossamer strand and with engineered precision, she fastened, at strategic points, the trap that would supply her dinner.

I observed her calculated movements, the way she felt the strands already in place so as to perfectly space the thread she was currently spinning.  She worked counter-clockwise around her creation, working from the outside in.  I poked my head no more than a couple of inches from her as she worked and was unabashedly amazed at the efficiency with which she worked.

My goodness, here is an example for us all.  While the world spins at an unbelievable pace around her, here works an amazing creation, doing exactly what God designed her to do.  Nothing, in my mind, is more beautiful.  The fact that her masterpiece was torn down the night before did not dissuade her.  The cold autumn winds, northerly, did not convince her to take shelter.  In fact, the cold winds seemingly persuaded her to hasten, work hard, quick…time is short.

As I left for home, I found myself comparing myself to her.  Do I work that hard with such tenacity and fierceness?  Am I doing what God designed me to do?  Hmmmm…

Brown Mountain

In the distance I heard the faint beating of a drum.  Steady, persistant, out there somewhere in the darkness, someone boomed the sound over the valley.  I expect it was a ritual of some sort, meant to bring the drummer closer to nature in a place that was, in his mind, sacred.

The place was Brown Mountain.  Standing watch over the Linville Gorge, the mountain is dark, perhaps forboding, but rather beautiful.  Wiseman’s View Overlook is where I was standing when I heard the drumming.  Brown Mountain was staring back at me from across the valley and the drumming was drifting through the night air from behind me, somewhere in the woods.

I was there with several friends and my own family to see the Brown Mountain Lights.  Oh they’re real.  That’s not even a question.  Undisputed even, are these strange lights.  And we saw them.  Right after dark, the appeared, slowly at first, incandescent through the black darkness, then brightening, shimmering, moving slowly up the ridge line, hovering across the ridge, then fizzling out.  Then they would reappear, in a different spot, maybe a different shade, marching up the mountain, sculling suprisingly fast through space, going this way and that, sometimes standing completely still.

Fascinating.

The drumming continued, boom…boom…boom.

The tribes of the Cherokees and Catawbas tell the legend of a great indian battle that took place on Brown Mountain in the 12th century.  The fighting was fierce and the loss of life great.  The respective tribes sent their young maidens, after the battle, to search for survivors.  None were found.  The lights, say the Cherokees, are the torches of the maidens, looking for their slain warriors.

Another legend tells of a slave, from ages gone by, returning night after night, searching for his master who was lost on a long hunting trip.

I’ve also heard the more logical explanations.  Foxfire, a light-producing fungus that grows in the forest.  Railcar lights, truck and car headlights, atvs, people hiking with flashlights.  Oh I almost forgot…aliens.

None of these have been proven and they all have been meticulously researched.  There are no roads on Brown Mountain, no hiking trails, certainly no railroad tracks.  The lights are too consistent to be hikers, and if you saw them, you would agree that aliens are the most likely explanation.  They’re that weird looking.

So that’s why drummer was drumming.  Wiseman’s view is a special place and Brown Mountain is a special mountain.  Not because of paranormal activity or naturalistic significance, but because the mountain and lights were created, yes created, by God.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am driven by curiosity.  I would love to know what causes the Brown Mountain Lights.  It is very interesting to me that after 800 documented years of their viewing, no one has accurately explained them.  But I’m okay with that.  I’m okay with the fact that there are things out there that cannot be explained with our human abilities.

The drummer was seeking a connection with the mountain.  While I admire his acting on his beliefs, I would suggest that rather than seek a connection with the mountain which was created, seek a connection with the Creator.  God’s word tells us that God’s handiwork points us to Him and that is a tremendous comfort to me.  Because honestly, that visit to Wiseman’s View, seeing the lights, certainly had tendencies toward spookiness.  But, as my friend and I were discussing on our way back to the cars, God knows exactly what those lights are.  Think about that.  He knows-He made ‘em.

As I drove away from the parking lot I noticed a church van pulling in.  Out poured youth, racing to the overlook, hoping to see the lights.  I hope they saw them.  I hope their leaders pointed them to the Creator of the lights.

