As I head out at sometime between 11 Am and noon, it's a bit chilly at 20 degrees. It's overcast with a forecast for snow tonight, but I doubt it will. I walk down the driveway with the Wincherster 1300 over my shoulder. The driveway is icy and a little slippery, but I'm getting decent traction. I think about video recording my walk down the long driveway...nearly a quarter-mile long, but decide not to.
Finally I reach the road...and I only need to cross it to reach the parcel of land I hunt on. I walk past the mailbox, reaching into my pocket for a few shells to load into the gun. "Opps, wrong pocket." I stop walking "Were they in the other jacket?" I search another pocket..."Nope, not in there." and then another.."Okay...we're good." I step into the woods and start loading as I walk.
The first thing I begin to notice are bunny tracks...snowshoe hare. My hope dims....they will be white and hard to see, but maybe I'll get lucky. This area of the property is loaded with hardwoods, and I mean loaded...you almost can't take a step without the possibility of getting a twig in your nose or an eye. I'm soon asking myself why I chose this route...and some smart-ass from within pipes up "Cause you didn't want to walk down the road with the gun and scare people?" Like anyone around here would be afraid of that!
The snow is mid-calf and crunchy. No silent approach is possible today. In fact, I'm pretty sure every critter in this neck of the woods knows exactly where I am. So I procede trying my best to make sure that every critter inside of two hundred yards could hear me.
About fifty yards in I see the first deer tracks. Two or three days old, for sure....(I was born in California...so sue me). I hadn't seen any tracks around this area before today, so...um...it's new to me. Note: The tracks run parallel to the pines before me but a good ten yards away from them. When I reach the pines there is another run of tracks....buck tracks..."Interesting". And then I come up on another set...actually, a pair of tracks from a doe and a yearling perhaps. This set runs past my tree stand, about twenty-five yards behind it...and then they step into the tracks I left on the last day of bow season. This scene was to play out over and over today. The deer have made good use of my old tracks. So, figuring that I would help them out some more, I walk in my old tracks too...just to make sure the trail gets nice and packed down. (I should leave a trail to my freezer.)
Anyways, I follow my tracks the rest of the way across East Creek and into the wood lot, where I decide to stray from my old foot tracks...and away from the deer tracks up to the top of the ridge. The small pines are in view but still roughly one hundred yards away. Then I notice a pair of tree trunks that have been scraped up pretty good by something...I get my camera out and take some pictures. I suppose it could have been a moose...but more likely it was a black bear...a nice BIG black bear.
I walk off the ridge and towards the small pines where I had seen rabbit tracks before and just as I reach them...a rabbit goes hopping away. Well, I'm not sure if its feet actually touched the ground but he was gone nonetheless....shotgun still sitting on my shoulder.
I continue on and enter the small pines down what I thought was a trail, until it ended, so I had to push through the pine in front of me...and then around another, and another, and another...you get the point...yeah...I was thinking "Where's the damn loggin' road" myself. And right about that time I found it. (Ask and you shall receive.)....someone once told me that. Anywho...
On the logging road I found my old tracks..and the deer tracks...and began following them. Atleast I knew I didn't walk through any more clumps of small pines last week, so I was good to go.
Trying not to alert the critters far off in New York that I was hunting rabbits in the crunchy snow, and feeling that the ones in the small pines surely must be deaf by all the nosie, I pressed on...tripping and stumbling over the sticks and logs under the snow. "Why do I do this to myself!? I should just go down to Alabama!"....some wishful questioning there.
See anti-hunters just don't ever see how difficult hunting is. How the heck are ya suppose to see a deer or coyote, let alone a little rabbit hidden under a dark little pine when you're constantly trying to catch your balance, or hopping up and down because a stick just road up inside your pant leggings and jammed into your shin? It should be legal to use grenades, right? Damn anti-hunters.
So, I reach a small clearing and realize that it was the same one that had the nice deer beds in it...yep, over by that small tree. Doesn't look like they've used it since though. "Hmmm...the wind has been blowing in the opposite direction as it was the day they made that bed. Perhaps that's why." I leave the beds and walk about ten yards....out of the corner of my eye I see something flee across a logging cut...but I could possibly have been delusional. I watch over the area for about ten minutes before pressing forward towards the point where the small pines meet the end of the swamp.
