Bright Idea Outdoors Weblog

Back to the Hay Bales

Brett was seven the first time I posted a picture of him standing on a hay bale in this same spot.  It was the first of what has become our annual Rappahannock County trip to deer hunt and spend a couple days in my hunt club's cabin.  Now he's 10 and growing up fast, but he still loves those hay bales.  He and I and his  buddy  Brady made the trip the day after Christmas.  The journey and our time on the property brought me great joy, as it always does, but I left with just a hint of sadness about  what the future may hold.

Brett's in fifth grade, and with two older brothers, he knows some things that a 10-year-old probably shouldn't.   He's also benefitted from the things I learned with Jake and Nick and has had opportunities few kids his age get, especially when it comes to hunting, fishing and the outdoors.  He's my youngest son, and when I'm with him he's my responsibility.  At the same time though, I  often feel like I'm just hanging out with one of my oldest and best friends.  I forget that he's 10 and still in elementary school.

 

Seeing Brett on those hay bales Tuesday and Wednesday, I rejoiced in the notion that he is still a little boy.  I know also that middle school is right around the corner. Brett will continue to find joy in small things like campfires and hay bales, but a year from now there will be no way I can still call him a little boy.

And as we drove past the hay bales on our way home yesterday, I wondered if this might be the last trip  with Brett as a little boy.  That made me sad, and I got quiet, listening to Brett and Brady chattering in the back seat. 

We stopped for lunch in Sperryville and then headed home, the boys nodding off and my eyes on Lee Highway, the sadness gone, knowing that even when my little boy grows up, those hay bales will be part of the man he is.

A Good Game and a Good Book

I went to a couple different colleges, both with Division One athletic programs, fairly good football teams and loyal - if not fanatical - fan bases.  In 1990, I wore a jacket and tie in the Mississippi heat to watch the Ole Miss Rebels battle their way to a 9-2 regular season record in college football's toughest conference - the SEC.  Later, after I transferred to Virginia Tech, I was on-hand as the Hokies football program rose to prominence under the leadership of legendary Coach Frank Beamer.

My native Northern Virginia is awash with Tech alumni, and many people I know travel regularly to see the Hokies play in Blacksburg and at various bowl game locations.  Whenever I watch Ole Miss play on TV, I think of my late friend Jose De La Vega, his love for the Rebels and how fiercely loyal the Ole Miss fan base has remained in the face of decades of adversity.

But I haven't been to an Ole Miss game since November 1994 when I watched the Rebels play Mississippi State with Jose.  I think about going every year, and have even been invited by my buddy Rex, but it's a long drive and life has gotten in the way. 

I went to a Virginia Tech game in Blacksburg 16 years ago, when my oldest son Jake was a baby, but after that limited myself to watching college football on TV for many years.  There were a couple main reasons for this:

First, around the time Jake was born deer hunting became my primary hobby.  If I had time to travel in the fall I devoted it to hunting with my late Uncle Jim in King William County, travelling to hunt at my dad's Northampton County property and in recent years hunting my club properties in various Virginia counties.  Or even if I was just hunting locally here in the Leesburg area, I was reluctant to give up a Saturday in the woods so I  could go see a game.

The other reason was that, as Jake and his brothers Nick and Brett got older, I spent most of my fall Saturdays watching - and often coaching - their sports.  Football or fall baseball went straight into basketball, and typically Thanksgiving weekend brought the only free Saturday  of the fall.

Our fall sports schedule was lighter this year, largely because Brett is still hobbled with a long lingering foot injury, and I also decided to step back - just a little - from deer hunting to make time for other things.  In October, I read Stuart Stevens' book The Last Season, and immediately decided one of those other things would be taking Jake and Nick to a college football game.

In The Last Season: A Father, A Son and a Lifetime of College Football, Stevens, a native of Jackson, MS, tells the story of the Ole Miss Rebels 2013 football season and how the author and his then-95-year-old father attended nearly every game.  Stevens looks back on his childhood in 1960's Jackson, his relationships with his parents and in particular on how his relationship with his father was shaped by their shared love of watching the Rebels play.   If you love college football, your parents, your children, history or the American South, you should read this book.  I'm  a big fan of all of the above, and I loved The Last Season.

As I closed the book, I asked myself how I, as an alumnus of both Ole Miss and Virginia Tech, could have been a father for nearly 17 years without taking my kids to see either team play.  Fortunately, this year has marked the beginning of a period in my life when I spend less time wondering why I haven't done certain things before and more time doing them now.  So I bought tickets to Virginia Tech @ UVA, and Saturday afternoon Jake, Nick and I set out for Charlottesville.

Even as a graduate of Virginia Tech, I've always liked Charlottesville and the University of Virginia.  I have great memories of visiting my sister and attending games there during the two overlapping years that she was a UVA student and I was at Tech.  I especially enjoyed it when my dad and stepmother Linda joined us in Charlottesville for the 1993 Tech/UVA game, which they'd done in Blacksburg the year before.

The UVA campus is beautiful, and Charlottesville is one of Virginia's great small cities.  I'd root for UVA in football against anybody other than Tech or Ole Miss.

It didn't take long for my kids to feel at home in Charlottesville as well.  Anticipation began to build, and crowds grew in the street as we ate our pre-game meal at The College Inn, located in the famed part of town known as "the Corner." 

After dinner, we walked several blocks to Scott Stadium amid a crowd that favored the Hokies.  Virginia Tech travels well, and the holiday weekend was no exception.  Even with a season that had already seen three losses, thousands of Tech fans showed up to see the Hokies take on the Wahoos.

