Our snow-cover got more dangerous for deer this week, just as we enter the most vulnerable time of year for the hoofed creatures. I can evaluate snow conditions when observing my dogs on their daily routine, which has been dramatically altered the past few weeks, deep, crusty snow complicating matters.

When I daily open the right side of the large double doors exiting my barn to the backyard, I am greeted by two, deep, manmade footpaths leading in a V toward the brook. One path goes left to the cook shed and kennel, the other straight ahead to the footing of an old, long-ago removed foot-bridge that once crossed the brook to pastures and orchards beyond. Following the lip of the eight-foot-high brook bank, a crossing footpath connects the two legs of the V to form a triangle before extending beyond the V’s right leg and onto my neighbor’s slim slice of brook bank graced by large sugar maples wedged between a sturdy stonewall and the stream.

For weeks my rambunctious English Springer Spaniels have been reluctant to leave the established backyard paths for good reason. Every time they’ve ventured out to explore, they’ve had to negotiate deep, cumbersome, icy snow that they obviously view as dangerous when slipping or breaking through … great news for deer. Why? Because, weighing between 40 and 50 pounds, my dogs and the average Eastern coyotes are about the same size. A wild coyote may be more agile, but not much more. So deductive reasoning tells me that the snow has not been ideal for coyotes chasing weakened winter deer.

That all changed Wednesday, the first day in weeks when my pets could freewheel atop the snow, be it running, prancing or walking; absolutely no sign of caution or trepidation for the first time in a month or more. That’s bad news for deer, which are now yarded up in large dormant herds typically bedded in wooded shelters with a couple of paths leading in and out of the bedding area, paths not unlike the ones traversing my snowed-in backyard. Coyotes will typically monitor such deer yards from the periphery, quickly recognizing, killing and eating any deer noticeably weakened by age, injury or malnutrition; but they cannot do serious damage and take down healthy deer without a little help from Mother Nature. Such help is now present, providing coyotes that hard crust they can run across. Problem is that deer cannot stay on top, instead breaking through with their hoofs, tiring quickly and becoming easy, pathetic prey.

Unconfirmed word out of Hampden — which has had significantly more snow than we have — is that snowmobilers last week came upon quite a natural deer slaughterhouse in the woods, with blood and body parts from several deer concentrated in a small area. Supposedly, game wardens were called to the scene and one was so appalled at the carnage that he opined there should be a bounty on coyotes. I hesitate to report such a story, but it came from a credible source I would not question, and even if I could get through to the wardens who visited the kill site, they would never admit to advocating a bounty. Such a comment would create a brushfire for superiors to extinguish, and they would not be happy. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely I’d ever get a chance to talk directly to the officers who responded to the call. Instead, I’d have to go through a state Office of Executive Affairs spokesperson, who would make a few calls, call me back and likely either
tell me the report could not be substantiated or confirm there was a deer-kill investigated without providing the officers’ names, definitely no spontaneous remarks made on the scene.

Fact is that there are many politically correct anti-hunters in this state who would not appreciate seeing such an “ignorant” comment from law enforcement in the paper, and they would scream bloody murder if such an irresponsible, inappropriate, hysterical call for bounties had been publicized. Thus the OEA filter was established several years ago to homogenize news, make life easy for state officials and miserable for scribes worth their salt.

All I can say is: take it for what it’s worth. You be the judge. And be certain that if, over the next few weeks, you decide to explore a forested southern exposure where deer typically yard, you will likely find similar, ugly, crimson horror shows. Yes indeed, balance of nature at its finest. The question is: Who keeps the coyote population in check?

The answer is few. Very few.

Seems I just can’t abandon the topic of oak trees, red and white, how to differentiate.

This week I will share comments from a wildlife biologist, an arborist and my own brother-in-law, with whom I quite spontaneously broached the subject on the phone Wednesday morning. He, the owner of a large, paradisiacal retirement spread in southern Maine, has successfully planted many white oaks on his property, acquiring a wealth of knowledge along the way. When told I had pilloried my ignorance for a public flogging because I figured to be no less informed than most hunters trying to quickly identify red and white oaks by sight, he was in total agreement. “It’s true,” he said. “I knew very little before I decided to introduce white oaks to my property and studied them.”

