By Rich Miller
For four years, I was in the military and that was four years that I didn’t get to do very much hunting. When we were not at sea, or when I was not on duty, I would try and come home to get a little hunting in. Sometimes, I would just go up to our hunting club just to get a full day of hunting in and then drive all night to get back before I had to be at work. Looking back now, a lot of those drives were pretty stupid and didn’t make much sense; but for a guy eat up with hunting the way I was, I would have done pretty much anything to get in a tree stand for a couple of hunts.
After I had completed my four years, I made it home in June of 1993 and I told everyone that I was going to hunt every day if I could. That fall, our season opened up the first of October and closed the first of January. In those three months I hunted everyday but three. I don’t remember the reason I didn’t hunt, but it must have been good. After that year I hunted a lot every year, but never like that first fall back.
This year, I hunted opening day as usual, but since then I haven’t been in the woods much this year. For one thing, the weather has been consistently warm except for just a few days. Heat hasn’t been the only reason; the dry weather has been as much at fault as any. My work schedule has changed, too, and that has played a part, but even the days I did have a chance it just didn’t feel like one should be in the woods. Every year it seems like I hunt like crazy as soon as it opens and by the time the weather gets right and the deer really get to moving I get a little burned out.
This year, with not as much time on my hands, I am going to wait and pick my days. I’ll wait on fronts moving in and out or any kind of temperature or weather changes. So far this year, that hasn’t happened; and the few times I have been, the deer movement has been as slow as the cool weather moving in. Watching the weather, it looks like it might be starting to get right, but looking back everything has been late this year. Turkeys, crappie, and the bass were all a little late this year, so I guess the fall weather and whitetails will be the same way.
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