Entry Forty-three: Sitting in the Stand

After a brief detour through the holidays, we now return to our regularly scheduled programming...

[A story in many parts: Part Twelve]

We arrived back at the lodge at 11:30 but didn’t leave for lunch until 1:00 p.m. We were late in leaving because the other group had spent most of the morning trying to find a deer that Jeff shot. After they found it they discovered the reason it was so hard to locate was because it was so small. Someone cruelly asked if he could have one of the rabbit's feet for his kid back home. The positive side of the whole event was the bar had been lowered and, at that point, about anything would be accepted.

I was sensing a pattern in the driver’s. Whenever they picked me up, he would ask, “Did you see anything?” and when I answered “No,” he would look shocked, then shake his head in disbelief. The implied message was that, just yesterday, he had spotted 126 deer grazing in that exact field, yet today... I think I would have felt better if it weren’t the exact same reaction each time. I’m sure the manual on “Picking Up The Customer” had more than one accepted response.

I didn’t see anything during the afternoon hunt. Just five hours of sitting and staring. When it got dark, I climbed down out of my stand and waited by the road for the limo service. After a little while I heard someone approaching on foot and was glad to see my dad walking up. We visited until the limo arrived and finally ate dinner at 9:15. The vapor woman was a great cook. She had mastered the art of serving five starches combined with enormous portions of meat. Combine that with sitting all day where not moving is a requirement and I began to understand the girth of my fellow hunters.

All words and images ©2005/J. Colle