The man is now an authority, having planted hundreds of Eastern White, Swamp White and Chestnut oaks on a property that contained only reds when he bought it some four decades ago. A Johnny Appleseed of sorts, he took it upon himself to gather acorns from tall, straight, extraordinary white oaks on the UMass-Dartmouth campus where he taught for many years, the Providence, R.I., private school where he sent his daughters, and several spots along the route from southeast Massachusetts to Maine. One such location, off Route 146 in Rhode Island, held many ancient Chestnut Oaks whose offspring are now doing just fine, thank you, on his Maine farm. As we chatted Wednesday, he said he now has more than 100 white-oak sprouts growing in his cellar, soon to be transplanted into separate cups for future planting.

He learned by trial and error how to successfully grow the seedlings in his woods. He started by concealing the infant oaks among natural seedlings and saplings, which protected them from browsing deer until they reached a height at which he could remove the closest protectors. In the process, he learned a more important trick to combat rodent destruction. Germinated acorns sprout two shoots, one that points to the sky, another a taproot that reaches in the opposite direction. He found that a planted acorn stays remarkably intact long after the sprouts grow, and that the pungent nut attracts rodents that dig it up and eat it in the spring. “They’re quite efficient and troublesome,” he said. “I found that they’d eat those acorns within a week or so of planting, amazing how fast they’d find them and wipe them out.” The problem required creativity. During the indoor transplanting process from a large container holding many sprouts into small individual cups, he now carefully twists the acorn, breaks the tubular taproot and sprout free, pulls it gently through the nut and buries it in the cup. There, the tiny plant continues to grow until planted in the spring. A friend surmised the experiment wouldn’t work. He was wrong. Ten or 12 years later, the small trees started bearing fruit. Wildlife today gravitates to the young white-oak groves. The traffic will undoubtedly increase as the trees mature.

As for the arborist, well, he wrote to inform me that there are only two species of oaks in our woods, red and white. He was responding to my warning that Chestnut Oaks could create confusion when trying to find white oaks because they both had rounded leaves. “The Chestnut Oak is a white oak,” he wrote, “along with the Eastern White Oak, the Swamp White Oak and maybe the Burr Oak, which is, in my opinion, rare here.“White-oak acorns are very different: Eastern has a shallow cup and the acorn is often green, Swamp has a deep, shaggy cup, Burr has a deep, very shaggy cup, and Chestnut has a slender deep acorn and cup. The bark of the two white oaks is similar whitish and furrowed or blocked. The bark of the Burr and Chestnut oaks is rugged thick furrows. Leaves of Swamp and Chestnut oaks are very similar.”

On to our wildlife biologist, an old friend and former state Deer Project Leader I always look forward to hearing from. He wrote to shed light on previous feedback from a reader who said he knew the difference between red and white oaks but found the whites less apt to bear fruit, speculating that this perceived scarcity of acorns could be related to their favored status among foragers. The biologist didn’t disagree that white-oak acorns are favored by animals in the fall but said the observer was ignoring a key factor.

“One important difference between red- and white-oak acorns is when they germinate,” he wrote. “White-oak acorns germinate the fall they drop. Red-oak acorns over-winter and germinate in the spring. So, while white oaks have less tannin and are more palatable, they disappear quickly. Red oaks are valuable to wildlife coming out of winter. In our bear study, in springs following a good red-oak acorn crop, about 25 percent or more of the bears’ diet was acorns after they left their dens. Following a poor acorn year, it was almost 100 percent skunk cabbage. Deer, turkeys and all the other critters also eat those over-wintered red-oak acorns in the spring. Red oaks are by far more common in our New England forests than whites, though in the valley it will vary from wood lot to wood lot.”

So, there you have it: more interesting winter fodder to chew on. God, what did I get myself into, anyway? Actually, give me more, a great cabin-fever antidote. Remember, Native Americans once ground the sweet white-oak nuts into meal and flour for gruel and bread. Now this discussion of red and white oaks is sustaining me through a cold, snowy winter.

Although it may be difficult to believe, spring is near for optimistic spirits. Count me among them. Why dwell on the negative, which then only gets worse? I’d much rather focus on the positive.

Ooooops! Better go. Gotta get in the last round of shoveling before work.

Wow! Quite a reaction to last week’s piece about my difficulties identifying by sight the different oaks in our forest.

Criticism, advice and gracious hands-on offers to teach me proper recognition of red, white and chestnut oaks came my way in rapid fashion. The feedback came from hunters and gatherers, hikers and foresters, ladies and men. Clearly, it’s high time I put this confusion behind me. Oh my, look what I got myself into by pillorying my ignorance on the public square.

