Killdeer in the Wood

[JEFF B]

and? ya cant do this to us killie we need more i just put my feet up and started to drink my hot cup of milo. and this happens ya stopped.      :mad:  just kidding

[Tom Leemans]

A 66 Dart? Sweeeeet! Did it have a slant-6 in it?  

[katie]

Man Killie this is great.  Three weeks out in camp sounds like heaven to us that get 2 hours in the wood once a week.  Can not wait to read more.

[Jeff Holchin]

She's using those fancy words too....keep 'em coming, please.

[bentpole]

I like it already.

[Killdeer]

Slop-6 225 that I helped rebuild when it ran out of oil and wiped a bearing. There was one just like it in an episode of "The Fugitive", Doc hid in the trunk. A Dart is a trunk with a car attached to it. The trunk lining was blue-black and white plaid...

Oh, bowhunting. I had shot bows since I was 8. Somewhere in my high school..no, first year of college, I shot at a crow. I collected a tail feather and lost my home-made black bird bolt. Thus starts my hunting career. My first true love from my still-sacred past gave me his Bear Grizzly, and I had poked around with it in the late eighties or early '90's. In 1996 I bought my first brand-new bow, a Jeffery Mity-Mag Classic. Laminated riser, red elm limbs, 52" one-piece. I shot that thing all the time. I watched a very talented man at the Baltimore Trad Classic knap a stone point in 1997. I finagled the point from him, a fair trade, I might add, and as Ed Wentzler handed it to me he made me promise to hunt with it.

Please don't throw me into that br'ar patch!    

I mounted it onto an ash shaft from Allegheny Mountain Arrow Woods, and fletched it with wild turkey from my beloved hunting spot, a gift from one of the locals. A few things were written on it and its mates, and off we went. My fourth year carrying it brought me fulfillment. I named my doe fawn "Ashly", 'cause that's how she came to be mine.

 

It seemed that that year was the last of the fat years up there. My tried and true stand sites no longer reliably offered up the big deer. From my PeeWee stand, I could usually count on seeing a racked buck sometime during the season, walking the ridge and scenting out does in the bedding areas below it. No more. All I could manage to bring home were does and some spikers, and these were with a muzzleloader or rifle. I was not alone in my experience, the hunter numbers were falling off rapidly. Some of the old-timers were still coming, out of habit and love for the old familiar places, but they were fewer, more sporadic as time went by.

What the heck was going on here?  :confused:  
Killdeer

[Killdeer]

We would hear rumors of winter die-off, and bluetongue. A game warden told me once that they found a bunch of deer dead down by the branch that all the little creeks run into. Cutting open the femurs, he said that there was no fat in the marrow. The snow does pile up out there. A bowhunter friend, Pete, who has moved west, said that the snow banks on the sides of the road were taller than his car in the late bow season. He drove a tiny car, but still...

Now we have a full-blown resident population of coyotes to factor in, too. I have not heard them, but a fellow I ran into said that he had been awakened by them, and stepped out of his camper and yelled at them to make them shut up and disperse. They did not obey, and I think one of them actually made a rude gesture and sneered back, "I ain't Fido!"
One day he shot one, but he still gets the finger.

And so, on my first full day in camp, after a freezy night of ice pellets that emptied into a dead-calm dawn, I went out a-scouting with my bow.
I eased along the trail, checking out changes from the year before, noting spruce and laurel clippings, and felled trees where the chainsaw-armed trail maintenance folks had taken umbrage at their encroachment. To the left, I noticed an orange flash of flagging tape. I went on, but at the second or third one, each about 30 yards off the trail, I had to go investigate. At the base of a large, flagged, red pine was a pile of white stuff, a little powdery, a little sandy-looking, and a little old and mussed by the weather. Was it a bait? One of those miracle buck attractants that would have Pope-and-Youngers milling about your stand, pestering you to show them the does or shoot them? I dunno. Maybe a big pile of Peters Professional fertilizer? I didn't want to stick my finger in there, much less taste it. So I ended up hunting flags to see where they went and why. I found more flagged trees, some with white stuff and some without. Then the line ended.I dropped back down onto the trail to sit and think about it, and to glass Mac's Ridge. Blue skies sailed gaily over golden-leaved oaks, and the landscape was devoid of critters.

