Lovely, dark and deep

At five I put my ear to the window, listened for a moment and heard the telltale sound of rain. Heavy rain. Drenching rain. So back to bed. Aroused from my slumber at about six forty five, I heard my uncle rustling around, making final preparations before heading out the door. "You're missing daylight, boy," he sang, though that was only barely technically true. The daypack was pretty much packed and ready to go so after a quick breakfast it was out the door and up the mountain.  

Wet, heavy snow weighs down every living thing in one of Paddy Mountain's clear cuts

Snow can be a boon to hunters. Movement is quieter, tracks are more visible and it takes more work for prey to forage for food buried beneath the fluffy stuff. Plus, should one actually shoot a deer, the snow makes it much more convenient to drag it back to the cabin. But it can also be disorienting. Fortunately on Paddy mountain there is only one way home - down. I frequently stray from established trails up on the mountain, but once I find my way down to the road I can always find the route back to the cabin.

This particular morning I overshot the trail up to my blind, but after having realized it, I decided to just keep going and explore an area I haven't seen before. So I turned uphill from the forest road that Fairmont Lane becomes (there's some debate about whether it's still Fairmont Lane at that point or Bonnet Hill Lane / Rt. 1857, as indicated on the National Geographic Massanutten and Great North Mountain map).

I crossed an earthen tank trap I'd never noticed before, thinking it was a jeep trail that would lead up what several of the neighbors refer to as Tartesall's Gut. Basically the next stream over from the one I usually go up. Any obvious signs of an established trail up the mountain petered away within a few hundred yards, but your intrepid narrator would not be deterred, even if I was slightly detoured. Despite being somewhat uncertain of my exact location, I was determined to get as high up the mountain as I could. The going was slow but quiet and lovely. I easily got up on the bench that runs across the mountain just beneath the spurs. It was there I started to see several sets of fresh deer tracks in the snow. I did my very best tippy toe stalking, slowly moving my way higher up the slope, following tracks as they zigged and zagged upward into the laurel. The higher I got the more jagged the tracks, with increasingly indistinct prints. I suspect I was pushing a small group upward as I moved, but as always with such scenarios, the tracks let straight into an impenetrable wall of evergreen claws and I eventually dead ended into an evil snarl of laurel. Ah well, it was beautiful and I took the opportunity to have a seat and enjoy a nice meatloaf sandwich in a peaceful little laurel cul de sac. 

Buttloads of snow

Suffice to say, the way home was considerably easier than the trip up. I wended my way down the mountain in a direction generally intended to put me back at the clear cut around which I generally hunt. As it happened I ended up within a few hundred yards of my blind. I then worked my way down the mountain edging my way around a clear cut with a stream bed running through its center, as is my typical pattern. I frequently close out my day with a visit to a rocky outcropping, overlooking the cut, that affords great views of the mountain above and the valley below.

The blanketed spurs of Paddy Mountain, Shenandoah County, Virginia

The next three days were wonderful. I only spotted a single deer, but didn't have a shot. Still, I wouldn't have traded the time in the snowy forest for anything. This year my brother, his sixteen year old son and fourteen year old daughter were able to come up for a couple of days after Thanksgiving. My niece accompanied me for two days which was a great deal of fun. I've never seen anyone who can sleep sitting on buckets, on rocks and in the snow. The girl, a lanky, athletic ginger, would sleep so deeply that her neck gaiter would become saturated with drool. Revolting. But this was a rare opportunity to spend quality time with my family and I cherished it. We should all be so lucky every year. 

After the hunt, a buttload of shearling-lined Chippewas drying in the mud room - Natural, waxed and vintage

The Rut

The autumn has come and soon it will be hunting season. Okay, it's already hunting season, but I can't go yet on account'a I got this job and all. So, following the emerging pattern over the last two years, I'll take to the mountain during the week of Thanksgiving. It's becoming a family tradition, heading to the mountain with my uncle and whatever other family members are willing to come up and spend time tramping around the frozen forest from predawn to post-dusk.

This is what it looks like at my parents' house at Thanksgiving. How 'bout yours?

Of course successful hunting trips don't just happen. Like everything else in life (delightful Thanksgiving meals, for instance or securing the right to an adequate standard of living) they take planning and preparation. This year I got a non-resident lifetime Virginia Hunting License and bought the requisite Bear/Dear/Turkey tags early, so I'm legal. The paperwork is in order and I'm all set should Game Warden Timmy inquire about my bona fides.

A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than by a mob of onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this fact.

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

So, with my '42 Swedish Mauser I'm all set for deer. With the proper planning this year I should get five full days in. Many of the hunters up at Paddy Mountain extend their season by going out for the late muzzle-loader season, which could add another couple of weeks of opportunity, and my uncle offered to lend me a spare muzzle. But that would require an additional license and the season goes from December 13 - January 3, during which I'd probably have a hard time getting away from work and family obligations.

