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A hunting we will go!
This past week, the mosquitoes were as thick as the air. I breathed them, swallowed them, smelled and tasted them. I could have stirred them with a stick had I dared to pick one up during the onslaught.
Even worse was the fact that I had carefully washed my hair with unscented shampoo and washed my clothes with unscented detergent to gain a stealthy advantage over the trophy bucks. But once outside my truck, I was forced to drench myself in toxic smelling repellent which did absolutely no good in terms of deterring the mosquitoes.
I am sure the deer were hunkered down beneath the thickest shrubs in an effort to flee the small winged torturers. Who failed to tell the insects we are in the middle of the worst drought in history? Where in the heck did they find water for breeding?
I am ready to give up hunting all together. I am too soft for it.
I can’t even believe I am thinking in such terms. I have been a true blue hunter for as long as I can remember. Some of my fondest memories are walking the creek banks of the Econfina, camping in the cold, and the camaraderie of my oldest and dearest friends. Heck, camouflage is my favorite color.
Gone are the days of looking for tracks, trails, and fluffy white tails. Hunting leases took all that away. Now, I hunt perched high in the air in a condominium (a 4 x 4 box 20 feet in the air) with all the comforts of home; heater, radio, TV. One of my buddies hooked up an outside antenna and set up a DVD player.
By definition, I don’t think I can even call it hunting. It should be called sitting because that is what I do. I sit. I wait. I watch. I don’t actually hunt the deer. I wait for the deer to hunt me.
Four years ago, I put a tin roof on my condominium. Now, I pray for rain. It sings me to sleep. There is something mighty comforting about sleeping in a 4x4 box 20 feet in the air. Were it not for the annoyance of constantly waking to see if a trophy buck has entered my shooting lanes, I could sleep the sleep of angels.
When I am not sleeping, I worry about all the things I could be doing: time with the family, or gardening, or working on the leaky faucet, or a hundred other things that make more sense than sitting in a 4x4 box 20 feet in the air. Oh, such selfish indulgence.
And the Florida Black Bear has made a terrific comeback. It is very common to see fresh bear droppings on my walk to my condo. There is something very discomforting about seeing evidence of a 300 pound animal capable of ripping your head off. My best friend Mike had a large bear scratch its back on the legs of his condo last year. That can make a man have an accident in his camo jeans. (I am not saying that it did. I am not saying that it didn’t either.)
So, I walk very cautiously in the darkness to my hunting spot.
But it is not just bears. The woods hold all kinds of things that can get you. Your mind can play lots of tricks when you are miles from street lights in the middle of dark and lonesome.
I never look behind me. I was once told that you will not see “boogers” if you never turn around to look. I don’t know if this is true or not because I never do it. I suppose if it were true, no one would be around to tell you different. But, I don’t play around with such things. I walk straight ahead and hurry to my hunting spot. “Boogers” can’t get to you in a 4x4 box 20 feet in the air.
Once inside the box last Friday, I lit my heater, even though it wasn’t too cold. I was hoping the dozen or so mosquitoes that had cleverly attached to tops of my uncovered ears would haphazardly fall onto the heater and die like the demons they are. But, no, I had to search and destroy each little devil, one at a time, armed only with a flashlight and determination.
Once the killing spree ended, I opened the windows to stare into the night searching for the first glimmer of light. It is amazing how loud a breaking twig or the rustling of bushes can be in the stillness. The sounds become a nocturnal chorus of the unfamiliar. The night animals scurry into their sanctuary to make way for the sunrise.
These moments prior to first light are the quietest. All of my senses are engaged waiting for the shadows to disappear and the light to reveal the unfolding day.
I sat and waited, but all I heard was buzzing from a very clever mosquito I had apparently missed during my earlier rampage. His buzz was deafening and sounded more like an attack helicopter than a mosquito. He flew in and out of my ear canal much more quickly than my swatting. At one point it seemed he flew straight through one ear and out the other.
My mother taught me not to talk ugly, but that mosquito got a good cussing because my random swinging caused me to bang against the side of my 4x4 sanctuary and alert everything alive for a one mile radius that I was in the woods.
This was an important fight. I knew that I could not dose off with that annoying arthropod aiming for any uncovered skin. Surely he would land on the very tip of my nose and have his way with me. One of us must go.
The light is always slow to come. But when it finally arrived, I saw the little monster fly out the window and out of my reach. He was so full of my blood he could barely gain altitude. I knew he, and all his friends, would be waiting for me when I climbed down from my 4x4 condo 20 feet in the air. I was sure he would tell of my slow reflexes and abundant flesh.
The glow grew brighter in the eastern sky. I was fatigued from the fight and not much in the mood to sit and wait for another three hours. The thrill of taking a trophy buck seemed a distant possibility. Maybe if it were colder, I thought. Or maybe if I had seen more signs. It had rained Wednesday and only one track had crossed the road. A week earlier, the deer were herding in my shooting lanes.
It’s hunting season and surely I can find some game to take; a rabbit or squirrel. I thought of Elmer Fudd again, “ I wiww vewy swowwy waise my gun and shoot that wacky wabbit.”
Maybe I have been in this 4x4 box too long, I thought. I’m starting to talk crazy. I reached for my headsets and listened to NPR’s Morning Edition and suddenly felt normal again.
I waited and watched but nothing gave up a target. At 8:00 AM, I switched my radio to 102.7 to listen to Swap Shop on Blountstown’s radio station. There were all kinds of horse trailers, yard sales, house work, and guitars. I once bought an acoustic guitar and some pecans after listening to Swap Shop.
The show ran for one hour, so when it ended it was time to climb out of my 4x4 box and 20 feet down. Sure enough, thousands, no millions of mosquitoes were waiting and the race was on. I made it to my truck as fast as I could and rolled up the windows.
On the drive home, I wondered why in the world a grown man would get up so early in the morning, spend so much money, drive so very far, fight bugs, bears, and boogers, just to shoot a wild animal. In a moment of complete clarity, it came to me:
It’s vewy, vewy, fun and it is how I west and wewax.
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