Last week’s “What deer?” column drew reader comments, some written, another phoned, all throwing in their two-cents’ worth about the status of our Franklin County deer herd. Not one painted a rosy picture.

The freshest response came by cell phone Tuesday evening around 5. It was Phil Phillips, an old chum from my hometown of South Deerfield. Phillips, his father, brothers and many Phillipses before them have hunted Franklin County for many generations, eyes and ears in the local woods, fields and streams. So his observations are as worthy of attention as anyone’s. He’s passed 60, has lived here all his life and thus has an extended sample period on which to base his opinions; what I would call a credible source, no ax to grind.

Anyway, the incident Phillips wanted to share involved a coyote, a good-sized fawn and a Bernardston golf outing. He wasn’t sure of the date but guessed it was late July or early August, so the fawn was a couple of months old, by that age presumably capable of fleeing danger. The scene Phillips and his partner witnessed left a lasting impression. He only witnessed a brief segment of the chase and actually played an intentional role favorable to the prey, but in his opinion, the young, stressed deer was dead meat.

The scene unfolded in broad daylight on a fairway that skirts the driveway leading to Bella Notte, a hilltop restaurant overlooking Crumpin-Fox Club. Phillips and his partner had teed off and were headed down the fairway in a cart when they noticed a fleeing deer exit the woods and run straight down Broadway with fear written all over it. The animal passed the cart and Phillips knew from the way it was acting that it was being pursued. Curious, he started scanning the woods line and, sure enough, spotted a single coyote running along the edge. The predator tried several times to dart out across the fairway but Phillips did his best to stay between it and its intended path, giving the deer a chance to get away. The brazen coyote was determined, truing several times to beat Phillips to the pass, but Phillips was able to seal off its path temporarily. Finally, the coyote tired of challenging the cart, looped across the road and likely circled back to pick up the deer’s trail.

“That deer had spots but it wasn’t tiny and I would have thought it was big enough to get away,” Phillips said, “but I don’t believe that deer made it. Just a hunch, but it looked disoriented and tired and worn out. I’ve thought about it often and had to call after reading your piece. After all these years of doe permits and cutbacks, you’d think the herd would be getting bigger but it seems to be going the other way. Coyotes must be a factor.”

Phillips is not alone in this opinion. Conventional wisdom among our most experienced woodsmen, ones who can compare what they see now in their favorite haunts to what they were seeing 40 to 70 years ago, don’t hesitate to opine a deer decline. Question what’s left of our dairy farmers — a dying breed that cuts the hay, plants the corn, picks the fruit and harrows the fields — and they’ll sing a similar tune. Meanwhile, the state’s deer-management team assured us that our local deer herd has never been healthier. So how does a simple pedestrian reconcile such a discrepancy of opinion? Confusing, to say the least; to some, downright annoying.

A couple of other respondents, both e-mailers, had interesting observations to share. One was from Conway, the other an Ashfield farmer, both deer hunters with opinions.

First the logger, who knew and had hunted the woods surrounding a secluded trail I elusively described in last week’s column. He wrote: “I would concur with your article about herd count and deer management here in Massachusetts. Living and hunting in Conway since the mid-70s and seeing where we are today doesn’t even come close to where we were then. At that time I worked as a logger and remember as clear as it was yesterday one cold January morning in 1980, snow on the ground a month after the season, coming across a herd of 14 deer in the area you spoke of. They pretty much stood and watched as the skidder went by, not threatened whatsoever. This was not an uncommon sight here in Conway then. Come this time of year, you could not drive at night without seeing deer standing in the road looking for salt and whatever else they could find. It was not uncommon to see 10 or 12 deer throughout the hunting week, maybe does or ones you couldn’t get a shot at. Today, that is not the case, and it is quite a surprise when you do see a deer any time of year. With the report of fewer hunters in the woods, one would think that the numbers would go the other way, but that does not seem the case. Not sure what the answer is. Hopefully there is someone out there smarter than those of us out in the woods.”

This man isn’t sure why deer seem to be scarcer these days, but he speculated that coyotes and bears were contributing to fawn mortality. Many armchair biologists suspect the same, and now apparently there are some scholarly reports citing spring bear predation of fawns. Perhaps more research is needed.

As for the Ashfield man who chimed in, he no longer farms but does hunt his acreage alongside friends who’ve hunted together for many years. He was recently dismayed after completing his second straight deer season with zero kills by his party, and he thinks he understands why.

