Pennsylvania Game News - August 2019 - 49

location where deer are. That's probably
sound advice, but it's often met with
resistance.
One of the tenets of nature is change,
and woodlands, of course, are no exception. Sometimes it is slow, as forests
mature and deer seek better, more reliable
food sources and bedding ground. Change
also may happen rather abruptly: logging,
farming practices and development. One
of my favorite deer stands within a copse
of ash trees was wiped out by emerald
ash borers.
Even when presented with the facts,
many of those older hunters remain reluctant to relocate. It may seem that they are
just being stubborn; they're often accused
of being cranky complainers who refuse
to get in step with the times, clinging
to the past. Perhaps it is something deeper, though, that
binds them to a certain
place, far beyond an
unwillingness to shed
tradition.
In typical
teenage fashion, a young
hunter, eager to
shoot a deer and tired of
being told where to post on
stand decides to set off on his
own to find his spot, one like the
revered stands of other camp members. His father encourages him to stillhunt along the long straight ridge, all the
way out to where it stops at a hollow. He
is told, by and by, when he comes
to a place that feels right, he'll
know it when he sees it.
The snow is shin-high
and he remembers to
slow his pace, to
walk a few steps
and stop to look
AUGUST 2019

all around. Clothed in hand-me-down
checkered wool, his dark, slim form
slips quietly among the grape tangles
and boulders. He stops at subtle breaks in
the terrain to visualize where deer might
appear, occasionally conjuring big, gray
mountain bucks that would fall to his new
.35 Remington pump carbine.
The ridge terminates in a knob at the
juncture of two hollows. A cleft in a boulder makes for a convenient, comfortable
seat and he feels secure there as he did
only a few years ago in a boyhood fort he
built in the woods out back.
It snows, muffling distant rifle shots.
The entire world seems so far away. The
hollow's tones of black, white and gray
remind him of the opposing pages of the
morning newspaper held up by his father
at breakfast. He would glance up from
his cereal bowl when his father turned a
page, scanning it quickly until a headline
caught his eye. Young blood pumps hard
and quick as his heart surges when three
deer appear suddenly down the slope like
a headline that leapt from the newspaper.
One is a buck, a fork-horn, and the
front post's brass bead burns hotly on its
gray hide, like a miniature sun moving
through fog. When it pauses, he pulls the
trigger and the hollow echoes with the
shot he never heard.
The buck bolts, then piles up. After
field dressing the deer, he looks around.
This is the place, he thinks. This is his
spot. So it came to be that day, as marked
with an X and his name on the big topo
map on the camp wall.
Over the years, the decades, the stand
becomes hallowed ground. It is, at times,
sanctuary and solace from the trials and
tribulations of the world. Whatever baggage the hunter brings with him falls away
with every step until he reaches his stand,
or is deposited there to dissipate over time.
49

Pennsylvania Game News - August 2019

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