Well, having seen only one rabbit and then the blur walking through the pines, I decided I'd check out the thicket and see if there were any rabbits there....a hundred yards later...that answer is obvious..."no, they aren't using the thicket." But, I did find five deer beds at the same place I had seen the nice grey doe back during rifle season.
Since, at this point I was standing at the edge of the swamp I decided that I would try to navigate my way through it....as if I hadn't had my face poked enough already....and now I want ice, water and mud under my boots? What was I thinking!? Well, at least the mud wasn't deep. (Some of us are likely clinically insane...and we just don't know it.)
Finally, once I realized that I had followed the swamp all the way back to the wood lot, I departed the swamp...and decided I hadn't yet had enough. So, I walked down along the outside of the swamp...back towards the small pines. I find my old tracks again...filled with deer tracks, and start working along the line between the swamp and the small pines. There are some tracks, but not many. Lots of red squirrel tracks though. I continue walking until I reach the end of the small pines.
I find the tracks I left earlier and cross them venturing further up the ridge to the upper portion of the pines where...there are no rabbit tracks. I work my way back down the ridge as I work across all the frick'n-frack'n logs under the snow and finally find rabbit tracks. It appears they like to just hang out near the logging trails. No trail...means more and bigger logs under the snow...means no rabbits. I head back to the logging road, but first I have to walk around this fallen sixty-foot pine that just so happens to be between me and the road.
Reaching the end of the log also means having to plow through yet another clump of small pines before finally having to push through another. Yeah....my thoughts too. At this point..."What am I doing in the woods?" And, while I'm trying to get a piece of pine debris from my eye I'm thinking about what someone once said that "to be out in God's Glory." Believe me...I love God's glory....just not when it's scratching me on the inside of my eye-lid.
Okay...bark removed...I'm on the logging trail again. I decide to sit and just watch and see if anything comes hopping by. I sit...eat a candy bar...nothing. I'm a little crunched for time since my son should be arriving home at 5PM. But, I'm trying to be patient. A small flock of chickidees [sp] fly by. Twenty minutes to a half hour later (I left my watch at the house) I decide I had better get heading home.
And, basically, the return back to the driveway....was essentially the same as it was getting out to the small pines....tripping, crunching, stumbling, all the way.
I might go back out tomorrow, only I may be packing a first-aid kit and a bull-dozer. I'm figurin' that God's Glory needs some tidying up.
Finally I reach the road...and I only need to cross it to reach the parcel of land I hunt on. I walk past the mailbox, reaching into my pocket for a few shells to load into the gun. "Opps, wrong pocket." I stop walking "Were they in the other jacket?" I search another pocket..."Nope, not in there." and then another.."Okay...we're good." I step into the woods and start loading as I walk.
The first thing I begin to notice are bunny tracks...snowshoe hare. My hope dims....they will be white and hard to see, but maybe I'll get lucky. This area of the property is loaded with hardwoods, and I mean loaded...you almost can't take a step without the possibility of getting a twig in your nose or an eye. I'm soon asking myself why I chose this route...and some smart-ass from within pipes up "Cause you didn't want to walk down the road with the gun and scare people?" Like anyone around here would be afraid of that!
The snow is mid-calf and crunchy. No silent approach is possible today. In fact, I'm pretty sure every critter in this neck of the woods knows exactly where I am. So I procede trying my best to make sure that every critter inside of two hundred yards could hear me.
About fifty yards in I see the first deer tracks. Two or three days old, for sure....(I was born in California...so sue me). I hadn't seen any tracks around this area before today, so...um...it's new to me. Note: The tracks run parallel to the pines before me but a good ten yards away from them. When I reach the pines there is another run of tracks....buck tracks..."Interesting". And then I come up on another set...actually, a pair of tracks from a doe and a yearling perhaps. This set runs past my tree stand, about twenty-five yards behind it...and then they step into the tracks I left on the last day of bow season. This scene was to play out over and over today. The deer have made good use of my old tracks. So, figuring that I would help them out some more, I walk in my old tracks too...just to make sure the trail gets nice and packed down. (I should leave a trail to my freezer.)
