Friday, October 13, 2006
Some Nights Are Not Fit For Hunting
There is an old saying about pretty girls. All girls are pretty but some are prettier than others.
Much the same can be said for deer-hunting nights. Some nights are just great times to be afield, but tonight was not one of them.
It rained and snowed last night, and then rained and snowed off and on all day today. The wind was gusting heavily and swirling all over the compass, and I deliberated long and hard before deciding to brave the elements.
I climbed up into a stand, and the rain and snow rattled against the Plexiglas windows, and the wind shook the stand like an angry God, and then it would rain and snow some more.
The evening seemed to be very long tonight, and the sky was dark and it was impossible to see well enought to shoot long before legal shooting time arrived. I stuck it out, just on general principles, and it was a compleat and total waste of time.
Not a single deer came to me tonight. I knew it would be bad, but had no idea just how bad it would be. Nary a deer, squirrel or ruffed grouse showed themselves, and if such nights are meant to prove a point, it proved that I should have stayed inside.
Hunting has been slow all week because of circling winds, rain, and two straight nights of an early snow. This stormm is dumping some of the wettest snow I’ve ever seen all over everything.
This snow is so thick and heavy that it is bending pine boughs to the ground, and if the weather turns cold, we may lose some trees. Some big gobs of snow clung to a pine tree I was in tonight, and when it slipped free and fell to the ground, it sounded like a 10-pound sack of wet sand hitting the ground.
The other people who hunted tonight had similar results. They sat in ground blinds or elevated coops, spent their time watching the mixed snow and rain fall, and left the woods without seeing an animal.
Such nights happen every year, and there is absolutely nothing to be done for it. Gripe and complain all you want, but fierce winds and a mix of heavy rain and snow is a guaranteed bummer. Deer dislike such weather as much as we do, and they seldom move at all on such rotten evenings.
That thought crossed my mind while I watched the weather around me, and it was: what am I doing here? Perhaps I’m a slow learner, but the next time we have a storm like this, I suspect I’ll stay indoors.
It is less stressful, equally as productive, and not nearly as wet and windy.—The Whitetail Wizard