A hunt

 

Merrick and I headed to the Oconto county forest for the WI youth gun hunt.  After last springs trip to Stanley he said he wanted to give deer hunting another try.  The weather was great, even plenty of mosquitos but the thermacell helped cut those down to size...or as Merrick continued to call it 'the incense burner'.  We left the house about 5 am and made the drive to arrive at the stand about 30 minutes before the light started to creep into the woods.  There was another Father/son team at the trial head where we parked, but that was a good example of how to hunt public woods. Introduce yourself, share your locations for safety and be polite.  The ground blind I built last April fit us both comfortably, the seats we had were not up for the task and the screw in tree steps slowly bent through out the day under our weight.  It lead to a constant battle to find comfort.  Merrick had a his head in his lap by 7:08...I took a picture of him and he busted me, smiled and figured he should check his phone too.  I then heard the characteristic double bound of a deer.  "Was that a deer?" I whispered to him as he smiled and shook his head at our foolishness  'Yup".  The deer had tiptoed in behind us and to Merrick's left, he only saw the white flash of the tail bounding away through the woods.  It was still great that we saw a deer, it would be the only one all day, but it if gave Merrick enough focus to hunt until sunset.  We headed back to the truck for an early lunch and chatted about hunting, school and the Nov. deer camp.  I pulled out the poem book and read a few to give him an idea about that aspect too.  He said he had a working title already "greenhorn' but no verses to go with it.  We walk/stalked around the woods for about an hour after lunch before making our way back to the stand.  He was great in the woods, had a good sense of the layout and found the stand on his own when we came in from a different direction and having only been there once in the dark.  He was safe with the gun and all around a great hunter.  In the end we didn't get a deer or even see another one, but both agreed that it was a great way to spend the day.  On the way home we made plans for how we would hunt on the second day.  I was impressed at his desire to go back out at 5 am...once home with a shower, dinner and on the couch he decided that not hunting and sleeping until noon would be more relaxing.  It was fine with me, with temperatures in the mid sixties it was a little hot to hunt anyways and the important parts of the hunt were already instilled.