Anyways, I follow my tracks the rest of the way across East Creek and into the wood lot, where I decide to stray from my old foot tracks...and away from the deer tracks up to the top of the ridge. The small pines are in view but still roughly one hundred yards away. Then I notice a pair of tree trunks that have been scraped up pretty good by something...I get my camera out and take some pictures. I suppose it could have been a moose...but more likely it was a black bear...a nice BIG black bear.I walk off the ridge and towards the small pines where I had seen rabbit tracks before and just as I reach them...a rabbit goes hopping away. Well, I'm not sure if its feet actually touched the ground but he was gone nonetheless....shotgun still sitting on my shoulder.
I continue on and enter the small pines down what I thought was a trail, until it ended, so I had to push through the pine in front of me...and then around another, and another, and another...you get the point...yeah...I was thinking "Where's the damn loggin' road" myself. And right about that time I found it. (Ask and you shall receive.)....someone once told me that. Anywho...
On the logging road I found my old tracks..and the deer tracks...and began following them. Atleast I knew I didn't walk through any more clumps of small pines last week, so I was good to go.
Trying not to alert the critters far off in New York that I was hunting rabbits in the crunchy snow, and feeling that the ones in the small pines surely must be deaf by all the nosie, I pressed on...tripping and stumbling over the sticks and logs under the snow. "Why do I do this to myself!? I should just go down to Alabama!"....some wishful questioning there.
See anti-hunters just don't ever see how difficult hunting is. How the heck are ya suppose to see a deer or coyote, let alone a little rabbit hidden under a dark little pine when you're constantly trying to catch your balance, or hopping up and down because a stick just road up inside your pant leggings and jammed into your shin? It should be legal to use grenades, right? Damn anti-hunters.
So, I reach a small clearing and realize that it was the same one that had the nice deer beds in it...yep, over by that small tree. Doesn't look like they've used it since though. "Hmmm...the wind has been blowing in the opposite direction as it was the day they made that bed. Perhaps that's why." I leave the beds and walk about ten yards....out of the corner of my eye I see something flee across a logging cut...but I could possibly have been delusional. I watch over the area for about ten minutes before pressing forward towards the point where the small pines meet the end of the swamp.
Well, having seen only one rabbit and then the blur walking through the pines, I decided I'd check out the thicket and see if there were any rabbits there....a hundred yards later...that answer is obvious..."no, they aren't using the thicket." But, I did find five deer beds at the same place I had seen the nice grey doe back during rifle season.
Since, at this point I was standing at the edge of the swamp I decided that I would try to navigate my way through it....as if I hadn't had my face poked enough already....and now I want ice, water and mud under my boots? What was I thinking!? Well, at least the mud wasn't deep. (Some of us are likely clinically insane...and we just don't know it.)
Finally, once I realized that I had followed the swamp all the way back to the wood lot, I departed the swamp...and decided I hadn't yet had enough. So, I walked down along the outside of the swamp...back towards the small pines. I find my old tracks again...filled with deer tracks, and start working along the line between the swamp and the small pines. There are some tracks, but not many. Lots of red squirrel tracks though. I continue walking until I reach the end of the small pines.
I find the tracks I left earlier and cross them venturing further up the ridge to the upper portion of the pines where...there are no rabbit tracks. I work my way back down the ridge as I work across all the frick'n-frack'n logs under the snow and finally find rabbit tracks. It appears they like to just hang out near the logging trails. No trail...means more and bigger logs under the snow...means no rabbits. I head back to the logging road, but first I have to walk around this fallen sixty-foot pine that just so happens to be between me and the road.
Reaching the end of the log also means having to plow through yet another clump of small pines before finally having to push through another. Yeah....my thoughts too. At this point..."What am I doing in the woods?" And, while I'm trying to get a piece of pine debris from my eye I'm thinking about what someone once said that "to be out in God's Glory." Believe me...I love God's glory....just not when it's scratching me on the inside of my eye-lid.
Okay...bark removed...I'm on the logging trail again. I decide to sit and just watch and see if anything comes hopping by. I sit...eat a candy bar...nothing. I'm a little crunched for time since my son should be arriving home at 5PM. But, I'm trying to be patient. A small flock of chickidees [sp] fly by. Twenty minutes to a half hour later (I left my watch at the house) I decide I had better get heading home.
And, basically, the return back to the driveway....was essentially the same as it was getting out to the small pines....tripping, crunching, stumbling, all the way.
I might go back out tomorrow, only I may be packing a first-aid kit and a bull-dozer. I'm figurin' that God's Glory needs some tidying up.
