Thursday, September 29, 2005

 
OCTOBER SHOWCASES PERFECTION

Sometimes, even a poet can miss the mark.

How did he say it?

"Then if ever come perfect days," I believe it was.

But the poet was referring to springtime.

My choice would be the flip side, when autumn tides are enhanced. That would be October.

To borrow from The Eagles, October has always been when "some fine things have been laid upon my table."

For example, from a bed at University Hospital in Charlottesville I first saw the Blue Ridge Mountains in October 1954. They were capped with an early snow. I thought it the prettiest sight this Scott County boy had ever seen. Thought I’d like to live in those mountains some day. And live there I do.

Driving down I-81 in the vicinity of Wytheville recently, a coyote bounded down the interstate embankment, crossed the first lane of southbound traffic, then came to a screeching halt in the hammer lane, where I was passing somebody at about 75 mph.

A good set of ABS brakes applied in a panic stop is all that saved my grille from destruction and the coyote from becoming sausage. He took the time to look at me through the windshield – he was now only 20 feet or so away – then seemed to say: "Oops. They must have built an interstate since I was through here last."

My belief is that, had it not been almost October, I would not have been able to watch an elusive coyote – and a well-fed one at that – just a few feet in front of me.

What I did not do is jump out of the car, scramble around to the trunk and uncase the scoped .22-caliber Magnum that I bought just for coyotes. Chalk it up to the magnanimous and "perfect days" frame of reference that October brings to the outdoors.

Sassy the Wonder Dog and I took a walk this morning along the North Fork of the Holston River. The Holston flows some 50 yards past the front porch of my home place. Today, the river is October clear, October shallow. It is almost surely the most beautiful it has been all year.

This time of year, yellow walnut leaves and brown sycamore leaves slowly mingle on their trip downstream. Blue skies and white clouds are reflected in the river’s surface.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to slide my Pungo fishing kayak through some of the low-water riffles below Weber City or not. But I intend to try. From Mother’s porch, I can see some nice smallmouth bass working the rock ledges. And just after dawn, I watched half a dozen half-grown river otters frolic and chase each other into and out of the river alongside the bank.

You can do these things in October, now that summer has loosed its sweaty grip on the land.

For all I know, disagreeing with a poet could bring bad luck.

But not, I think, until November when all that is unique and precious will have moved on as the first taste of winter bears down.

END

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

 

SNAKES ALIVE! CARRY A FLASHLIGHT!


De Lawd invented flashlights for one reason – to see snakes after dark.

Carry a light until cold weather, when snakes will den up for winter.

I’ve got a five-foot blacksnake living in the creative clutter underneath my back porch. He’s welcome to stay there. No harm will befall him. That’s because he keeps field mice and chipmunks from moving in, eating my bird seed and pooping all over the place.

But when it comes to rattlesnakes and copperheads – the only two poisonous snakes in the Blue Ridge Mountains – the paradigm shifts.

Here’s what’s happening.

As days and nights turn cooler, snakes seek out protected places – woodpiles, underneath porches, beneath large rocks or flagstones, under pieces of tin or other debris, among the stones in rock walls.

Snakes are diurnal, but are mostly night prowlers. You haven’t seen any at night? It’s the ones you don’t see that can ruin your day, your week, your month.

That’s why you should carry a flashlight every time you step outdoors until several hard freezes send snakes into hibernation.

A ranger friend in Shenandoah National Park left the upstairs of her house one autumn evening. She was carrying a basket of clothes to the basement to wash. She stepped on a copperhead. Barefooted.

By the time she got untangled from the clothesbasket and the snake, it had nailed her twice. The pain was excruciating, she said. Swelling and tissue damage started almost immediately.

Two years after the incident, she was still limping and wearing one of her regulation ranger boots untied. The swelling may never go down.

My doctor lives outside Charlottesville, Va. One evening, as he collected armloads of yard debris, he inadvertently collected a copperhead among the sticks. The copperhead promptly hit him in the hand. Nerve damage was so severe that his fingers will probably never regain their original dexterity.

"Good thing I’m not a surgeon," he said. "I’d have to find another line of work."

Snakes can show up in unusual places.

My brother-in-law, Kai, went to his woodpile one cool evening to get some seasoned oak. He lifted a log – and a copperhead stared back at him. Kai dispatched the snake, now two rows deep, with a load of .22-caliber rat shot, but credited his personal Woodpile Rule No. 1 with saving him grief.

"Any time I move wood," he said, "and the temperature is above freezing, I never put my hand in places where I can’t see."

Kai also found a copperhead once in the motor compartment of his hot tub. I suppose it’s warm and cozy in there.

Here in the mountains, I never go out in the evening without sweeping a light ahead of me. In fact, it may look weird but I have my own hot-tub defense. Since I have no close neighbors, I always get in the hot tub nekid – but with a pistol strapped to my side and a miner’s lamp on my head.

Haven’t been bitten yet, so stop snickering.

Let’s each of us, in our own way, be careful out there this fall.

END




Friday, September 16, 2005

 

IS THERE A COUGAR IN YOUR FUTURE?

Over the years, I’ve learned to discount most mountain lion (cougar) sightings.

Most reports of seeing or hearing the big cats – also called pumas and catamounts – come from drunks and other unreliables.

Until recently.

Before that, the last sighting came from an old girl friend still living in Dump Truck, Ala., who said a cougar screamed one night outside her shanty, which had once been our love nest.

