I find it hard to believe that there is a demand here for an account of a hunt with no kill in it. Not only no kill, but only rare sightings of any game whatsoever.
The old place is not the old place it started out to be, but then again, none of us are. I began hunting there over twenty years ago, a naive young woman and the woods thick with deer, like fleas on a dog. The camp was also clogged with hunters. Campers clustered along the roads, tents huddled in the hollow, day hunters driving up from Harrisonburg, and Pennsylvanians staying in the motel ten miles away.
I bumbled in at dusk one Saturday, in my '66 Dart. I asked the camper at the crossroads if I was where I thought I was. Light was fading fast, I was wet and muddy from rehanging my muffler twice on sleety-cold rutted logging roads.
"Well, yeah, this is the place. But, you don't want to go down there, little lady. That place is full of hunters !"
I zipped on down the road.
The camp was jammed full, every semi-flat place beset with a tent. Fires were a-birthing in the gloaming. In the open yard before a venerable log shelter, complete with plastic sheeting across the front, I pitched my pup tent. I kept a respectful distance as I placed the ground sheet over the unseen pile of smart pills. In the dusk I did not see that this was also the slight declivity that all the rainwater from the camp would be using to get into the creek.It was full dark by the time I got my makeshift fly over the tent and laid out my sleeping bag, left over from childhood. I don't believe I ate anything, but cocooned myself in for a very long night. It was 6:00.
Morning was the most welcome thing I had ever seen. I sat up in the bag, and ice crystals rasped into my hair. I crawled out and reached for the water bottle. It was frozen.
I have been there every fall ever since.
Killdeer
Topic: Killdeer in the Wood (Read 15582 times)
