From: Tom Nagel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 11:09:59 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [RCSE] Thermal Vagrant Meets Bambi, sort of

Thermal Vagrant Meets Bambi

    I have not been posting much here lately, due to the
many activities of the season--Ohio's three week deer season. I've been spending about every other day out in the
woods, up in a tree, communing with nature, reading paper
backs and eating cold pop tarts.  Altogether a quality
wilderness experience.

    We had a strange deer season this year.  It rained
heavily the weekend before, and then stayed relatively warm,
in the 30's and 40's, and windy.  As a result, the autumn
leaves were as soggy as a half-hour old bowl of corn flakes,
and between that and the wind, you could not hear the deer
moving.  In Ohio, you hunt mostly with your ears, since you
can't see much more than 40 or 50 yards in most of our woods.

    There could have been a whole herd of deer doing the
Macarena right behind me, and I wouldn't have known it.

    And then there were the left handed deer.  If you are up
in a tree stand with a shotgun or muzzle loader (our
basic choices here in Ohio) and a deer comes up on the wrong
side of your stand, it is virtually impossible to turn around
and shoot in the "left handed" direction.  I saw a lot of
left handed deer.

    So, after three weeks of off and on hunting, I still
haven't fired a shot.  What did I get out of all this?

    I had a nuthatch give me the hairy eyeball from six feet
up, and then proceed to bomb me with nuts.  Could have been
worse.
    I got to watch a pair of Pilated Woodpeckers work over a
dead tree, throwing chips like little red-headed chainsaws.
    I got to watch a young doe bound around in circles,
doing six foot leaps in a meadow, trying to figure out what I
was and what I was doing. (I was taking a leak in a groundhog
hole, holding the wrong weapon at the time.)
    I had a couple of really nice naps in the woods, one on
a six foot long flat rock blanketed with heavy green moss.
(Well, why not?  My wife says I make moose calls in my
sleep.)
    I observed a long, drawn out, terratorial dispute
between a fox squirrel and a gray squirrel.  The little guy
won.
    I ate lunch in four different restaurants where deer
hunters are regarded as normal people.
    I got to see the witch hazel flowering among the
rocks of my son's favorite lurking spot, and the bittersweet
blooming a brilliant red in the tops of a scotch pine.
    I got the hell out of the office for most of three weeks!
And I found out that my clients and the world get along just
fine without me at my desk.
    And I got to see a lot of deer, either from the wrong
side, or from the rear, or from 150 yards out.  Or all of the
above.

    So what is the soaring connection?  Well, last summer
one of my flying buddies, Adventures With Bill Hoelcher, said
he was shocked to find out that I was both a deer hunter and
a sailplane pilot.  He said that sailplane flying was such a
peaceful and gentle sport that he didn't see how the same
person could be a deer hunter.   Then I watched Bill enter a
handlaunch contest and proceed to smash the cockpit off a
couple of other planes by circling against the crowd in a
thermal.  I gotta get him out in the woods.

    And because of all the time I spent in the woods, I blew my 12 month
flyer status.  I didn't get out once in December.  Although I did scout
some nice Knox County slopes......

_________________ | Tom Nagel /O\ Columbus, OH - ------------------------------(___)------------------------------

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