“Our crew consists of three to six hunters on different days and we have hunted the same area of Ashfield for 25 years,” he wrote. “Up until two years ago, we would take three to five deer a year. I have a landowner’s doe permit because I grew up here on a dairy farm that is no longer in business. … I could go on about what MassWildlife is doing and saying, but I have a little different theory about what’s going on. I call it the Vermont theory. The last two does I took weighed 140 pounds (2007) and 150 pounds (2008). The Gould’s Sugarhouse biologist estimated the second one at 11½ years old. I had noticed then that the groups of deer had very few fawns with them. Everyone says natural predators are the reason but they’ve been around for years and the deer herd was still good. Between 1992 and 2007, hunting was as good as it gets around here. During those years, other than my landowner’s permit, I think our group might have received two doe permits. Because the herd has been mismanaged, there are too many old does that don’t carry fawns. From what I have researched about this situation, these older does will dominate areas, even chase bucks away. By the way, we have not even seen a buck during hunting season for two years. It appears to me that MassWildlife has ruined our deer herd in some areas of WMass by duplicating what happened in Vermont with our herd.”

Remember, this is the observation of a man familiar with animals, having been raised on a centuries-old dairy farm. I have never before heard this menopausal-doe theory but find it interesting after personally witnessing some huge does dragged out of the woods in recent years. It never really occurred to me that these older females were no longer reproductive, but I suppose it could be the case. I’ll have to look into it further. Maybe someone will chime in. I too have seen far fewer “skipper” tracks in the snow in recent years, a complaint I have heard echoed by many hunters bemoaning spring coyote predation.

Maybe there’s more to it than that. Stay tuned.

What to make of the 2010 deer season? That’s the question that’s been bugging me for the past few weeks. Not a scientific analysis. Just trying to make sense of observations I am not academically trained to interpret.

A deer expert I am not. Far from it, in fact. The only kind of field research I know is hunting familiar territory, talking to other hunters doing the same and gathering observations and opinions, always trying to separate the wheat from the chaff, fact from fiction, seldom easy. I only know what my eyes and trusted sources tell me. No more. No less. We all know what we’ve seen and how it compares to other years in the same areas. But who knows which of our conclusions are valid or invalid? So let me just lay it out there? You be the judge.

The impetus for this piece was an interesting night spent at an old Greenfield farm Saturday in the company of deer hunters eager to throw in their two cents worth. We were brewing and sampling tasty ales, not by any stretch of the imagination getting carried away, in a cozy, wood-heated barn chamber. Four or five of the fellas had hunted together and taken a doe the previous day, the final day of blackpowder; another young man had killed two bucks, one a handsome Shelburne 8-pointer. All the men were more than willing to chat about deer season and their impressions of the local whitetail population, which doesn’t seem to be improving despite draconian herd-building measures during the past decade. Our lively little discussion made it clear that I’m not the only one who’s wondering why, after years of conservative antlerless-permit allotments here, the deer population doesn’t appear to be growing. In fact, it seems there are fewer deer in the woods now than 10 years ago. Of course, I may be wrong. Perhaps everyone in the room that night was sadly mistaken. I don’t know. Not a one of us holds a wildlife-management degree, just years of patrolling the same woods, reading the same sign, observing.

Before we continue, I admit I did little deer hunting this year. A Dec. 2 family tragedy set me back and I never really got back into the swing of things. That doesn’t mean I ever totally ignored my favorite haunts, because I did take several challenging 4-wheel-drive reconnaissance missions searching for promising sign in the snow where experience told me I should find it. Guess what? It wasn’t there. As for actual hunting, I got out the first two days and, in perhaps seven hours in the woods, saw six deer, two of them bucks, one of which I shot at. So who am I to complain? There were indeed deer where I hunted. Not a lot, but enough to make sitting in a reliable stand worthwhile. In other woods where I’ve hunted longer and have several established stands that have produced consistent deer sightings, I had trouble cutting a track on a forest floor littered with nutty feed, high in protein. Yeah, I know the experts will say there was too much feed in the woods, thus the deer could have been anywhere. And maybe they’re right. All I can say is that what I found was unusual. Not long ago, when acorns, beechnuts and wild grapes were everywhere in those same woods, deer sign was widespread, including many frequently traveled runs, worn deep and wide into the snow, crossing the forest trails. All I saw this year was a lonely track here and there, nothing to spring a man out of bed in the wee hours and put him in the woods with daybreak enthusiasm in his soul.

