After a couple days of hunting with my muzzleloader (Thompson/Center Triumph) in the hills of Underhill, I decided it was time to spend a day in the office…to work on my blog. The photo was taken yesterday just below the top of a local hill. Extra credit if you can identify it. (Jim and Paul are not eligible for this contest with no prize.)

I was hunting with Jim and Paul (those not eligible), who both had doe tags (only relevant if they had shot a deer). We were hoping to push deer to each other as we moved through the woods. We were hunting land that Jim has hunted for decades – certainly long before I moved back to Vermont, so he knows the landscape quite well. Jim would call periodically on his cell phone to see where everyone was. Whenever he’d call to ask where I was, I answered the only honest way I could think of, “I’m right here,” I’d say; “where are you?” I didn’t see Jim the rest of the day.

We saw lots of sign and a possible bear denning site. Jim and Paul were too cowardly to venture a poke inside while I provided backup security. They don’t make men like they used to. In hindsight, I just should have dared them to do it. After all, it is all in the presentation of the challenge.

I leave Friday to head over to New Hampshire to probably not shoot any deer with my brother Kirk, cousin Mike, and Kirk’s friend Gary. We are hunting Bear Brook State Park Saturday and somewhere around Hillsborough on Sunday. It will be the last weekend of rifle season in the Granite State.

After the hunt on Saturday, I plan on taking an inventory of what everyone lugged into the woods – with extra points for total cumulative weight. It is always interesting, at least to me, to see what each person views as an essential piece of hunting gear. When I was hunting in the Adirondacks this past October with my dad and his friend Dick, we were comparing hunting knives. Dick commented on the extra weight of my knife, which I’m proud to say is a Case with 4 interchangeable blades, compared to his single-blade knife. What amused me about his comment was not the ounces I could save with a smaller knife, but the amount of additional gear I could carry if I shed a needed 20 or so pounds. Speaking of hunting gear…while I am not certain, there seems to be an inverse relationship between hunting success and the total number of batteries carried afield (excluding, perhaps, batteries in watches). Saturday’s inventory will include a battery count.

Tonight I’m heading to the Central Vermont Chapter of Trout Unlimited meeting over in South Burlington at the Best Western hotel in the Windjammer conference room. The meeting starts at 7PM and the speaker will be “the insighful and always entertaining” Bob
Shannon, the owner of the Flyrod Shop in Stowe. As always they will have bucket raffle prizes and complimentary refreshments.

Happy days afield.