Tuesday, October 4, 2005

'Tis the season

I was talking to my neighbor the other day and telling him that I have seen more deer this year during my walks in the woods than in all of the past 30 years combined.

“I think the big construction projects in Hooksett, where they’re clearing out all the trees, has something to do with it,” I told him. “It’s pushing the animals in our direction.”

My neighbor, an avid hunter, shook his head. “I’ll bet you anything that you won’t see any more deer now till at least January. It’s hunting season, and the deer know it. They’ll make themselves scarce.”

I pictured the deer gathered around a calendar nailed to a tree in the woods and saying, “Yep, Bambi, it’s hunting season all right. Come on, we’d better get the heck out of here.”

“Is it really hunting season already?” I asked.

My neighbor nodded. “Bow and arrow. Then in late October it’s muzzleloaders, and finally regular firearms. If you’re going out walking in the woods, you’d better wear orange, just to be safe. You don’t want to end up with an arrow in your butt.”

I groaned. Every year at this time, I have to don my Great Pumpkin outfit, which consists of so much fluorescent orange, I swear that people all the way up in Quebec can see me.

Even worse, I also have to deck out my dogs in orange. I bought orange vests, orange neckerchiefs, and even orange collars for them, just to be safe. If I could hook up flashing lights that spell out “DOG” and hang those on their backs, I’d probably do that, too. That’s because a couple times during past hunting seasons, hunters have warned me that my dogs look too much like deer from a distance.

I remember when I used to bring a cassette player with me on my daily hikes and blast rock-music tapes so hunters would hear me approaching and not mistake me for a deer. I’d thought it was a pretty good idea…until I mentioned it to my husband.

“You go around making all that noise in the woods?” he asked. “It’s a wonder the hunters don’t shoot you for scaring all the deer away!”

“That probably would explain why I thought I heard a bush cursing at me one afternoon.”

The thing I like about deer hunters is that they wear bright orange, too, so I usually can spot them from a distance and not be startled by them. Bird hunters, on the other hand, in their camouflage outfits, blend right in with the scenery and become invisible. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been out hiking and walked by a tree trunk that suddenly said hello to me. The first time it happened, I nearly needed a defibrillator.

Over the years, however, I have learned how to tell when hunters are around so I can keep an eye out for them. First of all, there will be pickup trucks parked along the edge of the woods. You can just about guarantee that for each one of those trucks, there will be at least one weapon-toting person roaming around.

And then there is the toilet paper. During hunting season, clumps of it seem to magically appear in the woods along the hiking trails. I’ve never actually witnessed how the toilet paper got there (and I pray I never will), but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t due to the animals being on a sudden personal-hygiene kick.

Of course, when there’s snow on the ground, it’s a snap to tell where the hunters are because their footprints are a dead giveaway. I don’t know if this is a proven scientific fact or not, but I have noticed, from years of studying hunters’ footprints in the snow, that most of them walk with their right foot turned outward.

I don’t know which is weirder…the fact that they walk with their right foot turned out…or the fact that I even noticed.

So as much as we hate to, my dogs and I will be wearing our bright orange ensembles for the next couple of months. That way, we should be able to make it through another hunting season without getting shot full of holes.

That is, unless we startle one of the hunters while he’s actually using some of that toilet paper.