Morning Frost, Woodsmoke, and Small Game

October is the month when we usually receive the first frost of the year.  Of course, frost starts quietly, like all seasons, and gradually builds from there.  In fact, for the past few nights, the frosts have gotten progressively harder and more widespread.  One can usually tell whether it’s going to frost in the morning  by considering the conditions of the atmosphere the night before.  Clear sky, no wind, cold temperature, equals frost in the morning.

Frosty mornings hold a special place in my life.  Whenever I leave for work in the morning and there’s frost, I always imagine I’m going hunting rather than to work.  Images of grown over fields, brushy two-tracks, icy dead leaves on the floor of the forest.  Naturally these thoughts dissipate briefly while I scrape my windshield-never with an ice scraper, I don’t even own one of those.  I’d much rather use a debit card, or CD cover, my fingernails, anything but an ice scraper.  I once saw an ice scraper for sale that was enshrouded by a woolen mitt that you slipped your hand into.  Evidently it was designed to keep the scraped ice from settling onto your warm skin.  That’s for wimps.

As I drive to work on these frosty mornings I am impressed by the number of houses I see which have woodsmoke ascending to the heavens-like burnt offerings with benefits, namely, warmth.

I really, really like the smell of woodsmoke on a fall morning.  Couple that with the general frosting of the milkweed and goldenrod and I’m downright transcendant.  I get kind of carried away while driving thinking about rabbit hunting, squirrels, grouse, etc.  Sure I think of deer hunting, but deer hunting is so, what’s the word, grown up?  Lackluster?  No…maybe commercialized.  There it is-commercialized.

No one deer hunts in wool and canvas anymore.  It’s all gore-tex, microfiber, and a new one I heard about the other day called “Optifade.”  Evidently, animals see in certain kinds of dimensions, gray scales, and parallel, parallax, and who knows what else.  Anyway, the idea behind Optifade, as I understand it, is to make you look less like a tree, unlike regular camoflauge, and more like the sky, or matter, or maybe it was broken matter.  I can’t remember.

So I think about small game hunting.  Living in the mountains of North Carolina, we have the occasional Ruffed Grouse, red phase.  Of the two color phases, it seems to me that the reds are a little larger than their northern gray phase cousins.  Better looking too. 

I’ve shot two grouse in my life.  I’ve hunted them specifically, in total throughout my life, about thirty seven days.  Believe me, in southern grouse hunting circles, that’s a pretty stout ratio.  Oh, I’ve flushed a few more than two, they’re just that hard to hit.

Squirrels, like any other boy introduced to hunting, except for these days it seems, were what I first pursued, gun in hand.  Dad taught my brother and me how to position a squirrel for a shot.  One of us would assume a post where we had a clear view of the tree trunk while the other, slipping quietly, would circle around the side of the trunk where the little fella was masquarding as a branch.  See, we essentially had him pinned this way.  A treetrunk, being round, has no corners to hide behind, so it was only a matter of waiting him out.

The smell of the woods, I think, most affected me as a young boy.  There was a feeling, (it still eludes me to this day,) that drew me to the logging roads and ridgetops.  All the seasons were great to me back then but oh the fall.  Golden, orange, earthy with the smell of dropping leaves, and cold creek water, and dogwood berries red and heavy, and the deer tracks in the dirt road holding ice that melts with the first ray of the sun.

Nothing is finer than the sound of hounds amidst the aforementioned backdrop.  A pack of rabbit hounds, beagles rather, is pure bliss when the air is crisp and the robins and starlings circle overhead, working their way southward.

We had a kennel of beagles growing up.  Some of my fondest memories are of Sandy, the jumpinest jump dog, and Bart, her littermate, and Tess, Tamer, Percy, Rock, Ann, Annie, and all the rest whose names escape me know. 

My brother and I were always afraid of the cows in the fields where we hunted rabbits.  I recall a sense of dread in my stomach when the time came for us to exit the cab of dad’s truck to let out the dogs.  The cows, assuming that they were about to be fed would amble close to us, breathing on us, mooing, stomping.  Quite an imposing site for a five-year-old.

