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The
View from a Tree stand
Other
Skewed Perspectives
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Stories and
Deer
Weight and Meat Chart Political commentaries and old
opinion pieces have been moved to the Archives
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Feb. 21,
2024 Scrolling thru some various pages and reading the comments to some posts is an enlightening, sometimes amusing, sometimes frightening experience. A simple opinion generates a snarky comment, followed by an insulting reply then a hateful jab followed by a nasty remark and downhill it goes from there quickly. Soon they all are off topic and wasting time taking swipes at each other & spewing hate at strangers miles away. People who they don’t know and people who don’t know them are trading personal insults. Who gains from that? What is learned? Quite sad, really. I came to the conclusion that some people actually WANT to be the cat turd in the sandbox, that stinky thing that sticks to your shoe. Is it for attention, to be noticed, to create controversy or provoke an argument? Or perhaps it just comes naturally to some – they may believe that being obnoxious and condescending gives them power. Not sure – maybe all of those things. But these trolls seem determined to be a pebble in your shoe, to be that “thing” that ruins your day, pisses you off, makes you react or knocks you off your game.
The
truth is – you can only control how you react. You
can control your emotions and anger and
NOT fall into the
trap. And IF you choose to reply, what you say is
up to you. Social
media and the inter-connectivity allowed us by the
Internet is an
awesome source for information, a way to keep in
contact with people
far away, reconnect with friends & family from
your past, a way
to learn about different cultures and see photos
of places you will
never visit. Like all things, it can be used
constructively or
destructively. The choice is yours.
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I often dreaded winter – it’s harsh and bitter cold, the piercing winds, the extra layers of clothing required and the lack of visible life in the natural world. It seems as if the world has gone into a coma, a deep sleep covered in a thick and frozen blanket and it has taken all the animals with it. I seldom ventured into the woods in winter – there was nothing to hunt & wading through the deep snow made even a simple walk into a tiring workout. Everything seems more difficult in the winter and requires so much more effort. Why bother? Over the last few years, and especially this year, I have rediscovered the quiet and hidden beauty of being in the winter woods. Needing some motivation and purpose to get me over the obstacles and into the snowy season, I decided to start hunting crows during the winter season. Crow season in WI is a dual season. The fall season runs from mid-September thru mid-November – the precise time I am deer hunting. But the winter season runs from Jan 18 – March 20th – a time when almost no one else is in the woods and I can pursue this crafty and challenging bird in relative solitude. And the winter woods seems perfectly suited to this bird. Winter is the monochromatic season – a study in black and white. What isn’t covered in white is typically some shade of black and the crow fits into this colorless landscape as if it were designed for it. And I am not. Concealment and camouflage in the winter is much more difficult than in the fall deer hunt or spring turkey season. There is little to break up one’s outline and the human form is easily spotted by the crow’s sharp eyes. The edge definitely goes to the crow in this hunt. My first time out was with my buddy from Denmark, Svend. An artist and crow enthusiast, he’s the person  that
initiated this desire to pursue the “harbinger of
death”, so it seems appropriate that we hunted
together on his first crow hunt in America.
Trudging thru the snow to the woods at the back of
my friends land, we set out some decoys and
started doing some calling. With little
response and no shooting, we split up and tried a
different strategy. Walking thru the woods
and stopping to respond to the distant “Kaww,
Kaww” of the resident crows, I saw a
black bird flying my direction. As he
approached in silence, scanning the woods below
him for the unseen new crow in his neighborhood -
I hid behind a tree and as he flew past an opening
in the branches above me, I shot. Instantly
he folded and fell to earth, landing softly in the
snow with an audible thud. As I stood there
congratulating myself on a good shot, gently
carried on the silent air currents was a lone
black feather – an epitaph to the fallen
prey. I had gotten my first crow.  But after more calling and talking
with the crows, we were unable to convince them to
return for a visit. No more crows would be
fooled today and none the next day either.
Svend returned to Denmark and I had found a new
pursuit for the winter months. Not to be deterred by our meager success, I picked up a couple new crow calls and a snow camo poncho to cover my hunting clothes, grabbed some shells, my shot gun, my snowshoes and a few decoys and into the cold and knee deep snow I plodded the following weekend. This time setting out on some public hunting property, I hoped to find some crows more easily fooled by my inexperienced calling. I lured in 2 crows, missed the first shot and a stuck shell prevented me from taking a 2nd shot. Once again, after shooting just one time – no more crows were to be tricked here. Now just to clarify, I am not a wing shooter by nature. It has been decades since I walked the CRP land of southern Illinois with my dad and brother pheasant hunting. I can count the number of time I have shot trap on 1 hand and not with great prowess. Give me a bow and arrow or rifle and I can drill the target – but shooting flying critters has never been my strong suit. But, “nothing ventured, nothing gained” as the saying goes, right? The winter wood is a place of contradictions and contrast. The pure white snow smothers everything horizontal while the black trunks of tress stand vertical in defiance. Sounds are muffled by the snow and the quiet engulfs you, but noises and voices carry great distances in the leafless landscape and the silence seems to amplify small sounds that would go unheard in the summer woods. As I sit in the snow and listen for the crows, I can hear the wing beats of the woodpecker as he flies by. His toes scratch in the bark of the hickory tree as he hunts for tiny insects. Soaring overhead in a bright blue sky, a redtail hawk makes his screeching cry as he looks for an unobservant squirrel or careless mouse to fill his belly. The breeze makes the pines whisper and rattles the dry leaves still clinging to the old oak tree as it blows through the woods. And the smell of the winter woods is almost non-existent. It is a crisp and clean scent, sharp and cold in the nostrils, but without the fragrance of the other seasons. The woods in winter is an unforgiving place and those animals not able to migrate to warmer climates for the winter must be alert and aware to survive. Once again, the crow seems well adapted for this environment. Sharp eyed and not easily fooled, and rarely fooled twice I discovered, they make the hunt a challenge and are a most admirable adversary in this season of black and white. And while on this day no crows were felled from the sky, it was a very successful hunt. My spirit was refreshed and I was rewarded with one of those dramatic winter sunsets that seem to linger for hours, growing more colorful as the minutes passed, reflecting the fading rays on the sky and clouds above me until it slowly faded into dark.  |
something to live and for that to
happen, something must die. Winter helps to
thin the herd, removing the sick and injured and
stupid from the gene pool, but adds them to the
food chain for the fortunate survivors. This
is a necessary time of cleansing for the natural
world and in so doing, makes every survivor
stronger.