Oh well, like the old trapper at Punkin’ Hollow used to say: “There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” a lesson I learned long ago and have learned to lived by. And the fact is that I already know more than I did a week ago about oak trees, and I never left my toasty study, flames dancing upward like snakes’ tongues in the Rumford fireplace. Ah, praise the Internet, despite the winter layer of fat this type of surfing can build. But, hey, don’t animals need fat to survive winter? Why should we, animals too, be any different?

But wait. Enough self-deprecation. It’s not like I’m totally clueless about the trees in our forest. Actually, I’m not bad at picking out the basic species as I traipse through the woods, trees like oak, beech, ash, maple, hickory, cherry, walnut, butternut, apple and hemlock. There are many other trees, bushes and plants I recognize, but I am by no means a botanist or dendrologist. In fact, I have never taken a course focused on the study of trees and plants. Or, maybe I did and have forgotten. I hated science; too much memorization. But who says you need a formal classroom to learn anything? Myself, I’ve just poked around over the years and picked things up in my travels, including information about trees and plants related to my favorite woodland pursuits. So I guess you could say I know enough to get by, and have done just that for decades, making exciting new discoveries along the way; likely many more before I check out.

I guess I’m no different than most hunters and woodsmen who patrol the forest for work or play. Remember, it was just such a man, a hunter and cordwood merchant no less, who taught me to misidentify white oaks by their bark’s deep grooves and prominent ridges. That was a bogus identification key, one I bared for all to see last week. Several readers were quick to point out the error, scolding that the deeply grooved bark, dark in color, belongs to red (and chestnut) oaks, not whites, which display smoother, scalier bark, whitish-gray in color. Thanks. I needed that. Forever enlightened. On to nature’s next riddle.

My mistaken bark-identification key was “learned” in the past five years, and I accepted it without delving deeper because I trusted the teacher. Prior to that woodland “lesson,” the white-oak identifier I most often used when inspecting a pawed-up feeding area was round, stubby acorns, which I have even tasted for sweetness to confirm my amateur assessment. I have also sampled red-oak acorns, their tannins producing a bitter taste that I suppose you could ignore if really hungry. A Heath forester I respect wrote to confirm that white acorns do indeed tend to be stubbier than reds, especially at the cap. Of course, Internet photos and “Peterson’s Guide to Trees” then cast doubt by showing some elongated white-oak nuts as well.

So it appears that the safest way to identify white oaks is by their leaves. Red-oak leaves are long and pointy; whites are similarly structured but rounded. Then arises another problem, that of chestnut oaks, which have rounded leaves similar to their white cousins. The difference between those two oak species lies in the bark. Judging from Internet photos I viewed, the chestnut oak’s bark has more prominent ridges and deeper grooves than the red. So, if the grooves are very deep, the leaves rounded, the ridges like the widest of all corduroys, you’re dealing with chestnut oaks, said to produce acorns favored by deer over those of red oaks.

Enough!

Off to a couple of interesting observations that appeared among the many responses to my white/red oak dilemma. One, from a South Deerfield chum who spends a lot of time poking around in the woods, said he knew a white oak by sight and has discovered they’re less likely to bear acorns
for some reason; either that, he speculated, or foraging critters snap them up as soon as they hit the ground, maybe even before. Another more comical remark came from a woman who hunts salubrious wild foods and has been searching for white-oak acorns near her hill-town home. She said that, although she has thus far been unable to find white oaks near her property, she did find a beautiful, mature white oak at Arms Cemetery in Shelburne Falls, a prolific acorn producer, at that.

“But I’m not eating those acorns,” she wrote, for obvious reasons.

Well, chubby, gray, burial-ground squirrels are not so fussy and reap the benefits.

A six-foot snow bank at a dead end marked the beginning of our quarter-mile trek through deep, fluffy, toe-dragging snow. We skirted the pile and followed a convenient foot-wide deer path down the wooded trail into a peaceful hollow before ascending to the crest of a gentle hill long ago cleared by and named after the man who built the center-chimney Cape standing frozen in antiquity there.

Because I don’t like to pinpoint important historic sites, let me just say this tranquil hillock rests somewhere in our western Franklin hills, said by an astute 90-year-old friend to be “honeycombed with interesting places and important people.” He knows. An auctioneer and antiques dealer, the man furnished many a country getaway with Queen Anne tables, Chippendale chests, Hepplewhite stands and Federal portraits, all handsome pieces of Americana with fascinating tales to tell. Our destination on this day was such a place kept by such people, transplants all, the best and brightest. Without these preservationists, all that would likely remain today would be an overgrown, stone-clad depression with many more questions than answers; one of too many buried under the canopy of historic landscapes. This one was spared the indignity.