But we’d quickly lose them as we gained ground up the two-track, following the hounds, stepping on the spikes of ice heaved upward through the frozen roadbanks, like stalagmites in minature in a frozen cave.  Hoar frost I think it’s called.

The beagles would work in little circles, drinking in the scent of everything that passed that way during the night.  Deer, raccoons, possums, skunks, coyotes, and then, there, that snuffle right there, aha…rabbit!  And Sandy would let loose with a high pitched whine, piercing the stillness, rising through the pine boughs and the cold laurel hells, reaching our ears and those of her hunting partners.  They, of course would respond with immediate obedience to her request, and join her in timely fashion to pursue the task at hand.

Rabbits, when pursued, usually run in circles.  Some range far and wide, trying to lose their pursuers with sheer speed and distance.  Others rely on trickery and fancy darts and jumps.  Maybe they’ll run up a little creek, trying to throw off the dogs.  Maybe they’ll run out a fallen log, trying to disperse their scent.  Years of living in fear of owls, hawks, and foxes have taught them that they must never stop moving and when under stress, to find the shortest distance back to their holes, or warrens, if you prefer.  If you’re a rabbit, there’s safety in going to ground.

So the idea, if your a hunter, is once the dogs strike, to try and position yourself where you best think the rabbit will be going, and kind of post-up for a shot.  Naturally, you don’t want to shoot until you clearly see the rabbit, and you want to make sure that he’s clear of the hounds.  Oh, and don’t shoot the minute the dogs jump him.  The dogs are there for a job, let them do it please.

A pack of five beagles at full cry is a sound like no other.  An organized cacauphony of bawls and whines, each voice known distinctly by their master, said master interpreting the baying for clues as to positioning of the pack, the whereabouts of the rabbit, and where the whole shebang is headed.  Presently, after manuvering through the swampy creek bottom, and over the cutover laydowns, and through the Christmas tree field in our case, the beagles will bring the rabbit ever closer. 

I remember such a chase where I was working my way out the hill.  Tenderfooted, I hacked my way over some rocks and grapevines as the dogs drew closer.  I carried daddy’s 20 gauge, he carried his 12 gauge Valmet.  I remember the dogs being above me, up on the hill, now cresting, the rabbit darting back and forth about twenty yards in front of me, bounding down the slope, flattening out in the bottom into a dead run.  The little Remington came up to my shoulder, swung to catch up with the rabbit.  I snapped the trigger, BOOM!

Evidently, I didn’t have quite enough purchase on the steep hillside when I fired, for my backside, as quickly as I had pulled the trigger, was transported through the morning air, in the opposite direction as my pattern of number 7s, and landed with a thud!  On a tree root, oh, about the diameter of a Louisville Slugger.

Amazingly, the rabbit lay still in the bottom of the holler, for, said number 7s, had found their mark.  The dogs were trailing up to the scene right as I reached down to grab him by his back legs.  Success was shown to the hounds and then slipped gently into the pouch of my game vest…blaze orange.

Now, there is certainly nothing wrong with deer hunting.  Nothing wrong with kids deer hunting.  But, are we not robbing our kids of something special if we bypass the small game and move from bb guns right bears?   Why are not more hunters taking to the woods each fall in pursuit of tails, both bushy and cotton?  Is it that they are too concerned with antlers, 130 inches or greater?  Are they too anxious to try out their new synthetic stocked superwonder?  Maybe their new grunt tube slash rattling box slash snort wheeze, sneeze, cough, natural esophagus-like tube with three-in-one doe and fawn bleat?  Oh yeah, it’s got an estrous bleat too!

I don’t know.  It seems to me that the little boy, heck, even the grown man, who is denied the pleasure of the small game hunt, in deferrence to bigger and supposedly better things is indeed missing out on a lot of joy and connection with the Creator.  See, a father or mother can teach important things about life while walking with their little hunter after a squirrel.  They don’t have to worry about being insanely quiet and still.  You just cannot do that in a deer stand.  Also on the upside, most fall mornings around here come in at about thirty degrees.  The great thing about small game hunting is you can walk.  You stay warmer.  Think about it.

