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It’s a trail in the woods, and I like to think a path the deer traverse quite often, really hoping a horned one in early November uses it as I am today. So many fallen leaves I have to scuff the ground to see if there’s tracks, and from time to time I’m awarded my visual prize of the V-shaped cut in the softer soils. Then when I see a big one, with dew claws, I bend over and measure it with my finger and saying to myself, oh yeah, he’d be a big buck.
The ridge now on top of, has some of last fall’s scars from antlers being polished, one is an eye catcher, even though it’s healed over its longer than my arm, on a tree easily six inches round,. He must have been a big one I never saw and did he give that tree a good thrashing. So far in my strolling I’ve seen no equal to that one, but lots of smaller ones so that bodes well.
A familiar stump, I take a perch, a pileated woodpecker flap, flap, floats, through the sparse canopy, no calling, just on its way to wherever. Copper colored poplar leaves flutter, occasionally one lofts and with just a gentle breeze it’s easy on the eyes.
I could walk the trail further, but I’ve seen enough to feel that same familiar but this afternoon’s very fresh excitement, the what ifs have begun, I get all kid-like, thinking, boy I’d like to get that big ole buck.
- The Trout Whisperer
