It’s Wednesday morning, sunny and warm. I’m returning from a splendid riverside walk with the dogs when I spot the approach of a young fella I often pass and seldom speak to, he pushing a covered stroller eastward on Meadow Lane. Inflicted with ebullient, precocious spring fever, I slow to a stop, slide down my passenger window, say: “I hate to ruin this fine morning but, if you believe March is here, you’re wrong,” and flee like a mischievous woodland spirit, my home around the corner, column rewrite awaiting.

I get inside, slip off my re-soled Gokey boots, slip into Birkenstocks, go to the kitchen, pour myself a hot cup of Coffee Roasters Guatemalan Antigua, and head for my bright, sunlit study, books piled everywhere, space-heater purring softly. I intend to start with daily computer tune-up chores before putting the finishing touches on this weekly column, the first draft barfed out midday Monday.

I arrive at my desk and immediately notice my wife has left a little “reminder,” or maybe you’d call it a hint. The silver digital camera, black USB cord attached, stood out lying to the left of the keyboard on my cluttered desk. Unaware of the photos’ subject, I call my wife at work and end up downloading the entire batch into a My Pictures folder she had created, named “xmas 2013.”

With that unexpected chore behind me, my computer reminds me that automatic updates are ready to be installed. Hmmmm? Ok. I hit the install button, wait and — go figure — discover when it’s done that a reboot is necessary, forcing further delay. Restless, I remember, “Oh yeah, the oatmeal,” and rise, cutting a Cortland apple into small pieces and sliding them off the cutting board atop the oatmeal before adding almonds, walnuts and medium-amber maple syrup, placing the stainless-steel pan on the woodstove, and walking out back to snap a few pictures of the racing, rattling brook I’m writing about for the second straight week. By the time I return, the computer should be finished burping and gurgling and groaning and I’ll be more than ready to start adding dabs of color to my column sketch.

Walking to the backyard — beautiful day making things happen — sure enough, I spot my female neighbor walking from her barn across the street. A young nurse originally from Conway, we often talk in passing and Wednesday was as good a day as any for socializing. All bundled up and wearing a wool cap over her ears, I playfully ask when she’s gonna realize it’s a gorgeous day. She smiles and I add that, “It was days like this that used to get me in trouble as a young boy.” She responds with a grin, admits she doesn’t doubt me, and continues on her merry way.

Oh my! What a difference a week makes. Last week I’m writing about deep freezes and frozen pipes, this week spring fever. Isn’t it great how sudden winter warmth brings out the best in a stream, a meadow and a man, always bringing with it Satan’s lurking shadows, if you believe in that kinda stuff. On my morning walk with the dogs, all revved up by spring fever, my mind had wandered all the way back to Amherst 40 years ago, me hiking to campus harboring only honorable intentions on an inspiring, bright, sunny and unseasonably warm winter morning. Back then it took little to pull me into playful diversions that ultimately proved to be my undoing in the classroom and baseball diamond, even though I must admit I still believe that many of those little, spontaneous detours right past the classroom probably taught me more about the big picture than any pompous professor could have. Hey, I could be mistaken, but not in my mind; and here I sit, still going strong, curious and, yes, still defiant as ever.

But wait. There I go again, wandering away from where I want to go. Enough! No more unrequested stage props. No, we’re not here for aimless, rambling, stream-of-consciousness banter. I’m here to promptly correct an embarrassing mistake from last week. So why traipse off into spontaneous springtime fancy borne of unseasonable warmth, melting puddles, glare ice, corn snow and rollicking Springer Spaniels that couldn’t contain their glee racing along the roily Green River. Finally, the dense ice had broken, buckled and cleared, leaving behind a turbulent, silty, gray-green current bordered by shelves and random, triangular, streamside ice shards that looked like huge white tombstones pointing to the heavens. But, forget about that, back to last week’s annoying column error, one corrected by a most circuitous route; circuitous indeed.

