Poor Bambi
Another deer hunting season in the books
Two weeks of dodging men in orange and highway ditches sparkling with empty beer cans covered with morning frost, Michigan's Upper Peninsula has settled down to an eerie quiet. Traffic is lighter, motels are depleted of week long guests and there are no more hairy toddlers mindlessly roaming the grocery store and making lots of noise drinking establishments. Retailers excitedly look forward to a healthy deer hunting season to keep their books in the black for the year. Without hunting and snowmobile tourists, well let’s say, the U.P. would be a different place.
Today is the last day in Michigan that men in orange can murder Bambi and his cousins. The dark morning is filled with heavy clouds ready to spit their contents to earth. Sound travels far in the woods and only the trees are chattering in the wind this morning as I step out onto my frozen deck. The dog speeds past me in need of relief, there is no ambient light so he disappears from my view into the thick, inky darkness.
My hunting warriors took two bucks and a doe from our wooded acreage this week despite a bear sleep walking through the woods looking for that last morsel of food before going off to bed and the very large wolf living almost next door. The wolf will stay close but just out of sight, in hopes that the hunters leave an easy meal of guts and organs that are discarded in the woods. The guys call it “field dressing” the deer. The wolf will call it a free meal but will also have competition for the warm innards, as coyotes, crows, buzzards, eagles and very large cats will also want to partake in the free delicacy.
I have such mixed emotions about our boys killing MY deer. I watch them strole our yard all summer with awe and such wonder. A majestic doe and her twin fawns meander past my kitchen window late this last spring as if to show off her darling family. She managed to get through the winter months of brutal cold and deep snow, sustaining her pregnant self on twigs and dry grass to give unassisted birth to twin healthy offsprings. It simply amazes me!
From my living room window I sometimes can spy several deer gathered together and bed down just inside the snow covered woods. On the coldest mornings they can stay nestled in their frozen bed until 10:00 am. One by one a doe will stand and stretch in knee deep snow, look around and take a pee. Their morning routine almost human like.
On the flipside of natures greatness these awe inspiring wonders will mow off every plant in your yard with impunity. And they will look at you while they do it almost with a chuckle and a wink, "thank you."
I had only been out here in the woods for a short time many years ago when I woke up one July morning to find that my hard earned garden plot, every single plant, had been mowed off to it's nubbins. Row by row of my beautiful green young vegetables were gone! They even ate the damn rose bush for cripe sakes.
We have but one chance per season for a garden, our growing season isn’t long enough for mistakes, so the next year I put up a 6 foot tall fence around the whole garden. It was my turn to laugh at the deer standing there just on the other side of that unfamiliar obstacle drooling at the lush vegetation they couldn’t get to. My garden was now safe from these night time marauders, until. . .
Until another morning that same year I looked out and saw a young bear cub riding a fence post back and forth in the freshly dug earth. Back and forth, back and forth like a damn carnival ride until he flatten it. Ugh!!! Damn bear!!
Then a couple of years later that now grown damn bear broke into the chicken coop and dragged off a 50 pound bag of chicken feed in a Rubbermaid tote. Hubby found the demolished tote minus the chicken feed in the woods later that week. Growing things and being able to keep them has been a real challenge to say the least. But I digress. . .
Well, at least for the next 6 weeks or so, at least until ice fishing season, we will be seeing trophy buck stories on local Tv channels. Thirty minutes of; "This bad boy was just out of range. I waited and watch him come into my sight. . . blah, blah, blah, blah," several times a week. To me it’s almost painfully boring Tv viewing.
Son-in-law just texted to say that he has a couple bags of venison for us. Cool, our share of the take! See why I have mixed feelings about Bambi? Ah, life in the Yoop, beer, brats and venison. Oh and lots and lots of snow. Time to go close up camp, another men in orange deer hunting season in the books. That’s a wrap.
Disclaimer: I took this buck pole picture from google.