Mrs. Mary Merriam, earlier a recovering patient in the Charlene Manor nursing home in Greenfield, pops in from time to time to keep up with friends made while she was a resident. Among other topics of conversation, she happily reviews seeing a doe and her fawns up and about in the Merriam home fields in Conway.
What has made the sighting of the three deer most noteworthy is the fact that the fawns still sport their just-produced spots. But, also noticed is the sad fact that the doe wears a collar of a plastic bag that somehow got tangled around her neck. At this writing, the decorative bag still has its hold on the mother’s neck. Calls to wildlife people assure deer watchers that given time, the resplendent bag ornament will come loose and get pulled off. We’re waiting — get off with it!
As I sat mulling over these recent short, cold days, I thought of the countless Bay State hunters who were home for the evening, tired beyond easy recovery — easily beyond the quick recovery that usually comes right from the first cup of coffee.
I sat wondering how many of my fellow pilgrims had gotten as far into the woods as I had gone in quest of the “elusive” deer. For days and weeks, most of us had hung in there, hunting to the farthest tree. We’d have had quite an assembly if we’d all gotten there at the same time. Eleven days it took me to get to my goal. I crossed a few fences and even a couple of roads to get into the woods where my tree stood. It was in Whately.
George Jonelunas took me up there at break of day. At 10:30 a.m., I came close to stepping on a fawn doe curled up and careless, not 30 feet in front of me. She got to her feet slowly, as though the bed she’d lain in had sent a December frost into her bones. I was glad to see her. She was the only deer I’d seen in all the six weeks I’d spent in the woods.
George had planned to take us to high county in Savoy. We turned south to Whately when we learned that the hills west of Greenfield were ice covered and noisy. I had never hunted in the Whately woods, and I was happily surprised to find considerable proof of deer living there. It was no serious discouragement to me to have the entire seasons summarized in the sighting of just one deer — and that one safe on account of gender. Every deer hunter knows he must operate with the philosophy that his day will come next year.
Go back with me and let me take you to a tree deep in the Vermont woods, where you’ll get a chuckle, if not see a deer. There are compensations in hunting when what you’re gunning for hides in the next county. Herewith is a little of that compensation.
If you sit in the woods long enough, the little deer that live there will soon make furniture of you. The mice and moles and shrews that burrow and tunnel in the duff under trees and around their roots will get out and active to find the food that feeds their rapid-rate metabolism. They may not be so incautious as to climb into your lap to have a close look at you, but it won’t be exceptional if one of them runs over your feet.
I built one stand in the fall in a pine grove. I laid down a thick seat of spruce cuttings to set my knapsack on and keep me dry. Two great pines had tumbled together in some past windstorm, crossing against each other four or five feet off the ground, making me a perfect hideout.
Some time after, I had sat down and heard the woods go quiet, a red squirrel came out of a hole in the spot where these two trees were locked together. You could see that in their embrace, accidental, they made a water-tight joint, which the squirrel had improved upon. The merest inch of a black spot showed here its rodent teeth had gnawed into a dry compartment below the water line and above the snow line.
Squirrel and I weren’t 15 feet apart. My hunter’s orange made no impression. The little fellow raced across trees in a wasteland of dead timber, zipped up the side of a hardwood and commenced hitting the bark on the tree’s stem, where a small hole was visible. You could hardly say that it pounded or thumped the tree where that opening was, yet the sound it made was plain enough to hear. Only the squirrel and what was in the hole knew what was in the hole. My friend scolded and raged for several minutes before leaving off to shoot back down the tree and race for home.
Twice again in the course of the morning, the strange activity was carried out. Whether vendetta or rage, it was surely strange to me. Whatever the issue, it was very much on the squirrel’s mind and absorbed it completely. Toward me and my being there, it was blind and color blind, for in its trips out and back, it never once cast a glimpse in my direction.
Take 11 days of hunting and multiply the product by nine, the waking, lighted hours, a persevering hunter spends daily in the woods. Spend 100 hours by yourself without interruption — no job, no TV, no books, no chores, nobody to interfere or interrupt. Catch yourself when you’re not concentrating fully in the hunt. What are you thinking about? What is on your mind?
Amazing the range and variety of your thoughts, the deeds and misdeeds that pass in review. Amazing, too, how blissfully blank the mind can be when the temper of the woods is conducive. Peace, tranquility, escape.