God almighty, do I hate making careless mistakes in bold black print, particularly errors that qualify as sloppy or lazy, and this one did. But — horrors! — it gets much worse when you consider that the email “clarification” came at me from, of all places, Arizona. Yes, that’s right, from the Great Southwest. Hail, hail the World Wide Web, which can knock a man down a peg or two and keep him humble.

All I can say is that this cyberspace we’ve all become so enamored with can really keep a man on his toes. Mind-boggling. I identify in passing the source of my backyard brook as a muddy Patten Hill bog in the local newspaper and receive a rapid-fire email correcting me from the other side of the continent. I won’t soon forget it or, for that matter, the critic himself, one Russell Coombs, 73, a neighbor of sorts, likely even a half-assed cousin, whose family has for many generations owned an idyllic East Colrain farm on the second upland terrace above me, up by the historic Fort Morris Site. There, just north and south of that palisade French & Indian War fort, lie two of the major sources of my Hinsdale Brook. The other main branch flows out of East Shelburne along with four smaller spring streams and two similar little hilltown tinkles beginning in East Colrain.

What makes last week’s mistake most annoying is the fact that it was quite avoidable. Yes, right here in my face, atop stacked icons on my PC desktop, sits a tiny green map labeled “Terrain Navigator,” providing USGS topographical maps for every inch of Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire; not only that but the capability to zoom in and out, compute distance and elevation, and perform many other helpful tasks important to a man like me. The problem is that — despite the fact that I have never physically followed my brook back to its source and obviously was either careless or unfamiliar with Patten boundaries when viewing the map — somewhere along the line in 16 years residing at the head of the Greenfield Meadows, I had somehow arrived at the mistaken notion that my brook started on Shelburne’s high, wooded Patten Hill a few miles west. Let’s set the record straight: The closest any of the previously mentioned nine Hinsdale Brook tributaries above my home gets to Patten Hill is about 1.2 miles. That spring bubbles from a marsh just north and west of Reynolds Road in Shelburne. A few other feeders are in that same area, yet a bit farther away.

“The Patten District isn’t far,” chuckled Coombs, who, like me, learned to swim in a branch of Hinsdale Brook at old Camp Shelloy, located in Shelburne, a mile or two up Brook Road from my home. “It’s just over the next hill. The Patten District brooks all flow the other way, toward the Deerfield River.”

Oh yeah. One more thing before someone chimes in to correct me once again by identifying another tributary named Punch Brook that feeds my backyard stream from the East Shelburne/East Colrain hills: although true, that little trickler meets Hinsdale Brook a quarter-mile downstream from my home.

So now I do hope I’ve corrected that embarrassing little column error from last week. For the record: Hinsdale Brook does no such thing as “bubble from a muddy Patten District bog” as stated right here for all to see in black newsprint.

Close, but no cigar.

Old friend Tom White of Northfield says the time is now for deer hunters to get in the woods, and the man has meat in the freezer to prove it.

He took care of the familiar butchering chores Tuesday, intending when I spoke to him on the phone that morning to skin out the 8-point, 187-pound buck hanging in his friend’s barn since he killed it on Halloween morning near his home.

“It was nice that the weather cooperated and I could leave it hanging for a while,” said White, likely supporting the tradition that it’s best to season venison before packaging it. The problem is that, if it turns warm, the meat can quickly spoil, and that would be an unpardonable sin.

White, a sociable potter/artist with unbridled energy and spirit, is a devoted hunter who raises, breeds and trains German Shorthair Pointers owned and loved throughout the Pioneer Valley and beyond. I am often reminded of my friend by drinking from his signature earth-tone coffee mugs, lighting his lamps and placing drinks on the glazed, table-top coasters I’ve bought from him over the years. The last time I actually saw him to talk to was in late August when he stopped by with a gift, a game and a devilish grin. You see, he had called on the phone earlier and, knowing I collect Whately stoneware, reported digging up something of interest he wanted to share with me on his way through Greenfield. When he arrived at my home around 5 p.m., he came in and we chatted awhile before walking out to his truck to inspect his treasure: a small, handled ovoid jug covered with in a gray, pasty opaque film. He wanted me to wash it off at the nearby garden hose and see what appeared.