My first hint of the current sad state of western Franklin County deer hunting came toward the end of shotgun season’s first week. A friend with more than 50 years experience called bemoaning the disappearance of deer in Conway woods we had hunted many times together. He said he’d been through the smallish parcel several times and there were no deer. None. Pointless to return.

I asked about the woods across the road, and the ridge to south, across the stream? Any shooting there?

A little the first couple of days. Nothing to get excited about.

Hmmmmmm? Where could they have gone? There are always deer there.

True, but not this year.

Like many local veteran deer hunters, my friend attributes our deer decline to coyote predation of spring fawns. This may or may not be true but you can bet that if it is, state wildlife biologists will be the last to admit it. The experts claim coyotes have a negligible impact on our deer population. Amateur woodsmen disagree. The times they have a changed.

Into blackpowder season, my friend gave me another ring. He’d been everywhere, found nothing enticing, was discouraged. Did I feel like accompanying him to the oaks by the pond atop Catamount to see what was happening up there? His uncle’s friend told him the oaks were all pawed up. Always up for a woodland ramble, I drove and we scouted through the oaks, guns in hand, never cutting a track, not even a coyote or squirrel. Perplexed, we departed and took a roundabout route west to another spot on the mountain, parking near a gate across the trail leading to the famous old schoolhouse. We walked the trail a mile or more through an upland oak forest, classic deer country, many acorns underfoot, and cut one track in snow that had been down for three or four days. One freakin’ track! A small one at that. Befuddling.

Puzzled, I suggested we take a ride to the big woods of Conway, where I wanted to drive three miles up a treacherous mountain trail to what I call “The Beechnuts,” if we could make it. Well, we were able to brave the ice and again found one uninspiring track crossing the ancient trail named after a wild, freathered barnyard pest. Imagine that! One lousy deer track in three- or four-day-old snow. I could not believe it. The deer were definitely not there, and they were not crossing a similar trail maybe three miles south, one I had monitored two or three times that week and been astonished by the lack of sign.

My friend phoned me again a day or two later. He had more news, had spoken to an old hunting buddy we often hunted with in the past. Our mutual friend told of a 20-man party he had joined toward the end of shotgun season, led by a notorious gang that has overpowered the same woods for decades. His tale was not one of success. The only reason they had increased the party to such extreme numbers was a previous lack of success moving deer. Well, on this day with their eager army rarin’ to go, it turned out they had too many bodies, so they split up and hunted adjacent parcels, 10 on each side of the road. Twenty experienced hunters with many notches in their belts pushed woods they knew well and no one saw so much as a flag. Not even a distant flash. They couldn’t believe it. Although I am aware that this crew’s hunting routine probably toes the line of illegality, we all know it happens and is nearly impossible to stop. Still, some will say it’s inappropriate for me to mention such activity in print. I disagree, am only using it to support my contention that deer were scarce locally.

By the time all the numbers are in statewide, it is likely we’ll be looking at a 2010 all-weapon harvest in the neighborhood of last year’s, which was down a bit from 2008. Just this week an inadequate MassWildlife press release reported incomplete preliminary archery and shotgun harvests of 3,644 and 4,435, the former a record, the latter a continuation of a downward trend. Who knows how productive the blackpowder season was? Probably around 2,000. But even that harvest has trended downward recently. And remember, state harvest numbers over the past decade have been skewed heavily eastward, reflecting little about our local situation. A significant majority of the deer killed in this state today are taken from Worcester County east, in the suburbs, where the woods are small and young and easy to hunt, especially for bowhunters set up behind shopping plazas and residential neighborhoods, not to mention shotgun-toting groups hunting in unison. The bigger woods of western Mass. are no longer attractive to most contemporary deer hunters, too difficult.

Yep, there’s no denying times have changed, and not for the better here in traditional deer country, where dairy farms and habitats conducive to healthy, burgeoning deer populations have gone the way of the stoneware churn. Whether it gets better or worse is anyone’s guess. But it’ll be interesting to watch, and listen to the professorial excuses.

This is a tale of perseverance and Thanksgiving, that of octogenarian Richard Phelps, known to his family as “Ritt,” Vermonter to the core, a throwback from way back.

