Out of the Woods...For the Moment

This was my view for 14 days. Let me repeat, 14 loooooong daaaays. Firearm Deer Season is 15 days long, but I had to take one day off in the middle of it all, just to get my sanity in check. During these 14 days, I didn't SEE one deer. Oh sure, we have all kinds of does and bucks on the game cameras, but those deer would come in after dark - ALL THE TIME. On my last afternoon of hunting on November 30, I left my blind at 5:35 pm because it was too dark for me to shoot. On camera we discovered an 8 inch spike came in at 5:50 pm taking the same trail in that I took out. If he had come in 15 minutes earlier, we would have stood nose to nose on the trail!

On day 1, opener morning, it was a little chilly so I turned my Buddy heater on.  It swooshed to life, then began emitting flames from the inside out! It's not suppose to work that way!!! I turned the heater off but the flames grew larger, so I grabbed my rifle, and bolted through the floor door, placing the gun by a far tree. Then I went to the outdoor propane tank and turned the propane flow off (or so I thought. Steve informed me later I turned it all the way OPEN.) Anyhow, I went back into the blind to retrieve my Ipods and Kindle. The fire was going out, thank goodness, because at that time the woods were VERY dry and I didn't want my blind to go up in flames and spread throughout the area. I said a thank you prayer. However, there was one last surprise. As the flames snuffed out, a huge cloud of smoke escaped the heater, filling my blind with a fog so thick I had to go outside to see. From the outside, I watched as it billowed through the cracks of the windows I had opened in the event I HAD seen a deer and needed to shoot. Well, now I smelled like a bonfire, but as I stared at my small wooden house on stilts, I reminded myself that I am contained in that wooden box and up off the ground so maybe the deer wouldn't smell me (yah, right), so my electronic friends and my rifle and I returned to the wooden mini house (after the smoke cleared). I rearranged things, sat back, and wondered just how many deer I spooked away. Apparently all of the day deer.

(The reason for the fire was that the mice had built a nest 

in the heater using mostly dry stuff, 

including tearing apart a magazine I had left from bear hunting.)

Oh well, in 14 days I read my daily devotions and a spiritual book called Lessons from a Sheep Dog by Phillip Keller, (VERY good, by the way, especially if you love dogs), two additional books: a novel called Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, and The Shack Revisited by C. Baxter Kruger, (both also very good), played 70 games of Scrabble (my new addiction), and read again the manual - front to back - that came with my camera (and I still don't understand it all). 

So I sat through sunshine,

clouds,

frosty mornings,

and snow!

We had our first ever Thanksgiving dinner at the Grizzly Den. Our son, Riley, was able to join us for dinner and deer camp for 5 nights. The turkey was delicious. The stuffing not so much. It ended up outside for the Chickadees.

They did eat the stuffing up off the ground, as did the flying squirrels by night, but the birds also loved the suet. This Chickadee is waiting it's turn while clinging to an icicle.

A few random pics of deer camp.

My favorite place to drink my morning coffee. I only went out a few mornings to hunt as my camera showed the deer slept in, too.

Riley slept in one morning, but he's forgiven as he arrived at 11:45 pm the night before.

After hunting Thanksgiving evening, we all sat outside way past dark as it was very warm and the moon and stars were so bright.

A few days later it all changed!

Everyday someone would go the mile and a half back home to feed the dogs. On the day I took off, we went for a long walk. 

And it snowed some more!

The snow left everything beautiful.

Below are some random pics.

Notice the empty buck pole?

Steve's blind

A Charlie Brown Christmas Tree

View from my blind. I LOVE hunting when there is snow on the ground!

We know they're out there!

At the height of deer hunting we had 4 hunters at the Grizzly Den. Out of six tags for the deer season, two have been filled, so it wasn't a bust this year. 

Black powder starts Friday, so we have one more chance.

Thanks for being patient with this blog, 

all of you, who stop by to hear about life in the UP!