I must say I had immediate suspicions and, lo, the pretty little jug was no ancient artifact but a brand-new piece he had made me as a special gift, with Old Tavern Farm impressed on its shoulder under a streak of cobalt blue, the same color as the bird he had an artist friend paint on its face. I was moved by the thoughtful gesture, a personal gift from a friend and reader that I will treasure for the rest of my days; it currently standing atop a one-drawer Sheraton stand in the study between a sofa and my bookcases. It’s heartfelt offerings like that which a man like me finds most special; yes, a genuine token of friendship that will always have a story attached and a storyteller to spin it.

But enough of that, back to the man’s big buck, which, in his own words, had “just an ordinary rack” but, in my words, was no ordinary deer. No, 187-pound bucks in these parts qualify as large no matter how you frame it. Perhaps its ordinary head gear left it a step below a trophy buck, but, hey, like the fellas sitting at the Conway Taproom bar say: you can’t eat the horns. And get this. White says there’s a larger buck sporting a trophy rack that’s been showing up on his trail camera since August or early September. So now that critter is patrolling the same area minus his No. 1 competitor vying for the affection of four of five does White has seen up close and personal, not to mention on his camera.

“One time those does were right under my stand and I tried my best to put horns on them,” he laughed. “You know how that goes: low light and you start trying to grow horns on them before coming back to reality and admitting they’re baldies.”

Yeah, any deer hunter knows that creative little mind game of internal deception; and to be honest, I’d venture a guess that a game warden or two has heard excuses from violators who shoot does without a permit and try to defend themselves by saying it was an honest mistake. You know, something like, “Honestly, Officer, I thought it had horns or I wouldn’t have shot;” followed by the ruse that there must have been deceptive branches behind it, because the hunter was certain it had spikes when he squeezed the trigger; then the tear-jerker of all tear-jerkers that his eyes just ain’t what they used to be. Well, it’s doubtful such excuses get a man far with the stern, expressionless officers of the law patrolling the region nowadays, especially the new, rigid breed wearing their military high and tights, rarely fitting the profile of the kid next door’s dad that applied when I was young.

White predicts that bucks are now most vulnerable to hunters, because in the pre-rut stage they’re anxious to breed does playing hard to get. “The does aren’t in heat or receptive yet,” reported White, “but the bucks are all revved up, their hormones cooking, and they’re scraping and grunting and growing their fat rut necks.”

White grunted his handsome buck in after daybreak and says the beast came at him quickly from out of sight. He knew the deer he’d been monitoring were bedding in slash above his stand and was careful to walk in quietly to conceal his presence in a tree stand overlooking his man-made scrape doused with doe-in-heat and rutting-buck urines in a jar. As soon as he settled into his stand, he started working his grunt call softly, just in case a buck was close, then when nothing happened, started grunting louder and more aggressively while alternating between aggressive- and more subtle tending-grunt sequences.

“Finally, I heard something and saw the buck running right at me,” he said. “Like turkeys, they have an uncanny ability to pinpoint a faraway sound they’re interested in, and he came right to it, stopping right below my tree, freezing briefly and turning to walk away.”

It was during that alert departure that the deer, still looking for the rival beast making all the noise, made its fatal mistake by stopping briefly at a spot where White had a clear shot, no pesky hemlock branches obstructing his arrow’s path. He let fly from 26 yards at just before 7 a.m. and was able to follow the bright streak of his lighted-nock fly at the deer, clear through it and into the ground on the other side. The shot passed right through the animal’s vitals for what proved to be a quick, humane kill. The 3½-year-old deer never knew what hit him; he flinched, ran off some 50 yards into the hardwoods, staggered, fell and quickly expired from profuse internal bleeding.

