It's A Long Season

Archery season is right around the corner here in Pennsylvania. I'm excited about the opener and all the possibilities the new season has to offer.

Mostly, though, I'm trying to keep in perspective the fact that it's a long season. I don't want to get burned out too early. Need to save some energy in the tank for prime time in November.

Last night I had a hard time sleeping, so I got up and turned on a few hunting shows.  Michael Hanback's Big Deer TV was on.  I really enjoyed it.  He made a 7-yard shot on a nice Canadian whitetail.  Prior to the kill, though, he said something that I totally agree with.  He said that the mental aspects of deer hunting are what make it challenging.

So true!

Deer hunting is not a physically demanding sport.  If you hunt a lot, though, it definitely tests your capacity for patience, endurance, and ability to stay focused.  When the weather's miserable, you're freezing your tail off, and you're not seeing deer, it's easier to give up and retreat to a warm kitchen and a steaming cup of coffee.  I've never killed a deer from my kitchen table, though. 

Perhaps my greatest hunting moment came during the 2010 West Virginia muzzleloader season.  I'd hunted archery and rifle and was still looking for a particular drop-tine buck (the tine actually jutted out at an odd angle from the base of its left antler).  I had pictures of him on trail camera but had never actually seen him...until the next to last day of muzzleloader season.  In the higher elevations around Cheat Mountain, with two feet of snow already on the ground and more snow falling at the rate of an inch an hour, I grunted and that drop-tine buck came barreling in.

It would've been so easy to give up and call it a year and shoot a buck much earlier in the season simply to fill my last tag.  But then I'd never have experienced the joy or sense of accomplishment I felt when I finally walked up to that buck and traced my fingers along its smooth antlers -- with the temperature hovering around zero degrees F and the snow continuing to fall.