But that’s it for clues. No more. I have learned my lesson. Once, when writing about woods dear to me, I assumed my intentionally vague references would help only a few harmless natives. I later discovered that a bright, misguided transplant from faraway had deciphered the location. I was surprised, even impressed, also reminded that even a little information can be too much. It won’t happen again. Cellar holes, cemeteries and Native paths are worthy of concealment from thieves, snoops and busy-bodies. Why contribute to the degradation of archaeological sites by giving away location? Not me. Maybe I’m selfish, or judicious. Call it what you may. I’m not budging.

Although I was revisiting this newfound treasure trove of local history to retrieve an essay about the dwelling and its stewards — and to examine a large cellar chamber inside the 10-foot-square stone base of the chimney — I also wanted to check the deer sign, which had been plentiful a week earlier during a walk through the property with a genial guide and caretaker. The woman knew from my prose that I loved, even worshipped, upland hardwood forests, and she had such a place to share, one harboring a 300-year-old oak tree that five men could not get their arms around. There are few oaks like it left in our Franklin hills, and even this one, broad and burly, has seen better days.

Interestingly, near that giant oak lay what was left of a small 6-point buck, likely killed and not found during the most recent deer season. Our dogs, three of them, quickly found the skeletal remains left by coyotes. My Springers returned with jawbones as her Aussie Shepherd proudly paraded the small rack and skull plate. My guide, joy in her gait, love of nature oozing through her pores, lugged those antlers for the remainder of our walk and hung them on a peg at home. A trophy of sorts.

Having bemoaned the scarcity of deer sign in woods I knew well during the season, I was surprised by what I had seen on my first visit to this unfamiliar forest. Many deer runs traversed the open hardwoods, and pawed-up foraging patches were prevalent through the oaks. There seemed to be no shortage of deer or turkeys on this wooded slice of upland paradise, forest in the 40- to 60-year range, beautiful open hardwoods with a few ancient behemoths mixed in, their massive limbs flexing their biceps before reaching to the high heavens.

I was curious to see what kind of deer activity we’d find on my second visit, a few days after our first big storm dropped a new layer of snow. Well, it was impressive, deer and turkey sign everywhere, focused primarily on plentiful acorns buried deep on the forest floor, especially under the muscle-bound oaks bordering the ancient road. The humbling trip reminded me once again that I must better learn to quickly and positively identify white oaks, which are less plentiful in our woods than reds but more important to wildlife. I was taught to identify white oaks by their deeply grooved bark, with more prominent ridges than their red cousins. A woodsman who makes his living selling cordwood taught me that distinguishing characteristic, and I accepted it. Another way to distinguish between red and white oaks is the acorns they produce. White oaks grow rounder, stubbier acorns than reds, and the white-oak meat is sweet and succulent. At least that’s what I’ve been told.

I now have reason to question my identification keys. When I pointed out a large roadside white oak near the secluded dwelling we visited, my guide corrected me, saying she had studied its leaves and they were sharply pointed, not rounded white-oak leaves. Hmmmm? Maybe large, old red oaks also have deeply-grooved bark. Can’t say for sure. Hopefully someone will chime in to straighten me out. Maybe it varies. Perhaps I have been misled. I do know that if there are no white oaks available, then deer and turkeys will eat other acorns. But, still, deer and bears, and probably turkeys and squirrels, prefer the sweeter meat of white oaks, and so did the Natives who gathered them for protein-rich sustenance.

I admit I can be lazy when given an excuse. Over the years as I’ve walked the woods looking for deer sign, passing hundreds of oaks along the way, some trees are pawed-up underneath, many are not, and I have assumed without closer inspection that the most aggressively pawed-up stands contain white oaks. When I investigate further, I have often found stubby acorns, even occasionally bite into them to sample their sweetness. It may be time to dig deeper, hone my identification skills to provide one more edge in putting it all together. Google is of little help.

Are not mysteries and riddles intrinsic forest beauties, even in familiar woods, gun or none, one puzzle today, another tomorrow, often related, sometimes not? To me it’s true. And these mysteries of the wild will continue to lure me back, my mangled left knee and flimsy right ankle willing.

Yes, there’s always something new to ponder in the woods, be it tight streamside stonework, a collapsed cellar hole, kindred spirits, or one of nature’s infinite mysteries, all present to make our cognitive wheels scream, our imagination purr.

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.