Low-Tech
Of course, I've been thinking about deer season, haven't you? How
could you not? By the time you read this, the deer bow season will be at least
one day old.
I'm fortunate to have Brian Loveland as a deer hunting partner. We're
both meat hunters, valuing a nice fat doe as much as a Boone and Crockett buck,
maybe more. We'll shoot the big buck (who wouldn't?), but we don't go looking
for him.
We are both out of style, going by the standards as presented on
today's TV outdoor shows, and the hunting clothes we wear are out-of-date, and
"of the day," as today's youngsters like to say. I know for a fact
that Brian has never bought a piece of camo in his entire life. He has some,
given to him by his brother Dave, I think, but that's it.
He favors Big Smith overalls (faded blue) to hide his lean, six-four
frame, and covers his feet with rough-out Wellingtons I've been looking at for
20 years. If it's not too cold out, say only down in the 30s, he'll pull a
black hoodie, like the stick-up men downtown wear, right over the top of the
other stuff, and then his orange over that. I'm pretty sure he couldn't spell
"L.L. Bean" if you handed him a fistful of $20 bills to do it. And he
doesn't care who knows it, either.
Oh, yeah, underneath all that is a nice, warm flannel, union suit,
cardinal red, with a trap door in exactly the right place. Under Armour? Give
me a break. If he ever does that, I'll kick him out of camp. If it gets down
into the teens and 20s, he's got a pair of insulated (faded camo, good grief)
bibs that Dave gave him.
The hunt we've got going satisfies a retroactive mind that does not
understand the cell phone on the truck seat where it lives, and couldn't begin
to take a picture with it, was it so equipped and carried on our person which
it is not. Why would it be? We don't talk to people in deer camp; we go there
to get away from that.
The closest we get to talking, other than running down the various
bosses we've shared over the years, is that we both know bits and pieces of the
same 50-year-old country songs that Brian accompanies with an old guitar he
saved from a trash pile. "Lovesick Blues?" Yeah, we know that.
"I walk The line," sure. "Night Moves," all of them, and
all at the end of the day right after woodstove dinner and Irish coffee. You
should hear us. You should hear the coyotes.
My own garb consists mainly of old woolen overalls, great for both the
cold and the wet, quiet, and old Pendletons, multi-plaids, no solids, Pam has
given me as Christmas gifts over the years. Wool is not itchy, in spite of what
you have heard, feels good, and retains its warmth when wet which even the best
woman will sometimes not do. Moths like them. You should see the holes. I patch
them with any odd woolen pieces I can find regardless of color. Who cares? I
like the way they look. Used. Like me.
I never had a deer tell me, "I wish you had shot me in a nicer
looking shirt."
I don't like union suits, not being mechanical minded, and much prefer
a good, warm woolen set of two-piece long johns that will hit the ground in a
hurry if they need to. Isn't ESP wonderful?
My only concession to modernity is a pair of rubber bottomed, leather
topped, ankle high, insulated slip-ons. I feel their comfort even now, and I'm
not even sure where they are. They're around here someplace. This thinking
about deer season will put me to looking for them.
Ben Test, out Guymon way, called me last week all excited about the
bow season. Ben cuts down bodark trees, seasons them dry, and then shaves them
down into the deadliest handcrafted tools you can imagine. With them he shoots
whopper desert whitetails, or any fat does and small bucks that get in the way.
He does not hold out for the monsters, and he has shot several of them.
A few years back I was out in that country staying with his brother
Bryon. We were hunting pheasant. Over coffee at the Three Amigos, I asked Ben
why he didn’t go with us that afternoon.
"Can't," he said.
"Why not?"
"Goin' bow huntin' ‘bout four o'clock."
"You got time," I said.
"No, I don't. Not if I take a scent-free shower, I don't."
"What?" I was stunned. I had heard of such things but didn't
really believe they happened.
"Oh, yeah. I don't bow hunt without taking my scent-free
shower."
I accused him of lying, but he was clearly telling the truth, without
the trace of a smile on his face. Shower, specifically, to go on a hunt? There
were social events in town for which I would neither shower nor shave. We
clearly were not separated twins.
I'm pretty certain neither Brian Loveland nor I would know one end of
an aerosol can of scent blocker from the other. Take a bath prior to hunting,
using scent-free soap? Hoooo, boy.
Last year, coming off a week in the woods during the muzzleloading
season, Pam lifted her head from working on a coke cake (I had smelled it clear
out in the driveway) and said without looking at me, "You need a shower; a
shave, too." Apparently she had smelled me also, about the same distance
away.
"But you're gonna' love me, anyway, right?" I said, grinning
through the grime.
"Maybe not," she said, not looking up from the cake, licking
frosting from a spatula.
I took a shower. Weedy things, barked things, too, fell from my hair.
Then I shaved. I'm remembering last deer season.
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