Posts Tagged ‘blaze orange’
Orange Obsession
It has come to my attention that I can obsess with relative ease. Obsession is something I prefer to avoid due to the preoccupation filling a mind constantly and intrusively to a troubling extent. It’s just not mentally healthy.
When a glimpse of blaze orange appeared from our front yard about 45 meters (50 yards) into the woods to our north, Asher and I both took notice. Asher wanted to freeze and stare while I preferred acting nonchalant and continuing as if oblivious.
Once inside, I didn’t hesitate to whip out the binoculars to see if I could verify the possibility there was a hunter crouched beyond a ridge, waiting for a deer to wander close. Unfortunately, I couldn’t improve on the basic perception of a small blob of orange. There was just too much distance for my wimpy binoculars and too many branches or tree trunks obscuring the view.
After staring for far too long in the hope of seeing some movement, I gave up and decided to check back periodically to see if it was still there. Hours eventually turned to days and I was able to convince myself it was not a hunter but more likely a hat or some other article of outdoor clothing that had been dropped and lost.
That didn’t stop me from continuing to look for it every time I walked nearby. I was curious if the hunter would return in search of the lost item, all the while reminding myself that our usual privacy was likely being invaded for random periods during the 8 days of the deer hunting season.
Eventually, enough days passed that I decided to deal with my trending obsession fascination with the blaze-orange object by taking the risk of walking into the neighbor’s woods to see what it was.
It wasn’t a hat. It is a hand warmer with a strap that wraps around the waist to secure it… unless it doesn’t. I would expect the hunter’s hands would get cold enough that he or she would have missed it and retraced steps to retrieve it at some point.
Turning around to look back at our house, I had a renewed sense of weirdness over a person walking so close to our place that is otherwise very secluded.
I picked up the hand warmer and walked a short distance to the plowed field where I hung it up prominently in view for someone to find should they come looking for it.
This morning we heard a couple of close shots from the other side of our property. It has been relatively quiet for the six days between last Saturday morning’s gunshots.
Tomorrow is the last day of the hunt. I look forward to the return of wildlife being the only creatures wandering around in the woods surrounding our house and an end to my seasonal obsession with blaze-orange sightings.
Knowing it’s a hand warmer hanging in some branches at the edge of the woods nearby will help me avoid obsessing over it, but I’ll check occasionally to see if anyone retrieves it.
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Shooting Season
This coming Saturday marks the opening of deer hunting in our state. For a week or two prior to the hunting season, we experience what I call, “shooting season.” This is the time when hunters “sight in” their hunting rifles. POW!!
Pow-pow-pow-pow-pow-pow.
With no leaves on the trees, sound carries more than usual in our valley. Not far away over hills, there is a gun range. We can hear those shots, too, in addition to neighbors shooting on their property.
It is not unusual to hear occasional gunshots year-round but in November, rifle reports ring out from every direction. I am not a hunter, so I have very little understanding of what the sound of the different gunshots reveals about the weapons being used. Some sound a lot bigger than others.
I also don’t get why we occasionally hear rapid repeated shots. Do deer hunters sometimes shoot with automatic multi-shot rifles?
Asher and I were out playing ball in the backyard while someone in the general vicinity was shooting yesterday afternoon.
He would pause and turn his head toward the sound, but thankfully, he never wanted to run toward the source.
We bought him a new vest to ensure he wouldn’t be confused with being a wild animal when he gets loose and runs through the forest.
I’m finding it makes it much easier to spot him among the trees after he runs at supersonic speeds to chase turkeys/rabbits/squirrels and I’m left behind in his dust.
I’m happy to report that our attempt to train him to come to the front door when he hears the ping of the hanging bell there worked like a charm at the end of the day yesterday. I’d say it has worked a third of the time when his location is unknown. Maybe he isn’t always hearing it.
When we know he can hear it because we are ringing it to test him, it is getting him to run in about 98% of the time. I like it better than trying to shout for him.
Yesterday was a good day for off-leash exercise. When the hunt begins on Saturday, Asher will be back on a full-time leash until the Monday after Thanksgiving.
At that point, shooting season and hunting season will both be over and we can get back to the merely odd occasional gunshot outbursts common in the rural countryside.
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Seeing Orange
This morning the firearm deer hunting season opened in Wisconsin. The entire month of November echos with gunshots as hunters engage in some preseason shooting practice and adjustments of their aiming sights. Those sounds rarely happen earlier than sunrise, nor all around us at the same time, so this morning is notably different.
Locally, the hunt legally commenced at ten minutes before 7:00. I heard the first shot at 6:55. The culling of our deer herds is underway. I’d like to imagine it as some of our neighbors now being blessed with food to survive the winter, but I know that isn’t the present reality.
Earlier this week, our neighbor whose family owned much of the land around us, including our twenty acres, called to ask permission to hunt on our property this year. He started by asking what we were doing up here without horses anymore. It occurred to me that he never specifically asked to hunt on our property when we had horses.
The very first time we met him after moving in, he opened the visit by asking in the form of a statement, “You aren’t going to post the property no hunting.” ?
Welcome, neighbor! That was a fine ‘how do you do?’ I remember needing to pause to determine he meant it as a question.
Luckily, both Cyndie and I have a pretty good sense of reading intent and suspended our first impressions, allowing him time to feel comfortable and to get to know us as non-threatening to his way of life. In the seven years since that day, we have had nothing but positive interactions with him. Despite his ever-present initial gruffness, he has always been incredibly generous with helping us in times of need.
There was no way I felt a need to deny him the chance to hunt where he always had before just because we now owned it. Such was the case this week when, knowing there were no horses to disturb, he asked permission to enter our land to hunt deer.
Orange clothes are the fashion fad of the day. Cyndie donned a bright orange vest and put one on Delilah for their morning walk, which was altered to avoid our woods. Down the driveway and around the field to the north and back to the barn to open the chicken door on the coop.
In that amount of time, they heard two gunshots from our neighbor to the south, followed by about eight other reports from the distance around us.
Moments ago, Delilah broke out in a flourish of alert barking at the window in the sunroom, which normally means a squirrel (or squirrels –the other day there were six hopping around in the grass just outside). This time it was a bright orange person walking through the woods owned by our neighbors to the north.
“Good dog!”
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Relative Something 