My guess is that she hoped I’d come riding up in a white limousine to take her away from all that. But I didn’t believe her tale. After all, she’d adroitly twisted the truth when it suited her many times before the mountain-lion-at-the-window story.

However, two events have renewed my belief that there may still be a mountain lion or two on the loose in the East, particularly in Virginia and/or Tennessee where I live and have my being.

An elderly lady (we’ll call her Mrs. X) from the Bedford, Va., area told me this story.

Late one evening, she and her husband heard what she describes as "a loud scream" in the yard. They flipped on floodlights. Nothing.

But a bucket of water in the yard had been flipped over. The couple retired for the night, but the sound she’d heard kept ringing through the corridors of Mrs. X’s memory.

"Then I remembered," she said. "I’d heard that same scream as a little girl in Arkansas. My grandfather said it was a panther or ‘painter" (other regional names for mountain lions). He used to hunt them."

After they’d gone to sleep, Mrs. X was awakened by "not a growl exactly, but a sort of guttural sound" coming from the yard where they’d heard the scream.

This time when the couple flipped on outside lights, a huge cat with reddish/tan body and long tail was caught in the spotlight. "I’d estimate it was five and a half feet long, including tail," she said.

For about 20 seconds, the cat appeared to be mesmerized by the bright lights. Then it dashed for cover.

"I’ll never forget the way it moved," she said. "It didn’t jump. It sort of glided out of sight."

I found Mrs. X’s account entirely believable. After more than a third of a century of outdoor writing – and scores of mountain-lion sightings – I’ve pretty much learned how to tell if the person saw an actual cat or a German Shepherd.

Besides, my conviction has always been that a few – repeat, a few – cougars still prowl the more remote areas.

State game biologists do not say, "No, never," but add this caveat.

"If there are cougar in the mountains today, they aren’t remnants of the Eastern cougar that were native to the area, but pets that someone turned loose," says Bob Duncan, chief of the Wildlife Division of the Virginia Game Department.

In other words, someone gets hold of an illegal cougar kitten – cute little thing, but with an attitude – and when the animal reaches five feet long and has devoured Poo Poo the Poodle, the disillusioned owner takes it to a remote area and kicks it out.

Whitetail deer are a cougar’s main source of food, and Lord knows there are enough deer these days to keep an army of cougars from going hungry.

Then one night a few weeks ago, I was sitting in the porch swing of my mother’s home along the banks of the North Fork of the Holston River near the Virginia-Tennessee state line. From the direction of Cloud’s Ford came an unearthly guttural scream that reverberated off every hill around.

The scream set every dog in the neighborhood to barking. The coyotes that den in the ridge across the river also got excited, and began to yip and howl.

The sound could only have come from a very, very large wild animal. The only thing in our woods big enough to make such an all-consuming sound is a bear. And bears don’t scream (to borrow from a Willie Nelson song) "like a panther in the middle of the night."

I may not live long enough to actually see a mountain lion. But I believe now that I’ve heard one.

I’d stake my reputation (such as it is) on it.
END
 
CROSSBOWS OFFER NEW HUNTING TWIST

Solomon was wise. But, like the rest of us, he could be wrong occasionally too.

He said there was "nothing new under the sun."

Wrong, baby-breath.

In Virginia this fall, a new hunting season opens – one never before offered to the general populace of the Commonwealth.

The new season, which allows crossbows to be used for the first time by the general public, is causing a sensation.

Until this fall, you had to be disabled and get a doctor’s certification that you weren’t your old self in order to hunt with a crossbow.

This fall and winter, during both archery and regular gun season, hunters can take to the woods with an ancient weapon whose accuracy and power have been overstated by movies, but which will still improve a hunter’s chances of success several fold over conventional archery equipment.

Sporting goods stores that I’ve talked with say that, as hunting season approaches, the sale of crossbows is hotter than funnel cakes at the state fair.

Most of us who have tried to get within the necessary 40 yards of a deer while hunting with a recurve or compound bow would have traded a week of season to be able to carry the flatter-shooting, more accurate crossbow. Especially a crossbow with a scope.

We just weren’t willing to saw off a leg or adopt a wheelchair to do it.

Mark my words. The deer harvest in Virginia will go up this year, especially the harvest during archery season when a very large number of hunters happily shell out $150 to $400 or more for a good crossbow and scope.

The harvest will go up because the average hunter (I include myself) will be able to shoot more accurately with a crossbow than he or she was ever able to do with a bow and arrow.

This ought to mean – I emphasize "ought to mean" – both fewer missed shots as well as fewer wounded deer that weren’t hit where the archer hoped to hit. And that is a very good thing.

Here are some items you need to remember about purchasing and using a crossbow:

The same rules apply regarding draw weight as apply to the use of conventional archery tackle. In other words, the crossbow must be able to propel a broadhead arrow at least 125 yards.
Scopes are OK.

Crossbows are legal during the upcoming 2005-2006 hunting season, including early archery season which opens Oct. 1 statewide.

A special crossbow license ($12 for residents and $25 for non-residents) is required, in addition to a regular hunting license.

You’ll also need a big game license for bear, deer and turkey during archery season.
Crossbow licenses are available wherever hunting licenses are sold.

Try to buy your crossbow from a sporting goods store where the sales person is likely to know one end from the other. Just as few clerks in the big discount stores know much about fishing tackle or shotguns, even fewer know much about this ancient but legendary weapon.

END

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