New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff
The chill is on!
Tuesday 11/09/2004
Only 21 degrees this morning. The meadow below the house that is a backwater from the Suncook River is frozen for the first time this fall. It will likely thaw and refreeze several times before the final over winter freeze in December. But it is posable that this is it for the winter.
Had a great trip to "deer camp" with my son-in-law Derek Martel and his brother Rob. Headed up last Wednesday late morning stopping at the Kittery Trading Post as a must on the way. I settled into my tree stand overlooking a blue berry barren and thick cover on a hill top near camp by 3:00 PM. The roaring wind drowned out any other sounds as I swayed back and forth in the tree. I certainly didn't expect deer to be moving in such conditions, but suddenly there two stood! I did take a nice adult doe weighing 130 pounds.
Not 5 minutes later I heard a couple of shots in the direction of where Derek was sitting on the field where I took my 205 pound 8 pointer last year. Sure enough he had connected too. His first deer!
We each had a second tag and hunted a couple more days without glimpsing a flag. Extremely good luck is always tempered by plenty of patience and perseverance if you are a hunter.
We spent Saturday afternoon and well into the evening butchering the deer. I like the connection of doing it all myself. Well, myself meant Derek, as Katie occasionally crawled under the carcass covered table in my kitchen. Rick Hamlett his daughter Kassey and his signifiv=cants son, Matt all helped process the two deer well into the evening. I finished the job myself which took most of Sunday. I bought a seal-a-meal and vacuumed sealed all the cuts. What a satisfying sight it is to see the freshly stacked venison layered in the freezer. Of coarse we shared the tenderloins for dinner Saturday evening as we all were working the results of our hunt. Not unlike scenes that have preceded us by millenniums. That is really the best part of the hunt, to share the satisfaction of the bounty of the woods and to be directly connected to it all.