So this year I figured I would go out for Fall Turkey in addition to deer, which will extend the season at least as long as black powder would, and probably more. Plus my license runs through the Spring Turkey season so I can potentially go out again in April. Last year while I was ostensibly deer hunting, I heard what could only have been turkey up the hollow overlooking which I had established my stand. And this year while scouting around I found two turkey feathers quite close to the hunt club. So I've kind of got turkey fever. With that in mind, I turned my attention to my tools. I have a Mossberg 12 gauge shotgun left to me by my uncle, but it had a 28 inch barrel with a fixed modified choke; good for deer, but not so much for turkey which require a very narrow choke to keep the shot in a tight pattern. So I picked up a 24 inch turkey-specific replacement barrel and an XX-full choke tube - the narrowest I could find.

A proper turkey gun. Mossberg 500A, with a 24" vent rib bead sight blued finish barrel 90135

...and an XX-Full choke tube.

A few weeks ago I went up to the range to figure out what ammo to use. I've settled on Winchester Long Beard XR. I also tried Remington Turkey Loads, but the Winchester held a much tighter pattern much farther out. The description of their revolutionary polymer technology seems a bit gimmicky, and I worry that I am filling the woods with tons of plastic, but in my highly unscientific survey, they really did perform far better than the competition. For the moment I'm sold.

So now the ol' Mossberg is a proper turkey gun. Maybe not a perfect turkey gun, but good enough. And shortening the barrel by 4 inches makes the gun feel infinitely less cumbersome for a little guy like your faithful author. By contemporary standards a turkey gun should probably be all camo'd out. Apparently turkeys have good eyesight, and the conventional wisdom is that you need to be completely invisible. I've been advised to wear the equivalent of a camo burqa, and to paint my face in festive RealTree™. Turkeys are known to have very good hearing too, which is why, when hunting them you need to be vewy, vewy qwiet. Since this is my first foray into the quest to get a gobbler, I'm not quite ready to go full Rambo. I reckon the pilgrims managed to kill turkey with blunderbusses while wearing buckled shoes. So I should be fine in my LL Bean camo and Mossberg 500a.

Historically valid proof that the Pilgrims used blunderbusses to hunt turkeys - Gobble gobble BANG!

Speaking of shoes, that's another preparation I've made for the season. I got the old Chippewa Arctic 50s out of the closet and put a coat of beeswax on them, the better to keep the tootsies toasty and dry. I used the Justin boots beeswax-based waterproofing they gave me up to the Alvin Stokes General Store when I bought the boots last year. I am of the opinion that beeswax is by far the best treatment for waterproofing, and the fact that this was free from the manufacturer pretty much sealed the deal. And sealed the boots! The treatment darkened the leather a bit, which I like a lot. The Arctic 50 only comes in a colorway known as Bay Apache, a pleasant medium brown, but if I had my druthers I would have preferred a darker color in the first place. So form follows function and I couldn't be happier.

Newly waxed Chippewa Arctic 50's

During the summer The Managing Partner and I made a scouting trip up to Paddy Mountain to do some maintenance on my blind. It was always a kind of ramshackle affair to begin with; well situated with long sight lines in several directions, but with no more cover than a hastily assembled brush pile. We spent a couple of hours gathering up branches and leaves to construct a serviceable camouflage barrier which should obscure my presence. By the time I'm sitting in it, the blind will have been there for several months, so hopefully the wildlife will have come to take its presence for granted and won't notice the little man now sitting in it. 

So I got my gun set up, my boots are waxed and the blind is in tip top shape. The leave slip has been turned into the boss, and the plan is to spend the entire week up at the Twin Spurs Hunt Club. We will come down from the mountain long enough to make our way to Chester Gap for the Thanksgiving feast with family. Then it will be back to the mountain for the last couple of days of the deer season. Judging from the impending polar vortex, I'm sure going to be glad to have those fleece lined boots.

Celebrate good times, come on!

My name is Norman and I paint lies

Today, in celebration of the fact that the indigenous people of this land failed to comprehend our ancestors' true intention and foolishly kept them alive through the first few winters of the colonization, we will stuff ourselves with the fruits of their mistake. We will gorge ourselves on the genetic abomination that is the modern turkey; the product of a most unnatural selection so horrible as to have almost no precedent save that of the comparison between the proportions of a Barbie® doll and that of an actual woman. Mankind's obsession with outsized breasts seems boundless.

That said, after spending the afternoon stuffing my gullet with truly obscene quantities of food and alcohol, I anticipate falling into my usual post holiday state of bloated self loathing. And like the good descendant of Puritans I am, I anticipate awakening bright and early Friday morning filled with the desire to punish myself for having indulged my wanton animal desires, my gluttonous impulse to pleasure, my decadent hedonism, my godless debauchery. And I plan to symbolically flagellate my body on the saddle of a bicycle; to purify my soul with Cliff's Bars and sports drinks. So I will climb the hill to Forest Glen, then turn around and amble out past Olney and back. Then it'll be time to stuff myself with leftovers and do it all again on Sunday!

I hope your suffering is as exquisite. Happy Thanksgiving.