November 15, 2017


Yeah, you know that when you have to include the YEAR in the date of a new post, you've neglected your writing!

To be fair, though, this blog has been largely a site based on outdoor observations and activities--and this past year or so has been a strangely interior time.  No qualification there; it's not good or bad, it just is.  Physically and otherwise, I have been inside until just recently.

And, as is usually the case now, it's my kids that have dragged my aging ass back into the woods and along the river.  Adam has continued his interest in shooting, and though he has moved a little over an hour away, we have been out several times.  In fact, just two weeks ago, we hunted my ex-wife's uncle's wood lot (only in Muncie is such a thing possible!).  Getting to the lot was challenging.  Normally, I can just drive my truck out to the site, about half a mile from the road.  But the field surrounding the lot, this year in soy beans, hadn't been harvested yet, so we parked between a derelict combine and the shell of the house trailer my ex's grandmother used to live in.  We soon found out that a field of beans is like a lot of things, very different when you're in the middle.  From the road, a field of beans looks like a mist rising from the dirt, almost fragile, and the stalks appear to be . . . oh, maybe a foot, foot and a half tall.

No.

In fact, soy beans are bristly.  They hold on to your pants like they NEED them, and they're about waist high and tightly spaced.  Fortunately,  we were not the first explorers to encounter this jungle.  Deer, and maybe people, but judging from the pointy halves of the tracks, certainly deer--had carved out a relatively easier way to pass through the field.

We didn't have any luck, but it was certainly fun getting out in the woods with Adam.  I wish so much that I had access to better hunting area to share with him.  This coming season (2018--2019) I'm going to make a concerted effort to expand our possible areas.  So far, we have:

1.  The aformentioned ex-in-law woods--although, this is a much bigger woods than the small part we have hunted so far.

2.  Sue Fisher's "ravine" area.  The only way to make this a reasonable place to hunt would be for Adam and I to work on the lot with some machetes or some similar "instrument of destruction."  As it is, there is almost NO way for a man to be quiet making his way through the tangles, and when you add another person, and it's amazing we saw anything living!

3.  Though I have not hunted it, Adam and I can shoot squirrels at the Monroe Township Conservation Club.  Last year, I saw a guy parked close to the rifle range and as I was driving by his truck, he came out of the woods with a handful of squirrels.  He explained to me where the majority of the squirrels were to be found (frighteningly near the target area of the rifle range).

And, that's pretty much it.  I don't own a shotgun with which I could take rabbits--or even deer--so right now, squirrels are about all that's on the menu.  I think I could kill a deer with my .357, but if you ask anyone who has ever seen me shoot a handgun, the overwhelming consensus would be that I'd need to sneak up to about ten feet away, and even then--it'd be sketchy!!  So, to use the .357, I'd have to mount a handgun scope on it--and I don't have the money to do that any time soon.