By Mac Arnold
Editor-In-Chief
As I sit here on Tuesday, Feb. 15, going into the third week of recovery from ankle replacement surgery with the days dragging on, I'm wondering how I can get started on a new blog item to follow up on the 2021-22 hunting seasons.
Most afternoons take place in the kitchen post where I'm close to the back door to conveniently let the dogs out when needed. Seems like this happens a lot to my chagrin, and yet I still get burned by the 6-month-old Lab pup.
It's also where the speakers are located so I can stare out at the living room and listen to tunes.
Today, I've already burned through my favorite inspirational Christian songs, and the Gordon Lightfoot channel on Spotify wasn't getting it either since I've had that on for the past several days in a row. Gord's cool don't get me wrong. The artists that I lean toward are those who pick an acoustic guitar and croon away.
Now I'm dialed onto the Kenny Chesney channel. Not a bad stop really since he sings about sandy beaches and relaxing hot spots to hang out all the while reflecting on life's pursuits and pitfalls. Good visions to have with the weather the way it is here in Northwest Ohio as temperatures dangle in the low 20s. The pile of snow that fell during last week's storm remains wherever you look.
The forecast is calling for mid-50s tomorrow (Feb. 16), so I may just roll outside and take up a perch to enjoy a bit of fresh air.
But what about the wrap-up on the 2021-22 hunting season?
Hold on, I'll have to put a pause on Mr. Chesney since he has me imagining I'm drifting lazily away with the wind on a boat (or in my case, a canoe) on a hot July day. That'll work here in a couple months. Trust me I can't wait to get out on the water and do some baaaaaaaaaaaaaass fishing. And I anticipate getting out more than once like last year since now we have a vehicle with a rack on top.
Hmmmm, so we'll end here on one of his best songs: "Better boat."
Now let's get to that fall-to-winter season where deer reigns as king.
Pretty uneventful except I finally did bag a deer -- a buck even -- unfortunately he didn't pass the Michigan Thumb camp standards, and I heard an earful with even a $100 fine discussed over my transgression. Camp boss is a stickler on the regs there -- even if he himself has done the same thing himself -- oops, did I say that? -- and bucks have to have three points to a side. This one had two.
Frankly, the light was slipping away and I was really just looking for a nice-bodied doe to blast with the muzzle loader on Dec. 6. His head was down and one side was completely broke off. Reflecting back on it now I should've put the binos on him again.
Thing is, in the end, it's still a legal deer in the state's eyes. So I'm kinda happy and kinda not. And I have venison. Lots of it. I think in the future I'll only shoot ones there that rival the world record Milo Hansen buck.
Heaven forbid if you shoot a button buck. I mean I hate when that happens and take great pains to make sure that doesn't happen but it still does. Thinking about it now, I can't even remember when I've shot a button last so it's been a long time. Maybe the early 2010s?
And I can't even count how many younger bucks I've passed up there. Probably dozens so it's not like I don't try to follow the rules.
Put this scenario on Ohio public land and/or Michigan with it being that late in the season, I would have shot that buck all day long. Way I look at it, that's a trophy with the old smoke pole. And really that makes it more fun to me being it's a kill with a primitive weapon.
Especially in Ohio. I almost didn't buy a deer tag. Wasn't really anticipating going out but then I saw how the muzzle loader season dates -- Jan. 8-11 -- kinda jived with when I wanted to kick back before my ankle surgery and figured, why not?
Again, as in the last two seasons in the Buckeye State, no deer were seen let alone bagged. The last day out retired me for good this deer season as temperatures dipped into teens Real Feel with the 30-mph winds howling. I wisely trudged not too far away from the car at the Killdeer Plains spot.
As I was walking back to the vehicle I had this strange feeling something was clinging on my backside.Turned out it was my sweat pants had froze into lumps. I had been sitting on the edge of a wet bog.
I couldn't get inside the car fast enough so I could crank the heat.
That was enough for this deer hunter.
I haven't even discussed how haltingly my steps were walking along the grain fields in all the spots I hunted. My ankle even with a brace made any foot travel practically unbearable and nearly impossible.
Which now leads me to two epiphanies that came clear to me before and during the 2021-22 hunting season.
The first of which, is not really a stunner. I physically have definitely lost a step ... literally. And I knew this when my left ankle first took a crap in August that something was really wrong. Turns out it was arthritic to the point where the joint was completely gone and was bone on bone. Very painful.
I wasn't sure if it could be fixed or what, but the podiatrist seems sure with this surgery that I can regain most of my abilities with the exception of high-impact activities: no jumping, no running, no kicking the heavy bag and so forth.
But I will be able to power walk, hike, ski (not that I have in years), and even get around on most outdoor terrain, which means hopefully I can get on with training my red fox Labrador pup for upland and wetland hunting. We'll see. Now that the surgery is over and I'm taking strides to recover, I am looking brightly into the future. I mean even just walking without much of a limp and painfree would be big wins.
As for the second revelation: I realized maybe I'm not the hotshot hunter I once thought I was. This really came on when I talked with a security guard at the newspaper where I work. He claimed to have shot 75 bucks and travels to a lease he has in Kansas -- home to huge bucks. He showed me the ones just from this year he bagged. I'm not worthy hahahahaha. Oh well.
And here I am with 52 deer (not just bucks) notched in my belt with maybe one real nice buck, a couple OK ones and others just too small to talk about. I have done a lot better on turkeys, I might add.
When I first got into deer hunting in the early '90s, I fancied at aiming to be some big trophy buck guy along with my late friend Mike Phillips. Mike ended doing better than me before he passed in 2006.
What this is all coming down to is that I'm pretty much a meat hunter. Poof! There it is. And many of us deer hunters are. I noticed when mixing up some sausage the other day how much I missed being able to do that. The fact is I hadn't shot a deer since 2017. I was in the throes of a really major dry spell.
So even if I would to like take down some real brutes, I'm just as content to fill up the freezer. Maybe another aspect I should consider is getting out to more places where there are fewer restrictions. But fewer restrictions don't always add up to seeing deer or having opportunities.
In the meanwhile maybe I'm building a better boat.
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| RTWO photo by Mac Arnold Taking a look around during the 2021-22 muzzle loader season on public land in Northwest Ohio. |
