MYSTERY GIRL

 

MR. FIX IT

     A Canadian was traveling across the ice near the Arctic Circle when his snowmobile stopped dead. Fearing he would have to spend the night in sub-zero temperatures he was heartened to see headlights coming in the distance. Coming upon the stranded man the other snowmobiler asked, "Blow a seal?" "No." he said, "That's just snot on my mustache."

    Yesterday Savage Lynch showed up at the shack at 6:00 am with sandwiches and that joke. After missing two good bucks I needed a little humor. Savage was to hunt the morning in the cemetery while I went back to Gilkey's praying  Biggers would show again. Neither of us had much luck. I saw about a dozen does feeding in the field and by 11:00 am Savage saw a flock of turkeys and had spike pass the stand. Not much to write about.

    So we had lunch and plotted our afternoon. The subject of the mouse and running toilet came up again. I still hadn't fixed the problem (nor had any answers concerning the mouse) so Savage took a crack at it. After a few adjustments and my hand wringing that he would break it, the inner works now seem to be working. It's good to have handy friends. Not only did Savage fix the toilet he informed me that he spent the morning securing the burlap on the cemetery stand by tying little bows of ribbon around the shooting rail. Like Bird, Savage has the anal-obsessive gene that I lack. 

   Deciding to hunt Paradise pond, when Savage left I threw another shell threw the 30.06 to make sure it wasn't the gun that was off. Nope. I was off, not my equipment. This info. ate at me. So when I got back in the stand I ran threw the scenario again. How could I have missed that buck? Knowing it was going to rain today, in one last attempt to put my mind at ease I once again went in search of blood. I blew off  the afternoon hunt hoping to find blood, a dead deer or not. Criss-crossing the swamp and field I finally put the case to rest (sort of). One is never 100%, but I'm 90% sure I never touched that deer. Both misses were fast shots at long distances with a bad eye. Savage can't fix that. Once again my best wasn't good enough.  I had planned on shooting a doe this week. Forget that. From now until New Year's Day I'll be hunting Golden Boy and Biggers. I do like a challenge. I just have to try harder. Settle the crosshairs. Take your time. Breathe.      

HOLLIE IN MY BATHTUB

 Photo: Marianna Rothen

SHOOT? DON'T SHOOT. SHOOT!

    First just a follow up on the mouse mystery. I came out of the woods Saturday night and when I turned on the faucet barely a trickle of water came out. Huh? I flushed the toilet. Nothing. I had no water. I looked in the bowl. No critters. After talking to Bird, who suggested it was my expansion tank, I called my plumber Jay.  While on the phone I heard water running. The tank on the toilet was filling up. The last thing Jay wanted to do was drive up the mountain and diagnose my mouse problems. Jay said it sounded like a toilet issue and was no help on the mystery mouse. He did say my name had come up that very day when a friend asked if he wanted to buy the Maybrook Church. "Why?" Jay responded "If I want to go to church I go to the CLGM." A loyal plumber/congregant is a treasure. Fuck it. I had water again, so I let Jay off the hook. Crisis averted. The mouse remains a mystery.

   Sunday I slept in and the afternoon was a washout so I didn't hunt. This morning I drove down the hill to hunt Gilkey's. Although the property has changed hands twice, now owned by the artist Julie Merhetu, it will always be Gilkey's to me. I'd moved a hanger stand to hunt the back field by the river, even rigging a monopod rest on a little 1x4 extension for long shots. I was excited to get in the tree. I'd hung the rest on a tree branch that I immediately hit with my head climbing into the stand and it clattered to the ground. I was gonna climb down and retrieve it but since it was getting light I decided not to. This was my first mistake. At dawn I spotted a big deer 250 yards in front of me. It wasn't Golden Boy. This buck was bigger.

     With no rest I knew I couldn't make a shot on the buck so I watched and waited. He had a doe feeding to his left. The wind was in my face. Conditions were perfect. Between 6:30 and 8:30 am the field filled with deer. Two more smaller bucks and ten does were scattered between me and the river. The three bucks remained feeding, surrounding the one hot doe, still too far for a shot but plainly visible. Eventually the doe started to move back towards my ridge into the shooting lane I had rigged specifically for my rest (now laying on the ground). I squiggled in my seat, crossing and uncrossing my legs, attempting to steady the gun on the doe, just in case the buck showed. Then  I saw movement behind some tree branches. Biggers was coming. My weak arms shook, breathing increased and the bum eye began to go weepy. Steady man.

    I crossed my legs, leaned back, put my left elbow on my knee, and tried to get the scope on the moving buck. He wasn't stopping. I bleated. He kept heading for the spot where the doe had disappeared up the ridge. I bleated  again, loudly! Then he stopped. I clicked off the safety and fired. Just like last week, he spun and stopped. Now facing away, all I had was neck. I shot again. He bolted, tail up for the river, bounding across the field unscathed. I knew I had missed again.

    Even though I was certain of the miss I climbed down and went in search of blood to be sure. It was a futile effort. Nothing. Another clean miss. Last year, even though I saw good bucks, I never had a shot at a deer until New Years Eve when I shot a doe. I hit her perfectly and she still went 100 yards before dying. This year I've missed two slammer bucks with the 30.06 in one week. It's a record I'm not proud of. I can't blame my eye or the gun. It's me. I'm somehow fucking up. Both shots were fast, but not reckless or hurried. Missing two good opportunities at mature bucks has the knot in the pit of my stomach growing into a stump. My brother Ross compares me to a golfer frustrated with his lousy game. It's a good analogy. Like a golfer, no matter how many hooks, slashes or wild puts one is plagued with it won't stop the obsessive duffer from playing the game. That doe is still hot. Biggers may have to swim the river to get back to her. All I can hope for is I'll be in the tree when he does. I'll never leave the rest on the ground again. I'm such an asshole. No matter. The afternoon lays ahead.          

