GunRights4US's latest forest adventures

This last Saturday morning I proved again that deer only show up when and where you least expect them.

I’m sitting in a cypress tree with a thick cluster of young pines to my front, and a hardwood swamp to my rear. An old firebreak divides the pines from the swamp and I have 60 yards of visibility in both directions. The weather is nice with a mild temperature and a steady breeze from in front of me. Unfortunately, there’s a squirrel convention in full swing. Never in forty years of hunting have I seen so many squirrels in one bit of woods! From every direction comes the sound of barking, gnawing, limbs rustling, and acorns raining down. I can hardly hear myself think, let alone discern the particular sound of the furry, horned, forest ninja commonly known as a whitetail buck.

During a relative lull in the tree rat activities I do seem to hear the sound of foot steps out in the pines off to my left a ways. As if to confirm that something is moving, one of the tree rats scampers out of the pines and across the firebreak. He darts up a tree and proceeds to rant and rave in squirrel-ese at whatever it was that startled him. I watched the area especially hard for the next hour and never saw or heard anything else.

Finally around 11 a.m. I climbed down very quietly and set about gathering myself together for the hike out. I casually glance down the firebreak and there stands Bobby Big Buck looking right at me. I had only enough time to drop my lower jaw – and that’s all. Looking like a bit of furry lightning, he did a high speed vanishing act that would have made Houdini jealous.

Apparently the sound I heard was him coming into that corner of the pines to bed down, and my climb down had been enough to bump him off his bed.