Killdeer

[Killdeer]

I wended my way through Spaghetti Junction, and went up the no-name drainage that comes out the bottom of the bowl of the Shelter Ridge. A ruffed grouse flushed thirty yards out, and I got to watch it for about thirty more yards. It was a warm, red bundle of nerves that had probably seen too many dogs. Further uphill, where there were vicious scrapes and brutalized trees last year, I was hard-pressed to find a single deer bean. I slowly worked my way almost to the top, where I insinuated myself into the stand I call the Pawn Shop. It was warm and quiet, with only chickadees for company. I ate my lunch, but I couldn't sleep. I was wondering where all the rodents were. This was just not natural. There are, normally, roughly 14 chipmunks per square yard of this part of the National Forest. Naturally, they are not ALL out at the same time, save for stand occupations, birthdays, impromptu Hunter Ed classes, warm spells and other special occasions.

Well, here I was, weapon nearby, on a warm midday, and not a peep. These self-appointed wardens of the wild are usually an annoyance on the level of a black fly hatch, but there was peace in the valley, and all was quiet on the western front. I couldn't stand it. I looked up at the top of the bowl and saw a piece of orange flagging...

Killdeer

[Ernie Black]

We do have some talented writers on this site.
Please continue and thanks for sharing!

[Shaun]

Reading your prose is a treat, thanks and welcome home Killy.

[Dano]

I don't like how this "orange flagging" is headed, and Killie you sound aweful nostalgic.  

[adkmountainken]

i was thinking the same Dano.  

[Killdeer]

I guess nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Killdeer  

[Whip]

Killy, you capture the essence of the hunt as well as any writer I've had the pleasure of reading.  You don't need to kill anything to keep us highly entertained.  While this tale may not turn out to have a big last minute happy ending, we will enjoy the journey with you all the same.

[IB]

I expect it WILL have a Last Minute Happy Ending Joe. Depending on what we're callin the ENDING  

[paleFace]

glad to see you back on here Killie, if you get a free day and want to roam around back up at Rough just let me know..... in the mean time keep the story coming.

[LC]

Don't post much if at all just lurk. But this post is one of those posts that prove a couple points. Some of the very best writers in the world A. are hunters and  B. are never known to the general population. Can't wait to read the rest Killy.

[Marvin M.]

Please don't throw me into that br'ar patch!  

Ha!  I don't know if anyone else caught this reference or not, but I sure did.  I loved those old Bre'r Rabbit tales.  The Tar Baby was my favorite.  

Were you raised by my Mom Killy?  You must be that other sister I didn't know about.

Great story!  Keep it coming.

[Shaun]

My favorite Bre'r Rabbit quote. "I's earnin' a dolla a minute!"

Tell me a story Killdeer...

[Doc Nock]

Good writing comes from sound minds...well, wait...well-read minds anyway.      That and regular 3,000 mile oil changes. Killy knows more about flora and fauna than most... Every walk in the woods is a total adventure for her.

Killy Dear, sorry to hear of the encroachments. Just got back from up with Preacher Carl. We'd found a nice quiet spot w/ several buck trails radiating out and fresh worked scrapes...and on game lands yet. Then, opening morning, in true 8th Dwarf Fashion in comes a guy on a 4 wheeler on the game lands trail...and his kid it appeared, on a 2nd one!! All illegal. Totally immoral and screwed up everything! And they got shooting and skidaddled in the rain afore I could get a pic of them in daylight for the bush cops.  Argggggg...

Hunters, in the true sense are becoming more scarce than the quarry we seek, Gal. It's all about cuttin corners and cheatin...seems like anyway...    

Good on you for finding at least solace if not some measure of heartache and bittersweet.