HAMMOCK

 Photo: Marianna Rothen

DEAD MOUSE IN THE BOWL

    I slept in the morning after Thanksgiving, filled with love and turkey and too stuffed to get up at dawn. So I hit the woods early on Friday afternoon, hunting from the ground on the north side of the cut behind the cemetery. The wind kicked up and even though the temps were mild, as the day progressed I got cold. At 4:30 I headed home never seeing a deer. Could the rut be over?

    As deer hunters know when the rut winds down you are in for long, cold, sits in empty woods. The deer seem to disappear. If you don't have a food source to hunt you may go days without seeing a tail. We've all been there. This morning when the alarm went off I made the same decision to burrow deeper in the covers and sleep in. I know I shouldn't have. That big buck that I've named "Golden Boy," could still be dogging a hot doe in my woods. I should be in the tree every minute of daylight. Shhhhhhhhhhhh.....let me sleep.

  Last night I had some plumbing problems in the shack. After doing my business and flushing the toilet, the water kept running. I shook the handle. No help. It kept running. So I closed the seat lid and fished around in the tank. My house is dark. I couldn't find a flashlight to identify the issue. Finally I touched something that stopped the water gushing in. Between the dark room and my bum eye I have no idea what I touched. Now I usually leave the seat up for Cheeky. He likes drinking out of the bowl better than the nice clean dish of water I leave for him in the kitchen. But last night after my blind plumbing episode I left the seat down.

     This morning I got up, lifted the lid and floating in the bowl face down was a big grey, dead, mouse. What the fuck? The questions are obvious. #1. How did that mouse lift the lid? #2. Could this dead mouse have something to do with my toilet issue last night? #3. HOW COULD A MOUSE DIE IN A TOILET WITH A CLOSED SEAT? Cheeky was asleep in the chair. He looked up innocently and yawned. No help. I have no answers. I'll hunt the afternoon, maybe see nothing, but have plenty of time to ponder this wet, floating corpse in my crapper (a sign?) along with how I could have missed Golden Boy.  I love a good mystery.     

MORGANE

 

NO BLOOD, NO HAIR, NO IDEA

What do you call a blind deer?

No eye deer.

What do you call a blind deer with no legs?

Still no eye deer.

What do you call a blind deer with no legs or penis?

Still no fucking eye deer.

   My last post was in April. It now being a week into 2022 gun season it seems a good time to catch up. The pandemic is over. Tell that to Bird and Shewho who got hammered with the virus a few weeks back. I didn't get it or a turkey in May. It's probably the first time in thirty years I've been skunked during Spring turkey season. Getting old. In August I turned 70 and two days later got my right eye operated on for advanced glaucoma. It didn't go well. The doc may have arrested my eye disease, but screwed up my vision in the process. My shooting eye is like looking through a glass of water; distorted and blurry. This made compound bow season impossible. I never got in the tree until early November for crossbow. If I concentrate, with the help of a scope I can hit the bull. So let's take it from there.

    It was a slow start. Hunting the cemetery stand, I saw a few small bucks and does, but no shooters. That changed early one morning when I heard crashing and grunts behind me. To my left (too far for a shot) I caught sight a big bodied buck with a nice rack dogging a doe into the thick stuff. This was a definite shooter. The hunt was on.

   I have eight stands scattered across a variety of properties. The one in the cemetery is a ladder stand, and the most comfortable. It is also the most difficult to move. All the rest are hangers and stick ladders. This is my preferred system. Easily portable, if a spot is dead you can move. This is also the most physical and dangerous part of deer hunting. It's not the gun that will kill you it's the fall while trying to move stands. Thankfully I can still do it. Once I saw that buck I started moving stands, trying to strategize where he would pop up next. As it turned out he showed himself again at the ladder stand.

   On Tuesday at 4pm I caught movement. The big buck was chasing a doe at breakneck speed 100 yards to my right. I pulled the gun up but could not get the scope on him.....until he stopped for a split second 150 yards in front of me. I clicked off the safety and fired. He spun, stopped. The doe stood there. Then he turned back and I fired again. They both disappeared into the thick brush. Had I hit him? I couldn't tell. Daylight rapidly fading I climbed down and went in search of hair or blood. With only patches of snow and my bum eye this was no small task in brown brush and dead leaves. Nothing. I walked in circles looking for a white belly or brown back, praying to see that rack up close. With every step my heart sank deeper. At 5pm, unable to see, I gave up. It didn't look good.

    The next morning (after a sleepless night) I hunted the same stand until 9:30 am and then went back to search for any sign that I had hit that buck. Again nothing. A clean miss. The worst part of hunting is wounding a deer and not finding it. It happens to the best of us. I'll take a clean miss any day. I gave it my best shot and my best search if I had hit him. And I accept my failure. My best wasn't good enough. To be bested by a beautiful, mature, whitetail buck is nothing to be ashamed of. I have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. Love to all my faithful readers. I'm back on the blog, at least for the season. HAPPY THANKSGIVING!