Phelps claims he’s applied for a Vermont moose permit every year since they became available “and they finally gave me one at prit’near 90.” Or, at least, that’s how he put it to me on the phone this week. He described his good fortune a little differently to daughter Patricia Knight of Jamaica, Vt., telling her, “They waited till I was prit’near dead before givin’ me one.” Phelps is 88.

Well, the permit may indeed have come a bit too late for the average Joe. Problem is there’s nothing average about ole “Ritt,” who daughter affectionately describes as “quite a character.” No sir. Ole Ritt knew exactly what to do with his long-awaited opportunity. He capitalized, put healthy, lean, wild meat in his freezer. Yes, less than an hour into that opening-day hunt, he jumped a 4-point, 412-pound bull and took it down with his .308 caliber rifle. Now it’s all cut up and packaged, providing tasty, salubrious fall and winter fare, high in protein, low in cholesterol. Just what the doctor ordered for an old codger, one with centuries-old Massachusetts Bay Colony blood flowing through his streams.

Phelps admits moose “aren’t as hard to hunt as deer,” but said he was happy to get one on his first try. “This one’s very good eatin’, too,” he said. “The big ones are tough. This one’s tender, very good eatin’.”

No stranger to hunting, Phelps has been quite the deerslayer over a long and storied southern Vermont career. The 10-point buck he shot 20 years ago in his hometown of Readsboro, Vt., scored 146.7 Boone & Crockett points, good for No. 52 on the all-time Vermont Big Game Trophy Award Program record book. Asked what that animal weighed, he couldn’t recall, but he thought it went over 200 pounds. “I’ve shot so many I really can’t remember what that one weighed,” he said. “It was the nicest deer I ever shot,” is mounted on his wall. He was 68 at the time of that kill, no spring chicken.

Phelps spent most of his life in Readsboro before moving to his current address in a neighboring Deerfield Valley hilltown called West Dover. Although he didn’t know the Northeast Kingdom territory where he shot his moose, oldest son Gordon did, because he owns a hunting camp in nearby Sheffield, Vt., where they bunked for their extended-family hunt. “An old fella told us there was moose in there,” said Phelps, “so that’s where we went. He didn’t steer us wrong.” Phelps described the site of the kill as “just above Concord, Vt.,” which means he was hunting in or along the periphery of Victory Bog, a veritable moose haven where the density of the Cervidae beasts may be greater than anywhere else in the Green Mountain State.

Once the animal was dressed out and ready to remove from the heavily logged-off wood lot, Phelps’ grandson drove his pickup truck to within 100 feet of the carcass and his tribe dragged it to the truck and hoisted it onto the bed. “Four of ’em put it right up on the truck,” Phelps proudly recalled. “Didn’t seem to bother ’em much, just got it right up there.”

Phelps had ridden a rocky road this year leading up to his eventful day. First his beloved wife of 65 years, Myrtle A. (Ellis) Phelps, passed away on July 2 at the age of 86. Then he suffered what his daughter called “a mild stroke” about a month later, on Aug. 4, to further complicate matters. Determined to get back on his feet and participate in his first moose hunt, Phelps diligently rehabbed at Physical Therapy Plus in Wilmington, Vt., and took the time to target practice with son Howard of Colrain every Sunday leading up to opening day.

The Phelps descendants accompanying the patriarch on his memorable hunt included son Gordon, grandson Douglas, and great-grandsons Stephen, Brian, Nicholas and Ryan. That’s something most can only dream of: four generations of a family sharing hunting camp. A fifth-generation male is due soon. Stephen Phelps’ wife is expecting a baby boy in February. So maybe ole “Ritt” will have a chance to imprint his love of hunting in his great-great-grandson’s soul, too.

Phelps credits the departed member of his family for delivering him his moose. Yes, he will go his grave convinced that late wife Myrtle “was looking after me” in the woods and at the annual lottery, maybe even guided the hand that pulled his card.

I dare anyone to prove him wrong.

An expert deer hunter I am not, do not profess to be, never had the benefit of a venerable mentor to hunt beside, teach me. Yes, I have taken deer over the years, mostly does when holding a rare permit during shotgun or blackpowder. But, still, I always keep my eyes open and try to understand deer by evaluating surprise close encounters, one recent.

