It's been a particularly stressful winter till recently. I haven't been out in the woods since my birthday, early November. Today the sun has been shining all day, there is a 4 or 5 inch powder on the ground from the last couple of days. I'm home alone so here I go.
I don my "Mickey Mouse" boots, string my bow, and gather a few of the pink arrows that I made for squirrels. The scrub ground is only about 400 yds north of the house. I walk to the end of what used to be the horse pasture before the barn fire in 2012. The two barn cats follow me. I didn't think about them following me or I would have fed them something to keep them home.
I come across a set of tracks I think are coyote. A set coming and a set going. I would be having a dog to send home but my friend of 12 or so years died a couple of weeks ago. There's a puppy already to try and take Jasmine's place. Right now it's a "we'll see" kind of thing but I'm sure she will do fine.
I started at the wrong end of the patch. The sun is in my eyes. I'll walk the length and then double back. The coyote tracks go off into the woods then come back out into the patch. There are rabbit tracks. The coyote must be on a rabbit hunt also. I wonder how you get a cat to go back home. Their names are Char and Ember. Two toms that were born last spring. They look full grown. Their mothers name was Smokey.
My bow is loaded and ready for action. Good thing it's not broadhead because Ember knocks the arrow from the string when he ran into it. The bow is an awesome little bow made by Kris McDonald during the bow swap in 2012. It is a sinew backed, yew longbow with a snake skin backing. It would be so cool to take a rabbit with it tonight.
It's cold but with a mild breeze so it's a comfortable walk. I keep crossing the tracks of the coyote. I turn and start heading the other way with the sun to my back. There's a milkweed pod asking to be shot. I's a close shot. It's a little painful to shoot with the arthritis in my left thumb. I should look into a recurve with a nice pistol grip until the arthritis pain improves. I've had this in my hands before and it has always gone away. The flare up started when my hands got cold on one of those last deer hunts. We've had injuries, sickness and deaths in the family since the middle of November. Plus my son (last child at home) turned 18, has a girlfriend and is gone a lot so there's some empty nest syndrome going on. It feels so good to be out hunting again. Char is making a distress meow. He must have gotten preoccupied with something and now feels lost so I call for him thinking he will follow my voice but he doesn't seem to get it. So I walk back towards him calling...there he is. I wonder about the intelligence of cats.
On another day I might have felt cheated from a nice hunt but it was so nice being out. I would get winded at times walking with the huge boots and snow on the ground but it felt great! Char and Ember were actually good company. There were plenty of bunny tracks but no balls of fur hunkered down in the dogwood saplings were seen. There was no evidence that the yote had any luck either.
My brother-in-law is in heaven, I'm no longer in fear of my daughter losing her life, I've given the worry of my son over to the Heavenly Father. I am blessed.
Topic: Gorgeous afternoon for a rabbit hunt! (Read 457 times)
