BITING THE BULLET

  Every day that I come out of the woods dragging nothing but my gun barrel in the dirt, Shewho's daughter Teehoo rejoices. Like other non hunting, PETA card carrying citizens, Teehoo thinks most hunters shoot every deer they see. She can only surmise that I'm just one lousy hunter. Don't think that hasn't crossed my mind also. But lets do a survey of other hunters and compare.

   On opening day only Milawyer scored amongst the locals in our group. In Bird's little woodlot, he saw nothing and Waders saw a dozen deer, literally a couple hundred yards away. As opening week progressed I saw very few deer and no horns. I had shots at "Daffodils"  (doe) but couldn't pull the trigger. There's a certain amount of competitiveness amongst us hunters. You want to have a buck on the ground first. Let the Daffodils walk.

   Then on Friday, Bird and I went up to Cooperstown to hunt Ray Key's farm. This is a yearly ritual for us. Up there it's all about putting on drives, ragging each other and shooting bucks. When I say "bucks" I mean anything from a spike up. It's an  old school mind set that I don't subscribe to, so when a little "Mortimer" (spike) ran in front of Ray and I,  I didn't even raise the rifle, Ray whispered "Buck!" raised his gun, and stuttered. "Gawddamnit......I....I.....had my thing on. I thought you would shoot." I told him I wouldn't kill that little guy. He was disgusted with me. His "thing" was a scope cover he forgot to remove. The rest of the day "His thing on." became our mantra. The tally at the dark was one little three point shot by Davey. Pitiful.

    For those of you wondering if I will ever work again, my next job is an old 1850 farm house redo recently purchased down the road from Shewho in WSS, by good friends Chuckles McC, Contessa Von Freeland and son Ace. Ten year old Ace and Contessa came up this past weekend to take measurements. They have 26 acres of woods, ponds and fields. I hunted it on Saturday. I climbed up the mountain and saw five Daffodils. Ace looked out the window and saw a big buck under the apple tree near the house. He said he scared it up to me. I never saw it, of course. Later, back at my shack, Ace got a two inch splinter in his foot from sliding across my nasty floor. Shewho and Contessa held him down while I operated. I gave him a .243 shell to bite on. The operation was a success. Otherwise we would've had to saw his foot off in the morning. Now, Savage's report.

SAVAGE LYNCH'S DEER REPORT: Bobby Rowe and and I went back up to Les' yesterday. My cold feels better.  About 7 am five doe came through. I saw they were a bit hinky and thought they smelled me, but they were looking away. Then about 5 minutes later I caught sight of a buck on their trail. I pulled up and saw good horns. I had one chance for a shot at 150 yards and squeezed one off. I made a good hit on him. He was a nice 8 with one broken brow tine. Another hunter got an 11 at Paradise pond. That's the report.

Editor's note: As usual Savage scores and has better luck than any other hunter I know. If it wasn't for him there'd never be blood in this blog. I'm biting the bullet now.