A Meeting with Majesty

Last October, the 4th and final week to be exact, the rut commenced.  My brother called me from his cell phone-12 o’clock in the day, “There’s a huge buck in my driveway!”

“Shoot him,” said I.

“Can’t get a shot…he’s chasing a doe, grunting, wheezing…sounds like he’s choking.”

Of course, it was still archery season here on the western slope of the eastern continental divide.  Leaves had just started dropping, nights were getting nippy.  And I was at work and Drew was at home eating lunch, trying to get a shot with his bow at this beast.  Exciting times.

I had hunted in that particular area a couple of evenings before and had missed a doe with my archery tackle.  Shot right under her, my arrow chunking into the soft, loamy soil on the bank behind her.  It happened right at last light and I was particularly lucky to find my arrow.  Thankful I did though as it let me know I had cleanly missed.  No blood, no hair, just dirt.

So two days later, in the middle of the day, here was this great buck, trying to breed the same doe, presumably, that I had missed.  You’re welcome Drew.

As it turned out, Drew never got a shot for the buck wouldn’t stay still where he was supposed to.  The buck chased my doe up the hill behind a neighbor’s house and stayed there pretty much all afternoon, grunting.

Drew called me again and relayed this information and we devised a plan.  A setup was layed out involving rattling and calling and hopes were stilled against the fact that the buck had more than likely chased my doe out of my neighborhood.

When we got home, we threw on some camo, grabbed our stuff, and walked into the woods.  Quietness enshrined the pine forest, the brittle dead sticks on the lower trunks of the pine trees snapped if you walked into them, making your head jerk up to see if you had scared anything with the noise.  I posted below a deer trail where a newly shredded hemlock trunk stood staring back at me.  Drew found a little hiding spot 20 yards to my right.  As darkness gathered I rattled and grunted, trying to coax the buck, if he was still in the vicinity, to show himself.

We heard him.

Slowly at first, cautiously, he raked leaves with hooves.  He rubbed bark with antlers.  He pranced about in place as if to let us know he wanted to come in to the sound but his age and experience with humans just wouldn’t permit him.  He was maybe 40 yards to the right of us, out the hill, up a little draw, surrounded by laurels and rhododendron.

Waiting him out was quickly proving unsuccessful, and as my fear had been, we ran out of time.  No, not time, rather daylight-we ran out of daylight.  It was too dark  to shoot, but light enough to just make out lines and shapes when he decided to trot in before us.  The kingly aura about him was palpable.  Long dark antlers projected from his head and swept backward at an angle accentuated by the tilt of his head, enabling him to sweep through the briars and vines.  Steam left his nostrils, rolling into the night air, almost frozen, appearing then disappearing, looking all the world like a dragon, maybe an angry bull.  His hulking form, backlit by the moonlight exhibited ethereal power and strength, but curiously, he was silent upon the dry leaves of the forest floor.  Ghost-like.   He stopped directly in front of me, my knees quivering, hair on my neck standing.  To say I felt small would not be stretching the truth for I felt as if I was in the presence of something more than a deer.  This buck was regal and he knew it, no doubt.  He stomped the ground, he knew I was there.  He stomped again, trying to make me flinch, react, run.  He snorted a low, menacing wheeze, stomped, twitched, and vanished.

The air had left my lungs and I inhaled sharply.  Coolness descended on the ground.  I heard the wind, saw the stars twinkling now, the pines brushed the blackness.  All was calm.  Something touched my shoulder and I flinched.  It was Drew.

We didn’t say much about what had just happened.  Neither of us had been that close to such a majestic animal.  Indeed it does sound corny but it was a moment that almost transcended the moment.  It was as if time stood still, for me at least, in part maybe, I believe, because of my great love for the woods, and deer, and hunting them.  God had given me this moment.  And looking back, I’m glad I never got a shot at that magnificient stag.  It was better that way.  I like the way that moment fits in my memory.  Of course I’ll hunt this buck again this year.  Don’t know if he’s still around.  But I’d like to think that the doe I missed last year will lure him into my neck of the woods again.  Well, they’re really his woods.  I’m just a guest.