Well, here we are again. Saturday is opening day for rifle deer season. It is an exciting time but, for me, not as much as it once was, for reasons stated later. No matter how one might feel about the Saturday opener, it looks as though it’s here to stay.
Back in 2001, in my book, I wrote a chapter entitled “ Older, but Better..” Back then, I was in my early fifties. Now, I am seventy six. Things are a lot different nowadays. Older is no longer better, at least where the outdoors are concerned. Now, a lot of my outdoor activities depend on such things as weather. I now really prefer the early muzzleloader season and the senior license holder seasons in October to the regular deer season and the after Christmas flintlock season. Thousands of miles of jogging ruined my knees, and I have arthritis in other joints as well. The bitter cold seems to find all of the bad spots. Since my bout with Covid, such things as sensitivity to cold and balance issues have become more severe.
My best friend (old Bub) and I often discuss the concept of life as a baseball game, a game in which we are in the late innings. Just as with the national pastime, things get a bit different after the seventh inning stretch. There was a time when I could sit out in the open for an entire bitter cold day. This is no longer the case. Now, I have to pretty much confine myself to warm days. Even hunting from a heated stand is a task on the really cold days. If I sit still in the open for too long, my feet and hands go numb, and I start to shiver. This is especially true of my hands, which suffered second degree frostbite a couple of years ago. That just won’t do. Years ago, I would often hunt all morning, then go home for lunch. After lunch, I would go back out again. I don’t do that anymore. Instead, I doze on the couch in my hunting clothes until I get up the ambition to shower and bag it for the day. I used to laugh at the “old guys” who did that.
In my younger days, there was no hill too steep to climb. One of note is “Old Baldy” a particularly steep hill near Hallton. I couldn’t begin to tell you how many times my friends and I climbed it, on nothing more than the hope that that was where the deer were. Sometimes we were right and sometimes we were wrong, but the steep climb meant nothing. Nowadays, I have some serious doubts as to whether I could even climb that peak at all. The lowlands hold much more appeal. Dragging a deer out has also become much more of a task. I used to be contemptuous of hunters who used a four-wheeler to drag out a deer. Nowadays, it makes perfect sense.
If all of this sounds rather depressing, it’s not meant to be. It is just a reflection of the natural progression of things. I still like the idea of deer hunting, but I do not like to go alone, as I used to. I just can’t totally trust the old body anymore. I no longer get upset if I don’t get a deer, but I still like the idea of getting one. Those wonderful memories of yesteryear keep me going. When you come right down to it, memories are perhaps the most precious things about the hunting life. Even when you are old and achy, venturing afield after the wily whitetail brings them flooding back. Even if you don’t get out, the memories are there and alive.
As this is being written, snow is in the forecast, although the forecast calls for little if anything in the way of accumulation. Actually, I must admit, it is rather pretty to look at. Looking at it is about all I care to do. We have certainly been on a weather roller-coaster lately.
Email: salmonangler1@gmail.com
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