Waiting for Deer Day

Soon after these words cross into your frontal lobe, I should be safely nestled among the branches of an old oak tree, waiting, watching and hoping. Perhaps, if the red gods smile, this season I might deliver a trophy Midwest whitetail to the taxidermist even before you can finish reading our matchless magazine and flush the toilet.

Either way, I will certainly be far more relaxed than the moments around the time this column was initially conceived. While trying to whip out my usual 1,500 words of sheer nonsense, I was unbearably distracted by a far more significant deadline looming like a head-hunting linebacker just downfield — the opening day of the deer firearms season.

Circle The Date

I certainly don’t dread opening day — in fact, quite the opposite. Both of my regular readers already know I consider opening day of the deer gun season, typically the second Saturday in November in our state, something akin to Christmas and July 4th combined but far more special. Unfortunately, with everything else going on throughout the year, I just can’t seem to get things organized in the 50 weeks preceding this High Holy Day.

Looking back over the approximate four decades of opening mornings I have greeted the dawn in pursuit of the wily whitetail, it seems my gun and gear were completely ready beforehand only twice. Sadly, the only reason things were prepared in these particular instances was because I never bothered to put them away after the previous season. Regardless, at least things were in order when hunting season rolled around again, unlike the typical fall.

It’s almost a sad yearly joke — I set wild and unattainable goals to have boots, backpack, hunting clothes and gun prepared well before opening day. In my mind, I earnestly vow to have all my gear sorted, cleaned and packed; hunting clothes washed in scentless soap and stored in an airtight bag; tags purchased; gun cleaned, oiled and sighted-in with multiple loads at various distances; boots waterproofed and everything sitting neatly staged by the garage door by 7 p.m. the night before opening day. Suitably prepared, I’ll then sit in my favorite chair with a pipe and small toddy, reading something by Gene Hill or Nash Buckingham before turning in early to be rested and ready for the singular, important day.

Real Life

Instead, a three-act tragedy always unfolds to replace my fantasy. Starting around 3 p.m. on Opening Day-eve, we can follow the trials and tribulations of a hapless nimrod who resembles a shortsighted and obviously dull-witted Magazine Editor. By comparison, “Macbeth” is a rollicking family comedy.

In the decades of ancient pre-history wherein you actually had to purchase a physical deer tag in our state, the opening tableau of this yearly drama begins as our hero scrambles from retailer to retailer in search of licenses. This is a necessity because of some malicious conspiracy between outdoor store owners decreeing no vendor should be allowed to keep both buck and bonus doe tags in stock at the same time. If you wanted both, as most hunters I knew did, the quest became a grim scavenger hunt.

This meant flying from store to store to store in an increasingly frustrated effort to find the elusive $25 dollar slip of government paper. You would eventually bag the tags after standing in line at the local bait shop/gas station behind an elderly woman purchasing $300 dollars of lottery tickets using rolled nickels. It would now be 4 p.m. and the November sun was within a hand-span of the horizon, sinking like a broken sash weight.

Fortunately, about 15 years ago when hunting license sales went online, the process became much easier — you’d wait until the morning of the opening day then curse as either the state’s website went down for hours or you discovered your computer printer was out of paper after the kids had made 42 copies of a term paper the night before. This is why it’s not uncommon for my hunting license to end up printed on the reverse side of Draft Revision #18 of “Long-term results of the War of 1812.”

Range Time

Fortunately, he quickly discovers four pieces of chewing gun work marvelously to hold a paper target against the backer board. In fact, he’s pleased to note some of the gum even has a bit of flavor left despite the sand and gravel!

Finally composed and ready at the shooting bench, the hunter fires into the twilight and is immediately taken aback to see a large puff of dirt five feet left of the target. Somehow, the gun sights had been bumped hard enough during the preceding 11 months to make the gun less accurate than a network news political prediction. How could this possibly happen to a gun so carefully stored in the corner of a garage without a case, but was only knocked over two or three times in the course of a summer?

He knows this wasn’t the right way to treat a fine hunting gun, but he was busy with fishing season at the time and just couldn’t get around to cleaning and storing it until later.

Side note — Sadly, years ago, the preceding paragraph was a true statement, though the particular gun in question was a muzzleloader. At least the rust-browning looked more authentic afterward.

Meanwhile …

Back at the range, our hunter is now sweating in the cold fall air as the last vestiges of sun disappear below the western horizon and his ammunition supply steadily dwindles. He fires briskly, like John Wayne defending the Alamo, and is eventually reduced to using trash and compact disks from the car for targets. Only a faint grim smile crosses his lips as he shatters an old Barry Manilow CD into a thousand pieces.

Finally, using the car headlights to illuminate the target, our hunter fires his last practice round. He is now sure the gun is ready to make a clean one-shot kill, provided he remembers to hold a point of aim exactly six feet high and four feet northwest at a 72-degree elevation.

The final scene of this yearly farce finds our hunter at midnight, cursing and tearing through the mini barn with a small flashlight clenched in his teeth in a vain effort to find the $##(@%& hunting backpack. Unbeknownst to him the backpack is exactly where he left it — on the floor of the back closet of the house, where he repeatedly reminded himself not to forget it 11 months prior. Around 1 a.m., memory suddenly returns and he loads his bag with hunting gear, after shaking out the mud, several old leaves and one desiccated apple from the bottom of the pack.

After all the exertion and stress of the preceding hours, our nimrod eventually collapses into bed shortly before 3 a.m., gear and clothes neatly stacked near the door, gun oiled and ready in its case.

Three minutes later, the alarm rings.

After jumping into his clothes, making a quick cup of coffee and grabbing some powdered mini donuts out of a bag in the pantry — coating himself, his clothes and the kitchen in general with white donut fairy dust — he bounds out to the darkened driveway where his buddies are waiting in their idling truck. The hunter is now like a caged birddog released into the field, fueled by coffee, adrenaline and donut sugar, raring to go. It is opening morning and there is no more glorious feeling on earth!

As the group excitedly backs out of the driveway, the hunter swears a famous oath that rings across the land from Maine to California: “Next year, I’m gonna get started earlier.”

Inside, still in bed, a long-suffering wife just shakes her head, pulls up the covers and rolls over. She knows, even if he doesn’t.

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