Pennsylvania Game News - October 2009 - 7

E STANDS AT the kitchen window with his coffee, scrutinizing the windblown sky, debating whether to hunt deer or cocoon beside the woodstove with the morning paper. Sleet ticks against the panes, gathering on the sill like sand in an hourglass. He hunches his shoulders at the thought of raw cold seeping into his bones. A broken limb dangling on the big oak out back scrapes against the slate roof of the smokehouse, producing the slow strident yelps of an amateur turkey caller. “I don’t like to hunt when the wind is this bad,” he said to his wife, as she fixes a new pot of coffee. “Lots of limbs and some trees will come down today; got to watch out for those ‘widowmakers.’” While the coffee perks he brews more excuses. “It’s too late in the morning to wait on stand, and with all the commotion, the deer will be extra skittish. And, there won’t be many hunters out to stir things up.” With enthusiasm as lukewarm as the dregs in his mug, he thought it best to call it a season. He rinses his mug, pours some fresh brew and returns to the window. The snow-laden roof of the sky collapses through rafters of scudding clouds as a fierce squall sweeps in from the northwest. He blows steam from the rim and sips, the hot coffee and prospect of a tracking snow barely brightening his outlook. Brow furrowed, he glances at his wife. He was not one to be indecisive or procrastinate, but lately she sensed that he was experiencing a midlife shifting of sorts, and knew that whatever ailed him would best be resolved in the woods. For him, it was always that way. “I think you should go,” she said, “Today’s your last day off this week and it’s a long wait ’til next season.” “You’re right, this is it. Might as well do it while I can. Just look at old Doug. No hunting for him this year, mending from surgery, and truth is, he probably won’t be able to hunt like he used to, if at all. I can’t remember a season we didn’t hunt together, not since we were kids. You just never OCTOBER 2009 H know,” he said, his voice trailing off. She filled a battered thermos with the remainder of the pot and fixed him a sandwich, then bid him luck as he left by the mudroom door, watching him lean into the wind as he crossed the yard, headed for the woods beyond. One quick chore needed to be done, though. He retrieves a pruning pole from the shed and saws off the busted limb on the oak. A remnant leaf strips away, catching on his collar. He removes it and studies the network of veins as if reading a map and formulates a plan. Hike back in to Dry Run Hollow, still-hunt along the ridge, and then slice back to the farmhouse. Simple enough. Or, if he hit fresh tracks, he would take them up. With daylight burning, he hustles along the lane through the corn stubble, annoyed with the late start, but more at having lost his bearings in the long and busy days of these last few months. It was as if he were wandering through a fog between two ridges; the past, which had faded from sight and, looming somewhere ahead, the opposing ridgeline that he had discerned as the far side of middle age. He picks up the tram road that separates the wooded acreage he owns along the cornfield from the forest beyond. Even the largest trees sway in the wind, groaning and complaining, the intermittent snapping of limbs like scattered pistol shots. He pauses at his ladder stand nestled between curtains of grapevines, regretting at not having hunted more during archery season, when the weather was more civil. Angling down a steep hillside, he is ambushed by a whiteout that slants in hard. He takes shelter behind the half shell of an oak, leaning into it like a medieval infantryman shouldering a wooden shield, bracing against a full out charge. When the onslaught slows,

Pennsylvania Game News - October 2009

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