So now White can focus on the big boy. Maybe it too will make a fatal mistake. Maybe not. White is hoping for the former.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’d be good with filling both my tags before shotgun season.”

It’s pheasant season, the ringnecks are cackling and flying and life is good; yet, sadly, some of my favorite coverts — thick, thorny, productive tangles I’ve plowed through regularly for 40 years — have become inundated with unfamiliar hunters, many from far away, a relatively new development.

It’s perfectly alright that “outsiders” find their way to the public, state-owned coverts on which all are not only welcome but directed by online maps that can be printed and stored in glove boxes or console compartments. But when new hunters and strange vehicles start spilling over into adjacent private land owned by folks who have always permitted their friends, classmates, teammates and neighbors to hunt — often stopping on fine fall days for warm conversation — well, let’s just say the owners are not always so welcoming to folks they’re meeting for the first time, strangers taking the liberties they’ve seen from afar other folks with personal connections take.

Hunters should know it’s never safe to assume that just because you see a vehicle parked out at the back of someone’s hayfield that everyone has the same privileges. Upon discovering a new place to hunt, it’s always best to find out who owns the property, seek out that owner, introduce yourself, ask permission and learn the ground rules, asking considerate questions like, “Is there anywhere you don’t want me to hunt or park?” By making bold assumptions and driving across private land like it’s yours, you can ultimately ruin it for everyone.

Truth be told, I’ve suspected for the past couple of years, judging from what I’d seen in passing, that things were about to change on a rich wetland where my roots lie deep; and I even went so far as to warn a couple people to be careful as I reduced my own presence and waited for the changes to unfold. Then, a little more than a month ago at an archaeological dig bordering ancient family acreage, a man with indisputable insight warned me it was coming.  I quickly reiterated my warning to a few friends and have intentionally stayed away this year since the season opened. Well, sure enough, Wednesday morning the inevitable phone call finally came. Yes indeed, one of the folks I had warned, a friend who had met the owners several times in my company, visited the site Tuesday afternoon, couldn’t find a parking place at the adjacent state covert, drove over the hump to the contiguous private covert and immediately noticed four trucks parked out along the brook cutting a vast hayfield in half. When he and his companion ventured out to see who was hunting and how they’d done, they found a band of unfamiliar orange-clad hunters milling about by their vehicles, stopped briefly to chat and departed for a different spot. Then, on the way out, they were flagged down by the landowner and politely asked who they were and where they were from before being informed that, unfortunately, times were going to change on the covert. In my opinion, posting was inevitable there. I sensed it coming long ago as more and more people found their way to the private side of the covert, and honestly, although I may sound provincial, I can’t say I blame them. If I owned it, I’d want to know who was hunting on my property, and if I wasn’t comfortable with the crowd, I’d put an end to it, too.

What’s interesting is that quite by accident I played a role in this sad development. Years ago, a fellow Frontier graduate was serving as Connecticut Valley Wildlife District game manager in charge of our pheasant-stocking and we were making small talk on the phone about “local” coverts we both knew well. During the friendly chat, it dawned on me to ask a question I had wanted answered for many years. That is: did they stock the place I called Balboni’s, an overgrown hayfield that had been very good to me over the years? I had hunted there for many years, primarily for woodcock and grouse, but knew pheasants always found their way to the covert as the season progressed. When he said, no, they never stocked property without the owner’s permission, I opined that the owner would have no problem with stocking it. Well, lo and behold, the man looked into the site, discovered it was for sale, tipped off the MassWildlife land-acquisition agent and the rest is history. Yes, the state promptly bought the parcel, a natural wildlife and wildflower refuge it soon “put on the map” as a Wildlife Management Area that has for 10 years or more attracted more and more hunters each year.

