I once had a reader from Vermont write and say that she has always dreamed of visiting Michigan. I have always dreamed of visiting Vermont. Christopher Kimball (The Cooks Illustrated guy) went deer hunting in Vermont and posted a video of a day in the Vermont woods. I wonder how many men just use deer hunting as an excuse to be out in the quietness and beauty of God’s creation?
Here is the first paragraph of his newsletter today:
The day before the opening of hunting season in Vermont is known as “Antler Day,” so Tom and I spent the afternoon up in the woods, looking for hookings (small trees on which bucks have rubbed their antlers), scrapes (areas on the ground that are scraped down to the dirt) and other signs of recent activity, and we surprised two large does in high grass. The next morning, I made a buttermilk pancake breakfast for Tom and his son Nate, and then we were up in our stands by 6 a.m. in a cold, steady rain. I sat for a couple of hours overlooking our summer pasture and then drove over to a neighbor’s property with my portable deer stand. (Portable stands allow you to shimmy your way up a tree in a hard-to-reach spot.) I spent a few hours right next to a well-worn deer trail and saw just one large doe before I came back to the original spot. Around 3:30 p.m., a small doe showed up, a wet ash-gray, checking out the upper field. Then she left and came back with her two yearlings and they grazed for half an hour. I stayed until 5 p.m. before driving home, soaked and chilled to the bone, only to discover that Nate had shot a large 8-pointer that morning. (Nate always gets a deer.) On Sunday, I walked up to the hollow right behind our farmhouse and watched a fog roll in. It was like sitting at the bottom of a shallow sea, the oak and poplar like eelgrass waving in the current, reaching up toward the surface. Two good-sized does snuck up behind me, but that was about it for the day. There is still one week left until black powder season in December! (Hope springs eternal).
