The Wind in the Oaks…

Stepping lightly amongst newly fallen oak leaves, the hat-rack buck only
comes by when I am napping.

The opening of deer season was only a few hours away. It was pitch black outside and the wind was roaring through the oaks up here on Lightnin’ Ridge. “Shucks” I thought to myself as I lay there in bed listening to that wind. “There won’t be a leaf left on my oak trees!”

I am sensitive about such things. I had watched those oak leaves bud out on the big white oak beside my back porch, only a few months ago it seems. First there were the tassels hanging down, shedding a yellow-green pollen all over my porch, a thick dusting of it that got in the house somehow and caused me to sneeze. How wonderful spring was, if I can remember right. But finally those squirrel-ear sized leaves began to pop out and it was easy to see summer was on its way. In no time, they were fully formed and bright green and it was great to sleep at night with the windows open and hear the rain dripping through that thick canopy. What wonderful shade it gave in July, when I would sit out there and coax the sun into setting over the distant river, late in the day.

In September, I abruptly awakened to the sound of acorns bouncing off my roof. I smiled to myself knowing that those first acorns meant the bass would be smashing buzz-baits and topwater lures on the river not far from Lightnin’ Ridge. In no time, you could hardly sleep at night for the sound of bouncing acorns. It was one of those Octobers where you had to sweep the porch every couple of hours.

October grew old and the sun began to set earlier and earlier, those beautiful green leaves began to turn color, a little brown, and yellow, and gold and red. In the last days of that wonderful short month, I began to sweep leaves off the porch with the acorns.

And finally it was mid-November. My daughter had come to spend the night, looking forward to hunting with me. But for some reason my dear, deer-hunting daughter, determined to outdo dad come dawn in the deer-woods, dozed deeply in the dark in my den, and didn’t hear the darned wind. But I did, and so I turned off the alarm clock and went back to sleep as best I could, waking after it began to get light, and it was still very windy. While we were eating breakfast the wind began to die down a little, and so we quickly filled our pockets with ammo and our packs with snacks and water, and headed for the woods. I walked Christy to the tree stand I put up for her a couple of years ago, saw to it she had her harness on and her rifle loaded, and declined to join her. I left her for another spot where I could lean up against a tree and nap.

There are thousands of oak trees all over Missouri and Arkansas that I have ‘leaned up against’, waiting for a deer or a turkey. Most oak trees have very uncomfortable rocks cropping up where I sit to keep me about half miserable. They were smaller when I was younger.

A good oak without rocks at its base is hard to find. It took me several years to come up with the idea of bringing along a cushion. I hate to do that. I have worried, in past years that one of my readers might see me with that cushion and question my grizzled old outdoorsmanship.

I tried several oak trees last Saturday. A doe and a yearling came by and woke me up at my first spot, but I didn’t see any hat-rack bucks, so I went to another place and two more does came by at a trot, a little more intent on being harder targets. I may shoot a doe later, but not on the day I am hunting with my daughter. I am just there on such a day to help her take care of her deer when she gets one.

In the past four years, Christy has killed four, two-year-old fork-horned bucks, each with one broken antler. I was still leaning up against an oak tree at eleven that morning, wondering if she would ever shoot. Before I left her, I laughingly reminded her to take a two-year-old buck with one broken antler. I didn’t know it, but she had seen seven does and yearlings before a buck came by. And she just couldn’t shoot a doe with its half-grown kid, or two half-grown kids, tagging along behind it!

Shortly after eleven, an antlered deer walked up through the woods, and she cocked her 30-30 Winchester carbine and dropped him in his tracks.

When I got there, (and I know this is going to be hard to believe)… he was laying there dead. And I swear folks, this is the truth…as I am holding my right hand up and my left hand over my heart while I type this… it was a young fork-horned buck with about two inches broken off of the end of one antler. That makes five broken antlered deer in five years.

That evening, as Christy and her mother were fixing some loin steaks back at the little house beneath the oak trees up on Lightnin’ Ridge, I headed back out to the woods and found myself another nice oak tree, thinking maybe that hat-rack buck would stumble across me and wake me up. I saw seven or eight more does, and thought of a half dozen good reasons not to shoot one. I watched the setting sun shine through a black oak still full of beautiful gold and crimson leaves, and wondered how in the world so many of them remained after the wind we had experienced in the night.

Ten or fifteen years ago I would have likely shot one of those does and perhaps would have noticed those sunlit crimson leaves a great deal less. For some reason, it is different now that rocks are harder to sit on. I gaze through the woodlands before me, at squirrels busily gathering the acorns they so willingly ignored when hickory nuts were plentiful, and I can see, in my minds eye, the first skiff of snow, and hear some distant church bells ringing out a Christmas carol, as deer season is forgotten.

I can feel the cold mornings of January, and see falling snow that gets deep enough to make for good rabbit hunting. Even beyond that, I gaze into the future and imagine the coming of longer, warmer days and those first oak stamens which will make me sneeze in April, just when some long-bearded, gobbling tom is easing through the woods, scratching at old dead leaves which were bright green a month or so ago.

It just feels so good to be in these quiet woods, no matter the season and no matter the reason, waiting and listening and thinking. There will be many more oak trees to sit against, I hope. I think I’ll keep bringing that old camouflaged boat cushion with me to soften the rocks. Make no mistake about it, it will not soften me any! And make no mistake about it, I’ll get that hat-rack buck yet, sometime before all of today’s oak leaves become tomorrow’s forest carpet. I’ll get him or one of his sons. Maybe.

Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613 or e-mail lightninridge@windstream.net. The website is larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com