Published: Thursday, January 01, 2009

It’s all coming back to me as I sit at my desk, space heater purring behind me, dog sleeping between it and me, noble, 9-point buck mounted above, between the windows. A steady rain splatters off the stone terrace outside as mellow gray light from the dense foggy air filters through sheers. Dry-docked, I’m thinking back, trying to make sense of a deer hunt on the first Saturday. It typified a fruitless season. Why do men hunt? That’s the question I’m pondering. Better still, why do I?

Posted high on a Colrain ridge behind an apple orchard that morning, I can still in my mind’s eye see that faint orange sunrise peeking over the eastern horizon, one that eventually cast a warm glow through openings in the cold, silent December forest. A hospitable hue, it bled through the mixed woods, a glint illuminating a tiny spot on a half-inch stick partially buried in brittle, bronze oak leaves two paces from my right boot. At first I believed it was a surveyor’s mark but couldn’t imagine it had escaped me the previous day. So I studied the brilliant orange patch, all eyes, careful not to move my head, and was convinced it was, indeed, the remnant of an old survey. Then the sun slid south and it vanished like frost from Guilford slate. Amazing, I remember thinking, the intensity a sliver of first light delivers. Then right back on task, sitting solitary and still, senses fine-tuned, awaiting a crack at salubrious winter venison.

I was nestled comfortably into a dip along a high, sturdy stonewall built by my ancestors, a realization that always brings a sense of comfort I’m grateful to comprehend in the quiet solitude of special places where my blood flows from spring holes. Makes you feel welcome. The location was selected based on many factors observed over the first five days of the shotgun season, the salient one being the nearby orchard, pungent with fermenting fruit in tree and turf. Equally significant, it was the first place where I had found scarce acorns and fresh signs of deer digging for them. Everywhere else they had been cleaned up by the many creatures that eat them. Combine the available feed with knowledge that hunters had surrounded the place when I was elsewhere on opening day, and that I had seen a buck and doe run off during noontime reconnaissance the previous day, and I liked my chances of seeing deer either feeding back to their beds or pushed by hunters.

I figured I’d get in there early and see what happened, liking my chances better than anywhere else I had hunted, but aware that deer hunting is always a long shot. I can deal with that. Being an old hardball player, I long ago learned to accept defeat without succumbing to it. It is said that a baseball hitter must learn to quickly forget failure, that even Hall of Famers are unsuccessful 70 percent of the time. More disheartening is the ratio of swings to solid contact, clearly quantifying what you’re up against. Then when you realize that the odds of taking a good Franklin County buck are steeper, it all comes into bittersweet perspective steeped in pessimism … but worth the effort. Even the finest deer hunters, which I do not count myself among, would salivate at a one-in-10 shot. Even so, it never hurts to arrive at your stand with confidence, which I was oozing with that frosty morning.

I had parked my truck along the woods at the outflow of a snowmobile trail in a frozen, brush-hogged field, packed lightly, loaded my weapon and slowly walked 150 yards up the trail, bearing left where it bore right and angling uphill toward the stonewall I knew would soon be visible in scanty light. I intended to first find the wall, then the large twin oak rooted at its base and reaching in a V to the heavens from near my intended stand, situated some 100 yards behind the orchard. I had taken the same route the previous day when the two whitetails had slipped by out of range, and I knew, with the leaves underfoot in their noisiest, frozen state, that I would not get a pop walking in. The plan was to get there as quickly as possible and settle in before deer left the orchard. When I didn’t kick one out on the way in, step one of my mission was successful. Step two would be the tedious waiting game that’s all too seldom rewarded.

As I sat to greet the new day in warm, camo wool, Mossy Oak mask hiding my face, I was enchanted by the breathless dawn, not a sound anywhere, certain I could hear a mouse within 75 yards. My attention was focused south toward the orchard, carefully scanning for movement through spaces between trees and behind deadfalls, fully aware that even when you’re convinced you’ll hear deer, you often see them first. Still, my ears and eyes were equal partners as I entered into that otherworldly state of melting into the habitat, alert as its wild critters, hoping to be in the right place at the right time. I remember thinking then how sad it is that most people in our modern culture, my own boys included, don’t understand the joy of deer hunting’s silent, motionless observation. Hunting isn’t about power and blood lust to me. It’s about the game, matching wits with an elusive beast of superior senses on its turf. That’s what draws me to the cold, gray solitude; not killing, even though I know it may come to that.

Although it’s not always easy to drag yourself from a warm bed to the dark, chilling woods, once there it’s fulfilling, the air and anticipation, sights and sounds creating a stimulating natural symphony worthy of an urban chamber. Reduced to a cripple by a bum left knee from a competitive past, the woods, the fields and the bogs have become my last, perhaps best, playing field. There is none better. Nature and challenge the attractions; seared venison medallions the occasional reward.

There were no deer sightings that morning, just a few squirrels, red and gray, crashing through the leaves to pique my interest. I have learned to tolerate those pesky little critters, never totally ignoring their audible teases even when certain it’s not a deer. A presumed squirrel sometimes becomes a deer, so you learn to investigate and forgive. But more disturbing than the squirrelly racket that morning was the total absence of a gunshot anywhere, unimaginable a generation ago when men gravitated to the woods on days off. But with much of Colrain and parts of Shelburne, Leyden, Greenfield, Deerfield and maybe even Heath within earshot from my lofty perch that calm morning, not even a distant blast, no orange-clad hunters passing. Not what I expected.

Returning midmorning-inquisitive to my truck for the ride home, I decided to circle the area. Not a hunter anywhere. I was surprised even though it only reinforced what I already knew. A local tradition is dying. Gone are the days I recall waiting as a boy before and after school for hunters to pull into the downtown checking station. They’d cozy their trucks up to a scale dangling from a grotesque frame and the attendant would hook and hoist the dead animal off the ground by rope and pulley as observers tried to guess the weight. This occurred right in the town square, butted up against the busiest eatery in town, and no one found it distasteful enough to make a public clamor. Some undoubtedly pitied the deer, opposed the public display and disagreed with hunting itself, but they contained their venom, accepting hunting as the way it was, the way it always had been, the way it always would be. How mistaken they were. Those tolerant times have disappeared along with an innate understanding of the subsistence farms owned by friends, relatives and neighbors. Back then, we all understood where our meat, milk and eggs, our boots, gloves and winter woolens came from. Most of us even knew the thump and flapping at the henhouse chopping-block. Not today. No, a troubling disconnect is now prevalent and directly related to the shrill anti-hunting outcry, not to mention the suburban affliction referred to by fancy-pants therapists as ”nature-deficiency disorder” — a catchy phrase indeed; sad, too, because it’s an American epidemic.

You wonder where it will all lead. Then again, who cares? It seems that those who know the least shriek the loudest, gathering frothy support along the way. So what can hunters, vastly misunderstood and outnumbered, possibly do other than turn a deaf ear and carry on? Sadly, that’s what it’s come to, even in our own quaint, muddy hilltowns, long ago yuppified.

The rooted few just can’t give in. We know swimming against the current only makes us stronger.

Wiser, too.