Another Deer Season Opening Day is Here
Opening day of deer season is a few days away. This will be my 37th opening day old enough to hunt deer season opening day. I’ve missed 3 openers since I was 12 years old. One I was in Army basic training and the other two I was at the beach with my mother celebrating Thanksgiving. One thing is for sure, I’ve got a lot of opening days behind me, and hopefully more than few yet to come. So, this Saturday I’ll be in the woods deer hunting remembering all those opening days of past.
My first deer season remains in my memories as if was yesterday. I followed my father into the mountains of Green Ridge State Forest before dawn. When the sun arrived, I could see the safety orange of other hunters dotting the mountain forest. It was a short hunt and neither my father or his two hunting buddies from church kill a deer that day. On the way home we stopped at the local check in station / butcher to see the deer of the successful hunters.
- Long before Dad and I hunted together, he was killing opening day bucks.
Years later, dad and I continued to hunt public lands. On Maryland’s eastern shore we hunted Idyllwild Wildlife Management Area. The competition from other hunters was less and I could hunt all day without ever seeing another hunter. Dad and I shared many memories hunting Idyllwild with bow and shotgun. We never killed a deer there, but this is the place I consider my learning grounds. I learned to trust my compass over my sense of direction. I learned to follow deer sign and read the time of day from watching the sun and many other woodsman and hunter skills. In my early teen years, dad let me go it alone in the woods from dawn to dusk. A fact that might be a little hard to comprehend in today’s world of constant contact. Without a cell phone at the age of 13 I was allowed to wonder around and hunt alone as I wished on the 9,000 acres of mixed hardwoods and swamp from sunrise to dark.
In my high school years, Dad and I joined a hunting club and this is where I became a man. I killed deer, drank beer and whiskey, played poker, and listened to the stories of the old guys. Opening day at deer camp is a special time and those memories will last a lifetime.
We shared our last opening day in Maryland together on private property owned by a developer who I was working for as a surveyor. I missed a deer at daylight, and fell out of a tree. Dad saw a few deer but could not get a shoot. The hunt was cut short when a neighbor called the police and complained about us hunting the property. I had failed to get written permission and only had verbal permission to hunt the property. Our hunt was over mid-day. That was the last opening day we shared hunting together.
I bounced around from a few clubs and hunted some state lands for the next couple of years. There was even the two years I worked as a guide in trade for hunting the properties of a lodge in the mountains of western Maryland. The camp was full of history and I truly enjoyed being an insider of the camp. But family life pulled me away from that camp, and I soon found myself hunting the local farms close to home in Carroll County.
The interesting part of the local hunting was the number of deer I killed climbed and by this time I was regularly taking several deer a year with bow, muzzleloader and rifle. Rarely, however, did I kill a deer on opening day of firearms season. All the while, I felt something missing, adventure.
The most special opening day came a few years ago when I shared it with my oldest daughter. In the morning we did not see any deer. After lunch at a local restaurant and being interviewed by the local newspaper, we took to our afternoon hunting spot. That afternoon as we shared a tree stand together and she killed her first deer. Yep, my favorite opening day ever.
For the last five years, I’ve belonged to a sportsmen’s club in western Maryland that has over 3,000 acres to hunt and explore. Only one opening day have I spent it in those woods. I did not kill a deer that day, but I had a good hunt slowly still hunting the woods while a light snow fell.
Two seasons ago, I killed a nice buck the opening minutes of the season only a few miles from my home. I guess most would call that a success, but to me I missed the adventure of the hunt shared with friends in camp somewhere away from home.
Last year’s opening day I spent on the beach on the Outer Banks fishing for big reds, blue fish and flounder. Mom and I had a great time spending thanksgiving week at the beach. We shared a special thanksgiving meal of venison from a buck I had shot during bow season and fresh local shrimp. I had spent many hours in the woods that year with gun and bow and with today’s long seasons and liberal bag limits, opening day has lost some of its magic.
Maybe the magic is not quite as stong as it once was, but the draw to be in the woods on the opening day of deer season still pulls me to the woods. So, in a few days I’ll be hunting the mountains of western Maryland on opening day. I’ve scouted very little, and as of right now, I’m not even sure of where I’ll be when the sun shines on the new season. My father has passed on and my daughter no longer hunts. My regular hunting partner prefers the local hunts on the opener. I’ll be hunting alone on opening day. Somehow, I think I like it that way, just me and the woods, it just seems right.
