Welcome Home, my dear friend.

Clark, get that silly grin off your face -    

 

Hi Killie!

Ahhh Killy's back, The world is right at Tradgang once again. Whew, it was bizarre for about 3 weeks around here.    

Missed you girl    welcome home

Cool!! I'll go clean up the "to pee or not to pee" thread and a couple of others and prepare to grin.

Welcome back Killy!  

Yea man, it was getting strange around here. Glad your back girl! Where's the story? CK

Can't wait to hear all about it!

I got Carly Simon singing "Anticipation" in my head!!!

yeah come on killie we want story and pics.    clad ya back safe.

As always I am looking forward to your adventure.

I still haven't found my journal...  

No pressure from us Killdeer.  Don't ruin a good hunt/annual rehab worryin' about get the stories and pics too quick.  I'm sure you'll find your journal somewhere there in Fibber M's closet.

Welcome home, I hope you had a great and relaxing adventure!

Welcome back Kathy.  

hello is this thing on???  

oh stop that killie no excuse          :D

I find it hard to believe that there is a demand here for an account of a hunt with no kill in it. Not only no kill, but only rare sightings of any game whatsoever.

The old place is not the old place it started out to be, but then again, none of us are. I began hunting there over twenty years ago, a naive young woman and the woods thick with deer, like fleas on a dog. The camp was also clogged with hunters. Campers clustered along the roads, tents huddled in the hollow, day hunters driving up from Harrisonburg, and Pennsylvanians staying in the motel ten miles away.

I bumbled in at dusk one Saturday, in my '66 Dart. I asked the camper at the crossroads if I was where I thought I was. Light was fading fast, I was wet and muddy from rehanging my muffler twice on sleety-cold rutted logging roads.

"Well, yeah, this is the place. But, you don't want to go down there, little lady. That place is full of  hunters !"

I zipped on down the road.
The camp was jammed full, every semi-flat place beset with a tent. Fires were a-birthing in the gloaming. In the open yard before a venerable log shelter, complete with plastic sheeting across the front, I pitched my pup tent. I kept a respectful distance as I placed the ground sheet over the unseen pile of smart pills. In the dusk I did not see that this was also the slight declivity that all the rainwater from the camp would be  using to get into the creek.It was full dark by the time I got my makeshift fly over the tent and laid out my sleeping bag, left over from childhood. I don't believe I ate anything, but cocooned myself in for a very long night. It was 6:00.

Morning was the most welcome thing I had ever seen. I sat up in the bag, and ice crystals rasped into my hair. I crawled out and reached for the water bottle. It was frozen.

I have been there every fall ever since.
Killdeer

I love the beginning of this story!!!

Been waiting for this....

Killie, you sure learned to camp wiser, didn't you? -   :D

Things have changed, all right. Camp has gotten a bit more, mmm, ornate.
For a good many years, I availed myself of the chestnut shelter there. Tarps across the front and a floor heater kept high winds and the drifts of nor'easters off of me and the mice. Still cold, but not frozen. Many people had sheltered there since it was built in '33, and their carved names and dates gave me lots to read and think about. Who was this woman who had been there in "1P35"? Who was the person who scrolled his initials so elegantly on the doorpost the year the shelter was built, in 1933? Pennies were hammered into cracks, 30-30 shells into log ends.
And in front, a huge fire pit, where the pyre fit.  :D      
Those years were good, and I progressed in my quest. I took my first deer, the only deer I have ever taken from a tree stand. Then I killed bigger deer, and more deer every year. I started letting eight-points walk because they were not any bigger than anything I had already killed.

I got a little blase about it, it became almost formulaic, and so I began to bowhunt for real.

Killdeer



This is what remains of the old tree stand where I shot my first deer, Clyde. He had half-inch spikes. The mumping old cherries seem to be talking amongst themselves. I hope they are kind about it.