Talk about cycles, or maybe chickens coming home to roost. For years I’d wait a few weeks for that field to fill up with stocked pheasants from the nearby private covert, then visit it daily over the last half of the season, when I had it pretty-much to myself. Now, I suspect that just the opposite scenario will soon unfold, with the hunting pressure shifting exclusively to the public covert, which cannot hold many hunters at once, and many of the pheasants that escape them ending up over on the private posted covert t’other side, separated by a dense, wet, impenetrable alder swamp flooded by beavers. That dense wetland used to be huntable, holding many grouse and woodcock, but the vegetation is now older, taller, thicker, thornier and, even worse, much of it is underwater. But game birds can still find dry pockets of unhuntable jungle refuge full of nourishing seeds and berries.

My guess is that soon the private land will be legally posted, and thus no longer stocked but full of pheasants that will be out of play for most  hunters. In my mind, it was inevitable. I clearly saw it coming. Only a blind man could have missed it. Streams of out-of-town hunters and vehicles are seldom welcome to landowners.

And so, yes, another good covert bites the dust.

I’m starting to feel guilty. The dogs know. I can sense it, see it in their step, their demeanor. Hunting season is here. They know.

Problem is I’m getting off to a late start because I procrastinated on a few key matters down the stretch. Here’s the checklist:

1. Purchase hunting license (done);

2. Purchase hunting bibs (done at last minute, awaiting delivery, could get by with tattered pair  hanging in carriage shed);

3. Purchase waterproof boots (also ordered late, still awaiting package, no appropriate boots to carry me through before new ones arrive).

Oh well, no one to blame but myself. I shouldn’t have delayed so long before motivating, but in my own defense, I’ve been busy with other stuff, all of it interesting, dynamic too, more and more archaeological information coming at me daily; stapled documents, books and notes accumulating rapidly, piling up on my desk, a candle stand, chest of drawers, Queen Anne tea table. That plus an interesting home visit a couple of days after a lively public presentation in Deerfield. Yes, it seems it’s been one interesting conversation after another — some on the phone, others face-to-face — all part of an information-gathering process that should bear succulent fruit. It seems there’s always some new angle or accusation to ponder, the loose ends dangling here and there, willy-nilly in opposite directions like roots on an uprooted tree.

But, hey, that stuff’s gotta wait. It’s hunting season, I own two good bird dogs born to burst through muddy, thorny tangles, and we only get six short weeks to pound the swamps together in search of stocked pheasants, migratory woodcock and diminishing partridge. I remember daily youthful frolics when partridge seemed to startle us around every corner in my travels out and about looking for and often finding mischief. Not anymore. No sir. With our forests older and taller, partridge are scarcer, which isn’t to suggest I’m a proponent of bloody biomass rape to solve the problem by irresponsible clear-cutting that would indeed stimulate fresh new growth and a partridge comeback, not to mention dirty, smoky air. Wouldn’t that be selfish of me? I think so. Besides, I like forests with majestic hardwoods, cool upland ridges and hard protruding ledge.

Actually, above all it’s the boots that have me drydocked. I was trying to make a decision on a new style, hesitated and lost. Quite by coincidence and necessity a few years back, I threw on my Cabela’s insulated leather and Gore-Tex 12-inch “Outfitter Boots” purchased for deer hunting and, although hot, was pleased with the comfort and ankle-support. So, with those stiff, rugged, upland boots destroyed after a few years, I figured I’d look for something similar this time around, minus the insulation. When I emailed a Cabela’s contact person listed in my outdoor-writers’ directory for advice and didn’t receive an immediate response, I didn’t want to be pushy and waited patiently. But the fact is that I waited too long and am now paying the price, twiddling my thumbs and waiting for that familiar UPS truck’s roar approaching my yard. I went with the 16-inch waterproof Boa Snake Boots, although a little worried that they may not hold up to the punishment they’ll endure. We’ll see. What the heck? If I get three years out of them, I’ll be happy. If not, I’ll try something else next time.

