Change of Season
For me, the first three days of February revolved around the late primitive season for deer that allowed you to fill any left over tags that you hadn't filled, or if you had, to take an extra doe, using a recurve or longbow, or a sidelock muzzleloader. It felt too late in the winter to be hunting deer.
Our season hadn't been the most productive, but a friend had given us several crop damage deer and so we weren't dying for meat but another one in the freezer would be a good thing. I always loved hunting with a muzzleloader. Since the season was late in the year, I opted to hunt using a bit of discretion. With most of the bucks having lost their horns, and the older does being bred, I would attempt to take a young yearling doe, which would be better eating anyway.
The weather had been very spring-like and most of the snow had all melted, with only a few patches here and there. The nights were in the twenties but every day the temps would climb up into the forties and even fifties. It really felt like spring.
I shot my muzzleloader the day before season several times, making sure that I could hit what I was aiming at. I've been struggling with the getting older/reading/ seeing thing. For the most part I wear contacts and use reading glasses to read, but that didn't work well for my old style open sights on my gun. I wore my progressive lenses and shined up the front brass sight and that seemed to shoot almost as good as it did back in the day.
Unlike modern rifles, muzzleloaders foul up pretty quickly from the powder residue. All of the smoke is partly what makes shooting one so much fun. So after shooting several shots, I swiped several patches loaded with bore cleaner up and down the barrel and called it clean enough before loading it up again for the next day of hunting.
The next morning was a pretty one. I saw a buck with its antlers missing and so I gave it a pass. Then a young doe came into the thicket where I was sitting. She was at forty yards and I thought it would make an easy shot. With the double set triggers and a strong sidelock, I almost always get an instant bang from the rifle as soon as I touch the trigger. Not this time. The cap snapped but the gun didn't fire at all. I guess that I had gotten too much bore cleaner in the bottom of the barrel and so my powder was damp. I removed the nipple and added a dabble of fresh powder. The gun performed exactly like it should, although there wasn't a deer anywhere around at that point. I didn't hunt Friday so I shot the gun several times. It's always fun to shoot except for the cleaning part, but I wanted to make sure that it would work flawlessly the next day, so I took the gun apart and cleaned it up the right way. I took the nipple out and momentarily misplaced it. After cleaning it with hot soapy water and letting it dry out, and not instantly finding the nipple, I removed one from another gun with the thought that I would get everything ready for the next morning. When I tried to stick the nipple in it didn't seem to fit just right but I snugged it up and then looked for the other nipple. After finding it again, I removed the one from the other gun and replaced it with the original nipple and voila, I was ready for the next morning.
The next morning was a frosty 23° but beautiful and it felt like spring. I waited and heard several deer walking but not close enough that I could see them in the crunchy leaves. Eventually a doe came walking my direction and after checking her out closely with the binoculars and determining she was what I wanted, I got everything ready and when I thought I had a good shot, I squeezed the trigger. Boom the deer ran off waving her tail like I'd missed and I saw a branch about 10 ft in front of me swinging that I'd nicked probably sending my projectile in the wrong direction. The deer stopped and stood there and so I quickly reloaded or attempted to when I noticed powder coming out of where my nipple used to be. Apparently the threads were damaged when I put the nipple back in and when I shot the gun the nipple blew out of the gun. That could have been a dangerous thing for me but luckily it wasn't. I looked at the gun and decided to call it quits. Back in the day I would have gone back home and grabbed another gun and went hunting some more. I had to chuckle as I looked my gun over and noticed the deer tracks on the side of the gun stock. I used to take a wood burner and put a deer track on the stock each time I shot one. I thought about how times change. It used to be about how many and then it changed to how big and now sometimes I'm not sure what season I'm in. Of course I'm happy if I tag a big buck or if I get venison for the freezer, but often it's more about getting out there and trying to find and get close to the critters in nature. And sometimes I'm just happy to be able to be out there. Since it was such a pretty day and it felt like spring, I took some time to enjoy the moment, sit back and to ponder. I got out my pack stove and cooked up a packet of oatmeal. As I poked my way back to the truck, it was fun to just be out. The sunny weather definitely was saying that spring is coming.
Seasons change day to day and year to year but as we get older some seasons are just new ones for us.
As I looked back on the day, I couldn't help but think about the seasons of life and how sometimes I'm not even sure what season I'm in or what I should be doing.
Often it's during these seasons of change when we realize that those things that we deemed as overly important , really weren't that important at all. And what we thought was important, was actually just a preparation for what was coming next.
Sometimes I struggle in not knowing what season I'm in or precisely what I should be doing with each passing day. Other times it feels like spring is on the way and I just want to throw everything down and rush into that next season. But I know winter isn’t over, and so the best thing is probably to just do the things that need to be done and be content with the season that's here. And when you do find yourself stuck between the seasons, it's probably a good time to stop, pull out the stove and relax a bit. Cause one things sure, there's a new season coming!