where the
food is more easily found and this is where the
best places to hide and escape are. The
openness of the snow crusted marsh is a death trap
for the small critters with escape from the ever
present predators almost non-existent. Even
the fox cross quickly – his tracks tell me that he
was moving at a steady lope, perhaps sensing that
there was little food to be found here and great
peril for him to be so exposed. The track of
the coyote is more deliberate and straight.
He has little to fear from any of the other
animals here. His track jogs only to
investigate the occasional small clumps of grass
as he searches for a careless mouse. Pieces
of fur and blood on the snow are evidence that one
less rabbit lives here now. 
cross the
frozen expanse of white for some purpose known
only to him. The trail he left moved from
clump to clump of grass as he attempted to conceal
his movements. But his trail ends in a large
divot in the snow, scooped out as a hawk or owl
snatched him from the frozen surface without
missing a wing beat. A graceful swoop and
grab for the bird of prey meant death from above
for the unsuspecting rodent.
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March
20, 2013
Today is the last day of my first winter crow
season and I have come to the conclusion that
country crows are much smarter than their city
dwelling counterparts. They have far better
eyesight and a more highly developed sense of
danger than the crows that live in town.
Country crows spot movement, detect the presence
of a gun and sense a set-up long before they are
in shotgun range. City crows are
either indifferent to danger or have lost all
sense of it – they can be easily lured into close
contact with humans. Perhaps their natural
fear of man has been dulled by generations having
lived without harm befalling them, but whatever
the reason, their reaction and response show much
less caution than their friends that live in the
farm land. The last 2 days of the final
weekend for this winter’s crow quest, I have tried
both my new electronic caller and my standard lung
powered mouth calls. Both would bring birds
in and have them circling high overhead, but
neither could seem capable enough to lure them
into range. My decoy set-up did not
appear to be very convincing either, or so the
crows informed me. I have much to learn to
become a successful crow hunter – that has been
made obvious.
But nonetheless, it’s been a great time to be afield. A few inches of fresh powder cover the crusty and dense snow that has fallen and compressed over the past few months. The sky is a clear blue and the sun is higher and brighter now, the days are longer and inevitably, eventually, later rather than sooner this year - the spring will come. The clumps of stubble and dried grasses will give way to new green and the branches on the trees will once again flow with new moisture pulled up from the melting snow as it soaks and softens the ground. So it is the natural way with all things – the old gives way to the new, the vanquished return to the soil and the melting snow quenches the thirst of the survivors and the world renews its cycle of Life.  I came across the evidence of a skirmish in the snow. A mouse or maybe a vole, braved the exposure of the world above the snow and may have paid with his life. The small tracks wander on the surface of the snow, barely heavy enough to leave an impression. Next to his are the tracks of fox in hot pursuit. The mouse may have tried to dive back under the snow in an attempt to escape, but the hole with a pile to one side of quickly excavated snow tells me the fox hastily tried to dig the little critter out and secure his dinner. The mouse must have fled and a chase ensued - the circular tracks of the fox remain where he made a valiant effort to bring this meal home. No blood, no hair tell me the mouse may have won this round, but unless more caution is exercised - his short life may be even shorter. This crow season likely came and went without much notice from the vast majority of folks. It’s an obscure season for an unlikely quarry – a plain black bird hardly worth the trouble most would say and my results certainly do not give me any bragging rights. I have successful bagged only one single crow this year. And yet I found the hunt a true challenge and the effort worth the reward. Corvus brachyrhynchos – the American Crow – successfully lured me into the woods at a time of year I genuinely disliked. My satisfaction came not in the slim count of slain crows, but in the refreshing of my spirit, in seeing the evidence of the struggles of life and death, and renewing my sense of the amazing continuation of the circle of life. In a few weeks, flowers will begin to push from beneath the snow, awakened by some unseen force of nature that tells them their time has arrived. Soon the woods will be noisy with life, the breeding cycles will come and new hatches of birds will follow. Trees will flower and fruit, bushes will be covered with succulent leaves and the sparse diet of bitter bark and dry winter grass will be gone. Food will be plentiful again for those that made it thru the cold and I will once again look forward to being in the autumn woods. But in a small and quiet way – I will also look forward to the time when the woods are again in deep slumber beneath a heavy blanket of snow and the silent emptiness of winter returns. And I will return as well to test my skills against the black bird and challenge the elements in this white and frozen world.  |
I combined several different charts, did
some math and came up with the following chart. It's
not exact, but should give you a good idea on meat yield,
the live weight, etc. of your deer.
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Where do you want to go?
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The only thing necessary for the triumph of
evil is for good men to do nothing". Edmond
Burke