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DECK THE WALLS

OK, we've gotten through the Black Cat season and now we have to roast a turkey and then we can deck the walls.  So I jump the gun a little.  But because the Christmas Season is my favorite.  

I still get a thrill from an overnight snow storm.  The next morning just glistens in an extreme quiet which can only be measured by being out in it.  It always overwhelms me with the awesomeness of nature.  One minute it is cold, overcast, maybe raining a little with a good wind blowing and the next time you look outside everything is covered in white.  And the only thing to prove witness the scene are the tracks of little critters looking for their next meal.

It brings to mind one such morning in Central Pennsylvania fifty years ago.  It was opening day of deer hunting season, (Yes Maud, I was hunting with "Gasp" a gun at the time) and we had about six inches of the white stuff fall the night before.  I had climbed a mountain to just below the tree line in the wee hours (where did that saying ever come from? Wee hours?) of the dark morning.  I strategized correctly that when the sun came up all the hunters in the valley would scare the b-Jesus out of the deer and they would head for higher ground to hide out. Well, I was right.

Deer will generally feed in the fields and edges at night and then move to higher and presumably safer ground as the sun rises.  Part of the reason for this is that scent will rise in the early morning hours as the air warms up and they will move above for safety purposes.  In addition, in the evening as the air cools, scent will fall and they will have protection from above by going to feed in the lower climes.  

To make a long story short, the minute the sun barely rose,  the first gun went off.  I tensed and strained eyes and ears, looking for the first escapees.  I was sitting with my back to an old oak tree about three times as wide as my own profile when a group of about twenty deer made their way over the bench in front of me.  HA!....he says to himself ... I was right!  They climbed above me with only a small fork horn buck amidst the group.  So I was wrong.  No huge Pennsylvania record book buck for me out of that group.  They milled around behind me for a half hour, finding spots to lie down, rest and be safe.  Other than little peaks around the tree, I could not watch them for any protracted period. 

But hearing steps behind me, I looked to my left and from behind the tree came this black, wet nose, followed by two huge eyes of a doe still looking for a spot to nap.  I guess our eyes were about a foot apart.  Only thing to do was say...."Morning lady"!

It was so quiet and still in the snow that she never saw, heard or smelled me.  Of course at that point she just exploded back up the hill taking 20 of her best friends with her.  I didn't get a trophy or a picture the bright snowy morning, but in a way I did.  A trophy memory.