Many of those chance encounters occur during pheasant season, while noisily brush-busting through dense alder swamps. That’s when I seem to jump deer, often nice bucks making the rounds during the November rut. It never ceases to amaze me where I find them, what I’m doing at the time of the sighting, and how I am moving compared to the way I slither through the woods when actually hunting deer. It leaves me thinking that perhaps I do it all wrong during deer season, slowly stalking, still-hunting, sitting on stand for hours waiting for one to appear. Some of the best deerslayers I have known, especially trappers, learn fast that you’re just as apt to bump a deer and have a good shot at it while moving like I do while bird hunting through dense, tangled cover. These men have the trophies to prove it.

My recent deer sighting occurred an hour into a pheasant hunt while angling across a gnarly open field toward a corner of dense young alders fronting cattails, a deep ditch filled with water, and taller, mature alders behind it. I was handling the dogs, often giving them two short bursts on my whistle to turn them, also giving them the whistle and vocal command to “come around,” my way of keeping them within range. It was after such a command that Lily appeared from my right and sprinted down a manmade path through dried golden rod and other weeds, tail furiously wagging. As I watched her, I caught a subtle flash of white in the young, head-high alders ahead of her, then noticed movement; yes, a big deer, head low, furtively trotting. When it broke briefly into a partial 10- or 12-foot opening, I could see large antlers, then its hind quarters as it moved away from me. When it reached the ditch, it jumped the water and circled back toward a dense, impenetrable alder swamp. Imagine that, I thought: all this activity and racket by me and the dogs, and a big buck passes within 80 yards; the third straight year I had seen a nice buck in that field at midday.

I jumped my first buck in that piece three years ago, maybe 100 yards east of this recent sighting. The big animal came out of the same type of young alder cover. It stood up, froze broadside for a moment to look at me and the dogs, then bound off through eight-foot, thorny cover, across a wide meadow brook, through a brown swamp and into a faraway hardwood stand. Then, last year, this time in taller alders nearer the road, maybe 10 a.m., the dogs jumped a big buck that bound off across the road and up a steep hill of mature oaks. It too wore a handsome rack, which, upon further inspection, had been used to tear up the alders it had been flushed from while making a large, aggressive rutting scrape on the ground. The dogs got to within 20 feet of that animal before it bailed out, and I was no more than 20 yards away, not trying to conceal my presence.

Another similar sighting that occurred in the past three or four years in the same area involved four does. A friend and I were hunting the back, secluded, L-shaped field with three dogs, Ringo, Lily and Bessie. We were working between the woods on the long leg of the L when the dogs broke into the trees on the west side of the field. Out came the four does, tails high, bounding across the open field no more than 25 to 30 yards in front of us. My friend claimed he could have killed all four with his buckshot gun, a long-barreled, full-choked, Belgian-Browning, Auto-5. I had no reason to doubt him.

“Why doesn’t that seem to happen during deer season?” he quipped, shaking his head. Probably because he never hunts deer that way, likely never will.When I told the landowner this week of the handsome buck I had seen in the alders, he knew of it. His brother had seen it, called it among the largest bucks he had ever seen, and the man has killed many nice rackers in his day. When I got to talking about all the nice deer I had seen in that dense covert in recent years, the landowner wasn’t a bit surprised. He said bucks live in that swamp and are nearly impossible to hunt. In the last year or two when he, his father and brother weren’t having any luck in the highlands, he remembered well a memorable swamp maneuver he put on for for the boys. He pulled on a pair of hip boots and thrashed through the alders and bull briars, trying to move deer toward the back lip overlooking the swamp, where his father and brother were “posted up.” The strategy didn’t work, no matter how hard he tried.

“I kept hearing those deer in front of me, to my side, in back of me, not far away at all, splashing through water, running around, making a lot of noise,” the swamp-buster recalled. “But I was helpless, could barely see flags, never pushed one anywhere near my father or brother. Once they’re in that swamp, you might as well leave them there because they’re almost impossible to get.”

Either that or maybe just sit patiently along the swamp’s edge near a frequently traveled run and wait for the deer to enter or exit the habitat early and late. It’s about the only chance you have when you can’t use use Springer Spaniels to help you.

