I love the feeling I get in the waning days of modern gun deer season.

It's kind of bittersweet knowing that something I looked forward to all summer will soon end. I remember sun-swept days in mid-October and early November and the excitement that accompanied muzzleloader season and the opening weekend of modern gun season. Yes, we complained about the heat, but that's always such a nice time to be in the woods.

Now it's mid December. Almost everybody in the Old Belfast Hunting Club has hung it up for the year. It's almost like the feeling I get late in football season. At the beginning, a championship was possible, but a few tough weeks crushed our dreams. Now I just hope to win one more game.

I'm alone in my stand in the pines. My Little Buddy propane heater keeps my legs too warm the rest of me not warm enough. There's not much room in the cupola, and my heavy parka reduces the area considerably. Every time I move, the hood or a sleeve catches on a bit of siding and scrapes. I know that the sound is inaudible 20 yards away, but in the stand it sounds like a roar. It makes me mutter.

Noise is the reason I stopped bringing a Thermos full of coffee into my stand many years ago. It squeaks loudly when I unscrew the cup and the lid. I'm sure that is audible a long distance away, and my need for quiet subordinates my love for caffeine.

My Aladdin travel mug is the solution. Its lid is vacuum sealed and leak-proof. It opens by thumbing a small latch that opens a slit in the lid. It keeps coffee hot all day. Scalding coffee on my lips forces me to take small sips. It lasts all day, and the mug carries nicely in a backpack.

I ran over the mug with my Ram 1500 pickup in May 2020 during a turkey hunt in Oklahoma. My tire put a big dent in the mug which compromises the vacuum's integrity a little. You can hear air fizz out when the mug is full. It really ticked me off when I did it, but now it's just part of the character that all hunters' gear has.

I scan the woods for movement, and my ears are sharp for the crack of a twig or the soft crush of leaves. These are often the only clues that reveal a deer's presence as it slips through the thick brush. I can't see them and they can't see me. I wait and hope one crosses the clearing to either side of the stand. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't.

I saw only one buck this season, a dandy mature 8-point that came and went so fast that I didn't have time to raise my rifle. He was looking for does and had no interest in food or attractants.

My friend Mike Romine had been hunting the same deer from his stand a half a mile away. Hunters have a saying, "If a deer or turkey does the same thing twice, make him pay for it the third time." The buck had twice passed Romine's stand just out of sight as it followed a path that took him past my stand. The third time he crossed a little too close, and Romine made him pay. It's the nicest buck taken on our club this year.

Something in the air made me feel happy. I can't explain it, but the sting of cold and the freshness of the air smelled like early spring. I drank that air like wine, coursing it through my sinuses and down my throat into my lungs. It made me feel a little melancholy, the kind I feel at the end of duck season when there's still so much winter remaining but most of the ducks have left. The hunters have all gone home. Urgency and purpose have departed from the hunting fields, but something in the air hints at the approach of spring turkey season. I smell that air, and the excitement comes rushing back.

It's worth sharing. I fish my smartphone from my parka pocket. It snags on a a pair of ear plugs on a cable and a handwarmer wrapper. I free the phone and start texting my friends. I won't miss anything because deer aren't moving anyway.

My friends are doing stuff at home and at work. They're happy to hear somebody's still hunting, and they want to know every detail.

Print Headline: Almost closing time in the Arkansas deer woods

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