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Saturday, October 3, 2015

An East Wind

10-2-15


"Wind from the west, fish bite the best.  Wind from the east, fish bite the least."

As primarily an angler over the last 10 years, I've grown to hate an east wind.  My friend who makes maple syrup hates it, too, as even sap screeches to a stop when the wind comes from the wrong direction.  But its archery deer season, and even though the season is longer than most, its not long enough.  If you get a funky wind direction, you've gotta have a stand for an east wind or you just lost a day in the woods.

I took my climbing stand up about 20-feet last night.  Before pulling my bow up, I hugged the maple tree I was in and looked up at the swaying top.  It bowed back and forth like a rubber band.  At one point, I felt like it was going to fall on top of me.  "Don't look up."  I told myself.  

A pack of coyotes yipped and howled at 6:57p.m.  Three minutes later, a solitary doe grazed into the field 150yds south of me.  Another came 10 minutes later, and a third 10 minutes after that.  I watched them for as long as I could from 60yds inside the field edge before losing sight of them.  

They weren't supposed to come out to the field where they did.  They were supposed to come out on the runway I was sitting above.  But the error on my part was that they came out with the wind at their back.  They always come out with the wind at their back.  I should have picked a different tree to climb.  

I picked up my son's deer from the processor this afternoon.  50lbs of venison in the freezer, with three more tags to fill between the two of us.  If our arrows fly true, I'm gonna need to buy a chest freezer.  I'll wait till I need to, though.  Buying one now would be bad luck.  Like bringing a filet knife on a fishing trip.  If you have that knife in your pack, you just made it really hard to catch fish that day.  The hunting and fishing gods don't like it when you count your chickens before they hatch.  


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