The noontime sky had cleared Friday after heavy overnight rains, and the sun was bright in an endless, blue sky, white clouds wafting east like lumpy cotton swabs. I was out by the mailbox picking up a gray Rubbermaid barrel and four recycling bins, tidying up for an important overnight guest due anytime. Never know what’ll greet you by the side of the road, maybe even news to fill this space.

As I stacked the four plastic bins one inside the other, a mini-van, I think white but can’t recall, approached slowly from the west, obviously wanting to talk. I figured the driver was lost. I was mistaken. He knew exactly where he was and broke the ice by asking what I knew about my neighbor’s motorcycle he’d seen parked along Brook Road for several weeks. Was it for sale? I told the man, older than me, accompanied by his wife, that I had no clue about the motorcycle, had never even seen my neighbor ride it. But it soon became clear it was not the bike he was interested in. No, the man was a picker, buyer of antiques and collectibles, curious what I had lying around my home and barn. He asked how long I’d owned the place and what had been left behind by the previous owners, well known collectors. That’s when the fun began.

I must admit I love rattling pickers’ cages, flash ing a wry grin, telling them I they’re barking up the wrong tree, that I was indeed born in the dark but it wasn’t yesterday. An old pro will have a reply for anything you can throw at them, though. Their steadfast goal is to at least get in the barn. Then, once there, all eyes, they try to find their way inside your home. Something like, hey, is it true there’s a ballroom with a spring-loaded floor upstairs? I’ve heard it often — hint-hint — and it’s a hoot to hold them at bay, give them the business, all friendly banter. I’ve been through it many times, be it walking the flea-market at 5 a.m., perusing a roadside antiques shop or an on-site country auction. The chit-chat is at least half the fun, meeting lots of interesting characters along the way, all with their own rehearsed, idiosyncratic spiels and yarns and pitches. This guy was one of them, right up my alley. Before long, he reaches into his wallet and hands me a business card identifying him self as a buyer of antiques and collectibles. When I notice he’s from Gill, I tell him jokingly that there’s not a “Gillbilly” alive I’d let into my place. When he asks why, I tell him I’ve learned over the years not to trust Gillbillies, they’re shaky, dishonest, can’t be trusted. He laughs, says he’s no Gillbilly. He lives in Riverside. Then he informs me that he’s made a lot of money off of shaky, dishonest fellas over the years. I reiterate that he’s barking up the wrong tree, an image any Gillbilly can understand.

Anyway, at about this point of our mischievous discussion, a silver SUV with Pennsylvania plates pulls up from the east and stops in front of my mailbox, facing us. Still talking to the wheeler-dealer and unable to see through the tinted SUV windows, I tell him to hold on for a second, I have to see who it is. So I walk over to the vehicle, the power window drops and it’s John Randolph from up the hill in East Colrain. We get talking and he hands me a program from the Oct. 9 Fly Fishing Hall of Fame induction ceremony at The Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum in Livingston Manor, N.Y. Randolph was as one of four 2010 inductees, quite an honor for a country boy from Colrain, son of a namesake New York Times outdoor writer.

Young John was an Arms Academy boy, then off to Mount Hermon School and Williams College; quite a ballplayer in his day, fierce and competitive, now a world-class fly fisherman, and author. I met Randolph through my late friend Tommy Valiton, Randolph’s high school teammate and friend who suggested I meet him and get permission to hunt his posted property. We have been friends and sometimes neighbors ever since. His second home, the one he grew up in, rests three miles up the road on a scenic slice of Franklin County paradise; deer, bears, moose, turkeys, you name it, they’re there. Who knows, maybe even a disoriented big cat passing through now and again.

As I speak to Randolph and wife Mary — his high school sweetheart from Shelburne Falls, daughter of Dr. Galbo, who practiced nearly 60 years on Main Street, Shelburne Falls — my picker friend grows indignant. He pulls up slowly and gruffly scolds Randolph for cutting into a potentially productive conversation. I reiterate that he has nothing to worry about: he wasn’t getting anything out of me, anyway. He shoots back that he’s heard that before, and then Randolph cuts in with a line or two of his own playful banter, creating a triangular verbal harpoon fight. No foreigner to history and antiques, Randolph knows the lingo, can talk the talk, even sent son John to auctioneer school, one of the best, in New York.

The picker seems humored as he pulls away, promising to someday return. I’ll welcome round two if he catches me in the right mood, which is most anytime. As he pulls around the corner and out of sight, I ask Randolph how long he’ll be in the neighborhood. He tells me through the weekend. I promise to stop by and talk when I get a chance.

