Opening Weekend Blues

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The hot weather was the worst part. Well, okay, the hot weather was the second-worst part. The worst part was the unprecedented presence of mosquitoes. But I'm getting ahead of myself... let me start over.

Dad showed up to my place on Thursday afternoon. We always "camp" in our little bunkhouse off to one side of my house when we are hunting, and Saturday was to be opening day of general gun hunting season in our home state of Florida. The weather was beautiful... in the sixties and very comfortable. We hoped it would hold, although the forecast said it wouldn't.

Friday, we got up and had a leisurely breakfast and talked about where we might hunt the next day. I was going to hunt the spot I'd hunted during the muzzleloader hunt two weeks previous, but Dad wanted to check out another couple of spots, so we piled our stands into Ezmerelda (my '93 Chevy Z71 Silverado 4x4) and headed out.

The first spot we scouted wasn't promising--someone had cleared the old dim road and driven down it, and in the process of clearing he had chopped off two branches which had hung over rut scrapes which had been there for years. The scrapes had been freshened a few days earlier, but that was over forever now, with the licking branches lying brown-leaved and withering in the dirt beside them. No fresh sign could be seen, unless you count fresh tire tracks and a pile of toilet paper off to one side. Disgusted, we headed out.

After riding by another area that didn't look any better, we decided we'd hunt together at "my" spot. When I pulled up at the parking spot by the dirt road, we both got out and were attacked--by skeeters. The mosquitoes had been bad during the muzzleloader hunt, but now they were terrible. I donned my Bug Tamer, shouldered my climbing tree stand and headed into the woods. The mosquitoes followed, picking up reinforcements along the way.

After wandering a bit trying to find another tree a little ways from where I'd hunted before, I settled on the same old tree. By this time I was soaked in sweat and the mosquitoes were having a field day with me, and the buzzing was making me insane. I quickly set up the stand, locked it up, and headed out. Dad had found a spot and took his stand to set it up while I got Richard's climber set up and secured. When Dad and I met up again we were both a bit put out by the heat and the bugs, but we still felt good about the hunting to come.

Saturday morning, we were at our stands before light. Even if the sun had been up, little light would have reached our eyes through the thick swarm of mosquitoes that followed us up our trees. I quickly dug out my insect repellent spray and, not caring about the smell, fogged myself down with it. This initiated a feeding frenzy, as the skeeters lined up to drink it from my clothing... mmmmmm, a shot of bug dope with a blood chaser, what could taste better to a disease-spreading, blood-sucking insect?

Along about 7:30 I spotted something right where I'd first seen a young buttonhead buck on the previous hunt. I only saw it for about half a heartbeat, and I'm still not sure just what it was--either a piece of a deer or a chunk of turkey neck. I had heard turkeys fly down at dawn, and Richard saw four of them later on, so I imagine it was a turkey that I saw. After the sun came out I had to shift my stand around the tree to avoid getting a sunburn! The nagging headache and stiff neck didn't help things, either.

Dad had his usual opening-morning encounter with a black bear, which was uneventful and did not result in a dead bear, because the bear behaved and was not legal to shoot as game. Perhaps Florida's game managers will eventually wake up and re-open a bear hunting season, but they are not known to act swiftly when it comes to sensible things like that.

Saturday afternoon we again braved the swarms and I decided to put my ThermaCELL "Mosquito Repellent Appliance" to the test. It did wonderfully, so I was a bit more comfortable, even as I sat in the tree sweating in the heat. Opening day is not supposed to be hot and sweaty, unless one is hauling a deer out of the woods! But hot and sweaty it was.

By Sunday morning the mosquitoes had so dampened the spirits of Dad and Richard that they stayed in camp and I headed out alone, armed with my ThermaCELL to keep the bugs at bay. This time it took twenty minutes to beat back the even-bigger cloud of skeeters, but it did work, and kept them away for the most part.

When I heard something coming through the brush, making a lot of racket though it wasn't yet close to me, I knew a bear was on its way. Sure enough, a black bear strolled up and presented a number of beautiful shots, and if I had chosen to be a poacher (and help the forest at the same time) we could have been dining on bear meat and fleshing out the hide back at camp, rather than eating spaghetti and cussing our luck. But being a law-abiding fellow, I held my fire. Soon the bear stopped for a few seconds, decided there was something he didn't like, and ran off, plowing through the brush like a runaway freight train. So much for the morning hunt... at least that bear still has some fear of man left in him.

In the afternoon, Dad and I tried a little stump-hunting with our folding stools, but just sitting still in the heat soon had us sweating and restless, so we gave it up and slid back into Ezmerelda's air-conditioned comfort for the ride back to camp.

Where, oh where, was the story-book opening weekend we had hoped for? You know the one I mean, the trip that ends in success by all participants, who are able to take their game without beating themselves black and blue fighting bugs, who drag out and skin their kills without breaking a sweat, who never experience an overpopulation of bears except when they're legal game and objects of the hunt. Heck, I think we would have been happy to have shot a coyote at that point, or get to look at a doe.

Well, it ended with no great opening weekend tales to pass around in camp, but it was a good time just the same. I reckon that's why they call it "hunting" instead of "shooting," because you never can tell how the hunt will end up. Just knowing what might happen is what keeps us coming back to get mosquito-riddled and dehydrated. If we knew when we'd be successful, what would be the fun of that?

But once, just once, I'd like to try that and see what it's like.

-Russ Chastain

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