Memories of Opening Days gone by...

Deer season opens Saturday.

For the second time since I moved here in 2014, I will be out there before dawn, in a tree, listening and watching and hoping.

I was on the land last week, making a few final adjustments to my stand and just feeling it. The forest has its own feel and an outdoorsman finds himself attuned to it, almost to the point of needing it. And I need it these days.

The forest brings me peace and a sense of connection that grows foggy as the year wears on. In a world of mortgage rates and real estate contracts and networking and commission checks and the constant grind and the daily battle, the hunting grounds are a chance to reconnect to the things that all men were, before we became mortgage brokers, and realtors, and auto mechanics, and lawyers and such.

It reminds me of a time when no matter what other title we wore, we had to remain in tune with the forest if we wanted to eat and provide for our families. A time when recognizing the tracks of a herd of whitetails was more vital to our survival than spotting trends in the bond market.

There was a day, not so long ago, when a man made his way to a place like the one where I hunt and earned his stripes as he listened and watched and learned and finally, harvested. Returning to this place returns me to that place. For a few days each fall and early winter, I can throw some wood on the embers in my soul that glow only faintly. I can reignite a fire that gets me through another new year. I can find myself again, and hopefully, memorize the face that stares back at me, reflecting from the creek in the middle of the woods I hunt, and let the memory of that man guide me for another year.

Sitting in my stand, I remember how magical this world really is. How dew on a billion pine needles looks so much like diamonds shimmering in the sunrise on a frozen November morning. How bold a squirrel can be when it’s not squirrel season. I remember how much farther sound travels in the winter, when the air is cold. I am reminded of this because I can hear the farmer in the neighboring fields, a good half mile from me, talking to his hired hand, starting the tractor and getting ready to finish up the soybean harvest.

I live in a world of social media marketing, where algorithms and trending hash tags are the currency of realm. Out here, the social media is the bickering between the crows and the cardinals and the squirrels and the woodpeckers, all seeming to be warning the deer that I am here, 15 feet up in this cedar tree, waiting for their appearance. The rest of the year I am trying to be seen and stand out to attract business. Here…I am trying to be invisible and silent and attract game. Hash tags are replaced with my grunt and my green can. The approach is different, but the tactics are similar and the desired results the same.

Out here too, I am constantly being reminded of time. The shadows of dawn look different from the evening shadows, but they are shadows nonetheless and they both hold mystery. One provides waning cover for the locals, waking up from their slumber, or just heading in from a night out. The other, a slightly eerie and foreboding signal that it’s time for man to be heading to his home, and time for the real rulers of this wood to shake off the caution of the day and come out of hiding.

More than anything, these days, I am reminded of all the other times I was in woods like these. Times as a boy, tagging along. Then as a teenager, just stepping out on my own as a hunter and tracker.

Or the miles I walked with my first bird dog, Jesse. A mid-twenties, struggling businessman and his young, eager Springer spaniel; shotgun over my shoulder, whistle around my neck, and a pocket full of treats for the best dog I ever owned. We’d walk until he was tuckered out on those frozen January Saturdays and then he’d stretch out on the front seat of my pickup, snoring like a buzz saw as the heater worked it’s magic on his chilled body and he caught up on the sleep he’d earned out there in the fields.

Or my best friend Mark.

We hunted and fished almost weekly when we were young. And into our early adulthood, every chance we got, we’d throw our shotguns into my truck and head off to the woods or the fields looking for our prey and, mostly, just being together.

We stay in touch. There was no falling out. We talk of going out together again, like the old days, maybe him coming here for deer or me going there for turkey. But life, and age, and responsibility, and miles just seems to preclude this hunt we both desperately want. And need.

I think of those days out here, too and I miss them. I am alone in my stand on these frosty mornings. I treasure the time by myself, but I sure miss Mark, and the great stories around the campfire at days end. There’s nothing like the stories told at a hunting camp among lifelong friends. I told a hundred and heard a million when I was younger, and I replay them in my heart as I sit here watching the sun rise.

It’s 325 miles from where I live now to where I grew up. It feels like 325 million sometimes. It’s not the distance…it’s the years. Most of a lifetime has passed since I sat in that stand on May Mills’ farm in Delaware and watched that perfect eight-pointer making his way to me. Most of a lifetime since I slowly raised that Glenfield Model 778 to my shoulder and whispered to that buck, coaxing him as he sidled closer.

A college degree, a marriage, a daughter, a divorce, a career lost and regained ago, I felt the recoil dig into my shoulder and watched as the big boy dropped where he stood.

A young nineteen-year-old scampered down the tree and approached that buck cautiously. A proud young man felt an arm around his shoulder as his hunting partner for that day, Hank, congratulated him on a beautiful prize. An excited best friend made the call from a gas station pay phone, to gain bragging rights for the day.

Now…at 56, he sits in a stand and remembers all the other stands he sat in through the years. And the lunches and the campfires, and the jokes, and the warmth after a cold day.

He remembers it all. Jesse is around some far-off woodstove, warming his cold bones and waiting to hear my key in the latch for a reunion one day.
Mark lives in Delaware and Hank is in Florida and it’s been a lot of years since they’ve hunted together. He remembers the last time they all went out…only nobody knew it was going to be the last time. If they had, maybe they would have said something. Or done something special to commemorate. But they just figured they’d all be together again the next year. And just like that…they weren’t.

But I remember…