The next morning I travel to his upland Federal home and catch him leaving for errands with Mary. He’s standing outside of his SUV talking to an old Arms Academy chum in a white pickup, a hunter who tells me about Savage Arms’ muzzleloaders, the best money can buy, in his opinion, better than the more popular ones most hunters are using these days. Randolph informs me that I arrived at a bad time. Come back Sunday morning. No problem. The brilliant sugarbush and flaming landscape between his home and Mt. Monadnock was well worth the trip.

I catch the Randolphs at the Sunday breakfast table, looking north through a large, multi-paned window across their pasture and old orchard to a ridge I have hunted many times. He leaves the room to dig out a photo album of snapshots from the 1940s, wants to show me what the forested ridge looked like when he was a kid, open fields and narrow tree lines following stonewalls. Among the photos is a shot of his grandfather, bowtie and suspenders, surrounded by sheep. We talk about how much the landscape has changed and move on to his glory days at Arms, war stories about making the All-Western Mass. Football Team, winning the Intercounty League title, punishing Deerfield High School on Veterans day, when Bunker Mazanec scored five touchdowns.

Randolph went on to play football and baseball as a Mount Hermon post-grad, then graduated from Williams (1959-62), where he also played football. He began his journalism career in 1967 as a reporter for the Brattleboro Reformer, then moved on to a brief stint at the Bennington Banner (1968-69) before founding the Vermont Sportsmen. That monthly hunting and fishing tabloid grew in circulation to more than 12,000 before he sold it in the early 1980s and took a job as Fly Fisherman magazine editor/publisher in 1982. Now 71 and retired, he’s living in Pennsylvania and spends his time fishing and freelance writing. When not globetrotting to the finest trout streams in the world, he often returns to his native turf to shoot the breeze with the cast of characters he grew up with, waking daily to a stunning view of faraway Monadnock on the eastern horizon.

Because we share overlapping eclectic  interests, our breakfast conversation jumped willy-nilly from squaretails and salmon to Shays’ Rebellion to Bradstreet to Kendall Mills to Pennell Hill and Pennell’s Tavern, then to the late Joe Jurek, a Colrain hunter who shot many trophy bucks on Randolph’s land. Randolph says no one ever gets the big one’s now that Jurek’s gone. He once took me on a walk to a swamp below his home, told me Jurek hunted it often because the big bucks were born there and returned when the shooting started. I made a mental note.

And to think Randolph’s love of fishing for trout, especially squaretails, all began on tiny Workman Brook, a mountain stream that traverses his
property and empties into the Green River a mile or two below, near the intersection of Green River and Nelson roads. Randolph learned to fish on that stream as a boy before honing his skills on the Green River, where he watched his first fly casters. It’s all chronicled in his 2002 book, “Becoming a Fly Fisher,” now the tale of a Franklin County legend, one whose name is included among American angling aristocrats, such men as Lefty Kreh, Ray Bergman, Zane Grey, “Catskill Bill Kelly,” “Sparse Gray Hackle” Miller, Ernest Schwiebert, Dave Whitlock and Lee Wulff.

John Randolph: Franklin County original, Hall-of-Famer.

The foliage is aflame, a chill’s in the air and woodstoves are belching smoke as white pines shed their long needles in blustery winds, depositing roadside mounds for mulch gatherers buttoning down their blueberry patches for winter. Yes, hunting season is upon us. Time to get my shotgun ready.

Actually, I’ve been at the chore since midday Saturday, when I returned home from the gunsmith with my favorite upland-bird-hunting gun, a petite Jean Breuil 16-gauge side-by-side made by skilled French craftsmen in Saint Etienne before World War II. Of the classic English straight-stock style, the quick-pointing double is a joy to carry, fast and effective, fits like a lambskin glove during reflexive mounts to my left shoulder. It’s that familiar raise, point, swing and fire; always ready to drop my forefinger onto the back trigger for long-range shots. Oh, how I love those double triggers, much quicker than the cumbersome modern barrel-selectors built into the safeties of single-trigger doubles. And it’ll all start Saturday, if I decide to brave the maddening opening-day crowds. But first I must focus on gun
preparation, waxing it over and over again, cleaning it, oiling it, labors of love.