I need a boot that will stand up to thorns, vines and hidden, rusty barbed-wire fences hugging the ground as I plow through black cattail mud and puddled depressions holding extended ankle-deep water from rains and overnight beaver dams. If these new boots don’t hold up, I could always go back to my old standby 16-inch L.L. Bean Hunting Shoes to which I was loyal for more than 30 years. The problem with them was that after a year or two (which adds up to 12 weeks of aggressive bird hunting), the stitches attaching the leather uppers to the rubber bottoms above the heel would break and leak. The new snake boots I selected are just as high as the Bean boots but lined with waterproof Gore-Tex top to bottom, no stitched seams to leak above the heel. We’ll see what transpires. I’m confident they’ll be fine, my feet warm, dry and comfy.

Something else that my friends wear and I’ve many times considered are those pricey high rubber boots you see English gentlemen hunters wearing in the field. Though knee-high and supposedly made of tough, space-age rubber, I have two serious reservations concerning durability: 1. they’ll tear in the thorny cover I frequently hunt and, more importantly, 2. they won’t provide the needed support for my loose right ankle the fellas shot up with Novocain at halftime of a high school football game against Mahar my senior year. It’s true, but no names. What were they thinking? Playing for a terrible team that won one freakin’ game in two years, you have to wonder whether it was really worth it? Looking back, I’d  say no.

Oh, how clearly I recall that doctor at my first UMass baseball physical examining the floppy ankle, holding it between his hands on opposite sides of my heel and wiggling it to check stability. Concerned by the range of motion, he suggested surgery that would require drilling a hole through my leg bone, pulling the loose tendons through it and fastening them to the other side for tightness. I wasn’t interested, assuring the man I could live with tape. So here I sit nearly 45 years later, still going strong on that balky right ankle which got me through the second half of that 1970 football game in South Deerfield, the painless throbbing eventually turning into sharp stabbing pain by late in the fourth quarter — all for the sake of athletic glory. Am I missing something, or is it ridiculous?

Anyway, back to my current predicament while awaiting hunting boots, I did make use of the idle time for backyard leave removal, then picked away at my side-by-side shotgun with paste wax that has it shining like a newborn’s behind. Problem is that the anxiety-soothing polishing activity uncovered yet another unexpected issue I am still at this point trying to resolve. You see, my European walnut stock feels a little loose and, with time on my hands, I sure would like to snug it up before it gets worse. Unfortunately, I don’t know where the screw to tighten it is and am unable to disassemble the shotgun’s receiver from its stock, if you can imagine that with a sweet little double-barrel I have owned for at least 25 years. On American shotguns and rifles I’ve owned, the stocks are typically attached to the receiver by a single screw that’s tightened with a long screwdriver through a hole in the base of the stock. Not so with this French double, and where does a man find a gunsmith these days? Trust me, I’ll find someone who can help but it won’t be as easy as hopping in the car and driving downtown. Not in today’s world, especially in a state unfriendly to gun owners. Maybe I can find some sort of instruction or a diagram online. If not, I can always drag out my 12-gauge Citori, which I haven’t used in ages. The issue is that to my knowledge I have no 12-gauge shells.

Oh my! Can it get any worse? Maybe I won’t get out at all this week. If so, I’ll feel bad for the dogs. They so love to hunt, and so do I. And hunt we will, promise, as soon as I get everything sorted out, which should have been last week but may not be till next week, eight days late, by then likely chasing stragglers that escaped the first furious push I unintentionally avoided and perhaps didn’t miss.

In the meantime, maybe I’ll kill time reading that Daedalus Online bargain-bin book I bought by Good Father Daniel Berrigan, one Catholic priest I can agree with on some matters. Better still, maybe I’ll hear that UPS truck pull into my driveway today, in the nick of time.

Old Jean Breuil wants to bark with both barrels, and the dogs are eager to “Fetch it up,” both sounds music to their ears.