Chris Maroldy
It was a dark and stormy night.
Hurricane season. Not exactly deer hunting weather if you weren’t from around here. Even if you were from around here, you might complain. No cool crisp days in the treestand in sight for a while.
It was supposed to clear this morning, though, and it might be worth a shot to try to catch the big buck getting up from his bed and browsing toward the beanfield. The opposite of what you usually planned for on a morning’s deer hunt. The directions would be reversed, if he was lucky and correct, and he’d catch the giant in daylight, tired of huddling all night in the wind and drizzle, his stomach calling him to feed.
Afternoons tended to be better hunting in the early season, but our hero could not wait to be in the woods with a bow in his hands. Seven or eight months with no deer hunting, depending on your circumstances, was much too long to wait. He was not impressed with the urban deer seasons in some locations, which allowed you to hunt well into the winter and even later. No, he’d rather have his deer hunting on the front end, and even though the best reward was not to be had until November, he much preferred to ease up to the peak than to slide down from it.
He couldn’t imagine how hunters whose bow seasons opened in October could stand the wait. He reveled in the warm air and the steady breeze up from the south as he stepped outside the house and began to stow his gear in the truck.
It was a short drive to his main hunting area, and already even at this early hour he could see some patches of clearing in the night sky when he pulled in and turned his headlights off. the old familiar feeling was with him—not a dread exactly; more a deep sense of being alone in the dark. He rarely felt it coming out of the woods in the evening, even late, but he nearly always felt some bit of it on the drive in of a morning. Not so much when he started walking, he recalled, but quite often in the truck. Strange. Maybe it was something primordial, he thought. Existing at the beginning of the world.
He was counting on the buck being bedded, but he avoided the fields and openings as best he could on his way around to the thickest part of the property. This early in the season, he didn’t run much risk of bumping deer feeding under the trees, but it was a balancing act. In years and years of hunting, he’d alerted more deer than he’d ambushed walking in the mornings, especially once the acorns started hitting the ground.
He preferred morning hunts, though. Not as easy as the afternoons, but then again there were some places where the afternoons were dead. Whether from hunting pressure or poor strategy, it depended. He just thought morning hunts were a little harder to figure out—more of a challenge.
Not that he really wanted a challenge today. He really just wanted to sit and see what happened. It had been a long eight months.
Still, he would have to take into account the wind, which was likely to swirl as the storm moved through. The wet vegetation might hold his scent too well, alerting the buck and all his minions passing through before him. Or the high humidity might actually overwhelm the buck’s sense of smell, up near the top in all the animal kingdom. A hunter would have to climb high to try to fool that nose with distance, and to hide himself so he could see the buck silently approach in the soft, wet leaves.
His open shot options would be reduced as he climbed higher, increased his angles and the vegetation between him and the buck … Yes, it was going to be a challenge whether he wanted it or not.
But he did want it. Eight months. A lot had happened. But now he was back.
Hunting.