cellini's Diaryland Diary

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The Chase

No luck on the last day of deer season. But it did get me out in the open air for 8 hours or so and that's something worthwhile. I froze my ass off but I got a little sun, watched the birds and squirrels and consider it time well spent in any event. The day was capped off by Alice's typical escape from the fenced yard after dark, whereupon she began baying from the woods that she was on to the trail of something good. Well, who knows? Maybe she cut the trail of a wounded deer, hit by a car or another hunter's bullet. She's been right about this sort of thing before.

I grabbed a rope, 2 flashlights, a knife, pistol and a leash and ran out to catch up with Alice.

These night time tracking excursions with Alice are always character-building exercises. Allow me to paint a picture.

Even if there is a moon out, everything looks pitch black because you are in the woods and you have a flashlight strapped to your forehead, which is essential to seeing any drops of blood on the ground but ruins your night vision. The weiner-be@gle is on the other end of a longish leash and frantically sniffing the ground, insisting that you go exactly this way. Alice is only about 16 inches tall so thick clumps of thorns and impenetrable piles of wind-fallen trees are none of her concern. She will pass easily underneath the clawing obstacles that you will struggle through like the fox scrambling after Brer Rabbit in 'Uncle Remus.' The sheer ridiculousness of trying to pass through this crud cannot be over-emphasized. If you looked at it in the day time you would certainly state that it is physically impossible for a grown man to get through. Yet in the dark of night with only a short, narrow beam of light before you, this impossibility will rarely be entirely clear to you until you find yourself actually crammed between a fallen log and a tree branch with your face surrounded by thorns and a broken off branch poking up into your belly as you struggle to hold on to both leash and excited weiner-be@gle.

Yes, all this time you must struggle through these hazards with only one hand on account of having to keep the leash under control. Simultaneously, you must constantly scan both the ground beneath you for evidence of a wounded deer having passed through (blood drops or pools, clumps of hair, sign of a large animal having bedded down) and the terrain ahead of you for a deer jumping up and bolting at your approach.

This goes on at times for up to 2 or 3 miles. It makes cross country competitive running look like an afternoon nap. As far as time goes, there's really no telling. Maybe 45 minutes, maybe 4 hours. It all quickly becomes a blur of howling dog, scratching thorn and vague concern over the question of where in the hell you might actually be.

[Strangely, I have never gotten truly lost on one of these expeditions. Even before I took up hunting I did rack up a pretty good number of night time bushwhacking excursions that have led to my being fairly comfortable in these circumstances. We did a lot of night hikes in Outward Bound, often in the rain and without a trail of any kind.]

Maybe it's better when there isn't a deer at the end of that kind of chase. Because when there is, you've got to drag the damned thing home and spend the next few hours dressing and quartering it. More work. When you come up empty, you get to go back inside and take off your boots and jacket and give the weiner-be@gle something especially nice to eat for her troubles and then put your feet up and have a beer and contemplate whether it's worth bothering to doctor up the scratches and bruises covering your face and hands.

Nah. Just let the blood dry and have another beer while the weiner-be@gle falls asleep on your lap.

12:07 p.m. - 2008-01-07

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