OPENING DAY – DEER SEASON 2008

Deer season opened yesterday, October 10. If you're rooting for the deer, this is probably the year for you. Ordinarily the best time to get a deer in this place is right around opening day – before the deer get the picture and move to the canyon. However, conditions are working in their favor right now. 1) A depredation hunt occurred the whole month of August on neighboring farms, which served to reduce the already reduced number of deer. 2) The half moon moving towards full provides a lot of night light, making foraging at night realistic for the deer. 3) Our farmer moved in to seed on "opening day eve," disrupting the environment and making the fields difficult for humans to navigate. 4) It turned cold, which encourages the deer to seek the warmer habitat of the canyon.

While Mike is disappointed, he has known for weeks that things weren't working together for an easy season this year. However, it isn't over yet. And, while we've come to enjoy the lean venison meat, getting your deer entails real work, especially if it happens in the cold and you're by yourself and you have to finish up in the dark.

I enjoyed an afternoon in the sewing room yesterday. I was comfortable sitting by the window with the southern sun shining in. I darned knees in a pair of Mike's blue jeans and then worked on the "Ina" costume. Just the hem on the circular bias skirt and the buttonholes and buttons to go. The frustrating part is not knowing the machine well enough to just use the various applications without doing some study.

The photo is me, of course, demonstrating how the clay pigeon thrower works. Stomping on that lever releases the spring-loaded "arm" and that action flings the "bird." To be effective, the photo should have been a close-up of the thrower. Instead, you have a picture of me.

I had a message from Hallie yesterday. She was looking forward to sightseeing in San Francisco.

It's back to town this afternoon. KW

PITTSBURGH LANDING HUNTING/CAMPING TRIP

As Jackson and I had seen a few chukars on our backpacking trip from Pittsburgh Landing to Kirkwood Ranch I thought that would be a good place for an opening weekend hunt. So Ken and I headed out Friday morning and arrived a little before midday. It was very hot just as it was when Jack and I were there--100 degrees in the afternoon and still 90 at 6:00 pm. We tried scouting around some in the afternoon but it was just too hot, especially for the dogs. Swimming in the river was much nicer.

About 5:00 I decided to place a geocache while Ken fished for our supper. The spot I picked was only 1/3 mile from the parking lot but it necessitated an ascent of over 1,000 feet. It wasn’t too bad though, as it only took 35 minutes to get up there. It’s called simply Upper Pittsburgh Landing in case you want to look it up. Meanwhile Ken had a nice bass and trout for our supper.

We turned in after supper but it was too hot to sleep. At one point during the night I got up and just sat outside on the table enjoying the breeze. About 4:00 am the rain began and it really came down. Fortunately my reliable 40 year old blue canvas tent kept us nice and dry the whole trip. The rain eventually stopped but it threw us about an hour late in getting out to hunt.

The only birds we found were a very short ways from camp. They were running up the cliffs above us and the only way to make them fly was to shoot into them on the ground which I did. The shot at the one on the ground wasn’t a kill as is usually the case but one that flushed provided a shot as he was curving around the bluff. Unfortunately he just dropped one leg and fluttered on around the bluff out of sight. If it went down there was no way to know where. Pretty much the same scenario was repeated within 100 yards of the same spot. This time I killed the one on the ground as well as the one that flushed. The dogs each retrieved a bird so supper was assured. We hunted another couple of hours without so much as seeing a bird. Later in the afternoon we tried a spot a couple of miles down river because a camper said he had seen some huns in that area. We didn’t see a bird there either and as it was beginning to rain we headed back to camp.

The rain really set in so I rigged a tarp from the pickup to a bank and that served as our cooking and dining area. Ken served as chef and he did a good job on both the chukars and fish the night before. The rain had cooled things off so sleeping was much more comfortable but the rain really came down all night. It reminded me of a Scout trip with Milo into Moose creek. Except, unlike that trip, we stayed dry.

Fortunately, the rain stopped before daylight and I roused Ken out a little before 6:00 am. In the same spot as the previous morning we flushed a single chukar. However, he flew out from down below us and a boat moored across the river would have been right in the line of fire so we didn’t even shoot. That was the only bird we saw that morning. I’m afraid it’s going to be that kind of year.

The sun was out now so we broke camp about mid morning and headed back to town. In spite of the poor hunting we had a great time. However, if you seek seclusion, that’s not the place to be. The river was like highway 95 with all the jet boats and rafts.