Saturday, January 1, 2011

The Beginning in the End

I know inside its because I'm passionate, but I sometimes wonder why I would deprive myself of three hours of sleep in a warm bed to stumble through the woods and sit up against the base of a tree for hours in the cold.  Am I crazy?  Maybe.

Today, unlike the last closer, was relatively warm.  The thermostat hit 60* in Fluvanna, as opposed to the below zero temps of last January.  A relatively new moon should have had the deer moving out to feed just before sunrise, and with no grass on our property, I wasn't sure how to hunt them.  So, I took vigil outside of a bedding area to catch any of the stragglers......there were none.

What where there were squirrels, pairs of them running around to take care of their winter litters. So, after two hours, I traded in the boom-stick for the air rifle and claimed four of the frisky rodents for the freezer.

After some food and rest, I grabbed the 20 Gauge and hit the woods agian, this time still hunting.  With the wind and light rain, the deer were almost certainly bedded down.  Slowly, I worked my way through the laps on the side of the ridge, looking for any part of a deer I could see, always ready for a jump shot.
The last day of the Eastern Virginia deer season ended without even a deer sighting.