I’m sure there are those who’ll argue that there are better ways to polish a sporting weapon. To heck with them. I’m locked in, a creature of habit who favors paste-wax protection. For me, it requires the application and buffing of several thin coats. It’s a tedious process that could be accomplished in a day, I suppose. But, for me, the routine takes many days.

My choice. I want to give the wax a chance to harden between applications, ultimately producing a hard protective sheen that brings luster to the wood and barrels, which glisten from afar like a diamond in dry, unruly, sun-splashed coverts, pollen dust tickling your nostrils, irritating your throat.

My choice of wax is Boston Polish, the same stuff I use on antique furniture and wooden floors. The white wax also works. Once a good base is down, a quick touch-up maintains the finish after a robust day afield, wet or dry, windy or calm, cold or warm. My waxing procedure can’t differ much from that of others. I use old, velvety cotton sheets, the softer the better, torn into 12-inch squares, folded in half, then half again. A pile of six rags rests underneath my wax can on a shelf above my interior cellar stairs. A seventh wax-saturated rag stays sealed inside the can.

Before I start polishing, I warm the can next to the woodstove for an hour or more to soften the application rag before spreading a thin coat over the entire gun. Then I stand the weapon against the wall for five or ten minutes to dry before polishing. Sometimes I leave the final coat on overnight, then buff it out in the morning and repeat the process several times during the day, increasing the shine and protection with each layer. Wax breaks down fast with hand contact or rain, but you can stay ahead of decomposition with due diligence.

Once the wax dries and the polishing begins, I start rubbing back and forth or up and down with the oldest, tackiest sheets, one in each hand, cleaning any accumulation of wax from grooves and crevices, blowing away any wax dust that may appear. Occasionally, I’ll even wrap the cloth around a straight screwdriver blade to lightly remove stubborn wax along the inner rib between the barrels. I begin step two of the three-step polishing process with the third and fourth cloths, softer and less tacky, then finish with the fifth and sixth buffing cloths, softer and cleaner still. At the end of each season, I throw out the application rag in the can and replace it with the tackiest of my six polishing cloths, replacing that cloth on the shelf with a fresh one from the pantry rag bag. It works for me, a routine perfected over the years, which are adding up fast.

Once my gun is polished to my satisfaction, I clean the inner barrels, dragging a freshly coated oil bob through on the final withdrawal. I then place tiny drops of oil here and there, working them into moving parts for protective lubrication. That final step will probably occur Friday night. Then the weapon will be ready for many joyful romps through gnarly autumn wetlands.

I’m finally supplied with appropriate shotgun shells as well. Two cases of 2½-inch No. 6’s and 7’s from RST Classic Shotshell Co. arrived at my door Tuesday night. I used to shoot Gamebores in my sweet 16 and have been searching for a suitable replacement ever since my Maine supplier went out of business several years ago. I discovered RSTs in the Ruffed Grouse Society’s quarterly magazine. I was pleased to find the Spring 2010 edition at Burlington, Vt.’s, Fletcher-Allen hospital. I figure the magazine was left there by a gentleman hunter from the cardiac-surgery team.

I do hope that unexpected discovery won’t be the only good news that comes my way out of Fletcher-Allen. Twenty-eight-year-old son Gary, father of two young boys, is still there, fighting for his life, slowly making gains in the ICU, recuperating from 17 brutal hours of complicated, Sept. 24 open-heart surgery gone bad. It was no one’s fault, just happened. They couldn’t stop the surgical bleeding, needed 40 units of blood, some arriving by emergency helicopter, a slice of horrible  luck. They say he’s now on a long road to recovery; too long and windy for me.

This medical family nightmare relegates my gun-polishing chores to minuscule indeed, a tiny pebble on the ocean floor. Call the gun work a welcome diversion, a distraction from a bleak, haunting reality. I’ve said it before and will say it again: There is no pain like reality. That, I have always believed. Now I’m living it, grappling with it, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, reduced to a pitiful, bony tramp pleading for a whiff of Nature’s mercy. Lying to yourself does no good, just compounds matters.

I don’t intend to beg and weep and wail, or tear out my hair. And I will not pray.

For what? To whom?

No, I’ll just hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and pin foreboding gloom’s throat to my woodshed wall, maybe even extract a clear dab of pure optimism.

Why succumb to despair when hope is alive?

My faith is my son, his will to live and carry on.