The UVA fans became thicker as we reached the parking lot and the season ticket holders' tailgate parties.  Tech fans filled back in around us though, when we reached our seats high above the field on the visitor's side.

The game was a defensive battle that ended in a 10-0 Virginia Tech win.  I was happy and so was Nick, who said it was the first time in awhile he'd been to a sporting event where the team he liked won.  Jake, who had been practically the only person in our section not wearing Tech apparel, was quiet, and I suspect he may have become a UVA fan that night.

That's fine with me though.   We don't always have to like the same teams, and I may even attend some UVA games next year against teams other than Tech.  Charlottesville is a lot closer than Blacksburg, and it's in a beautiful part of Virginia.

We rode home through the hills in darkness, the three of us talking about the game and the two colleges and laughing and joking a lot.  I pulled into the driveway at 2 a.m., thankful I'd bought those tickets and thankful that I'd read that book.

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What it Means to Me

I didn't hunt much this year before the last two weeks but did  take a few days off recently to get out in the woods.  Saw some bucks chasing does in Rappahannock County, but I never got a shot opportunity.  I did, however, shoot an eight point a little over a week ago at one of my go-to spots near Leesburg.  I was reminded that day, again on Friday and a third time today, of what deer hunting means to me.

When I started this blog over 10 years ago I was relatively new to deer hunting.  Back then, I chronicled virtually every hunt, and you could bet that whenever I shot one you'd see a picture of me with it in a blog post with a title that began: Whitetail Down. 

I still send my friends who hunt pictures of deer I kill, but I don't post them anymore.  People in my area see dead deer on the roadside every day, and if they want to see mine they'll let me know.

I have three kids, all boys, and all of them have killed deer.  Jake, my  oldest, shot a doe at age 10 and then a good eight-point that same year.  Nick, who will turn 15 in December, shot a spike at age 9.  Brett, my youngest, killed a doe two years ago at age eight and another one last year at age nine.

Brett loves deer hunting.  He  sits like a statue and knows what he's doing.  But Brett's in a cast after surgery and a foot injury that has dogged him for months, and he can't hunt right now.  Nick shot that one deer and felt bad about it.  He doesn't want to hunt anymore, and I totally respect that.  Jake, now almost 17, says occasionally that he wants to get back into hunting but doesn't have time for it right now.  I respect that too, and when he's ready to get back out in the woods I'll be ready to take him.

We're all in different places when it comes to hunting, but when I brought that deer home on November 11 everybody came back together.  Jake pulled in with a couple friends and took a picture of me with the deer.  Brett hobbled out in his crutches.  Even Nick, who may never hunt again, asked:

"Can I see it?"

On Wednesday, I travelled to one of my hunt club's properties in Rappahannock County, VA.  It was great to be away from the constant roar of Northern Virginia traffic and to experience the quiet and stillness that deer hunting should be.  I read several chapters of Danielle Nadler's book Without a Trace and passed on a doe and a spike.

I hunted near Leesburg on Thursday with no success and returned to Rappahannock on Friday.  My plan was to hunt in the morning and then return to Leesburg and get some stuff done.  I saw bucks chasing does and came close to shooting one of the does before I saw antlers bobbing up and down in the tall grass behind her.  Both deer turned away from me, however, and I lost my chance to take a shot.

On the way back to my truck I spotted an orange hat.  It turned out  to be a guy named Keith, a club member I've known for a couple years but had never really talked to before Friday.  We talked over lunch, the same conversations that every deer hunter has, and I decided getting "stuff done" could wait and to stay for the afternoon hunt.

If you're a hunter, you know what we talked about:

"Nobody's killed anything here.  The trail cams had all kinds of bucks then they just went dead."

"I got this buck on my trail cam at 1:00 today, right before I got to my stand."

"I'm just hunting for meat.  You can't eat antlers."

"Did you see anything?"

"Hell no, you?"

"I just do this to get out of the house."

"I wish Brett was here with me."

Of course, these conversations were much longer, but since about 75% of the words we used were profanity I was able to clean them up and shorten them a lot here.

The important take away was that Keith is an old school good guy.  He's a fire marshal in Fairfax County and has been around the block more than a few times.  Men don't hunt side-by-side for the most part, but the conversations we have before and after are another reason I love deer hunting.

Finally, today I reached the best thing about deer hunting.  We "process" most of the deer we kill ourselves and grill it, fry it or make it into jerky.  But I take one deer a year to my buddy Mark at Mark's Butcher Shop and get everything except the tenderloin ground up as venison burger. 

I cooked up a pound of the burger today. Brett just likes it plain.  He was down with a cold and ate a bowl of plain deer burger sitting on the couch. 

The rest of it I made up into this chili con queso concoction I do, AKA deerburger dip.  Jake and I ate that for lunch with tortilla chips.

Nick took a pass on it, but I still hope he comes back.

So that's a snapshot of what deer hunting means to me, but there's so much more to it.  So many more people who bring me back to it, year after year:

• My uncles Jim and Tom who taught me to hunt:
• My cousin Tom who has grown into a father and a great man, but who I still think of as Daniel Boone in soccer cleats;
• Mike, AKA, the Captain, my best hunting friend, who I hope to hunt with more soon;
• Rex, my buddy from Mississippi; I've never hunted with him but someday I will;
• My father-in-law Mike.  He's not into hunting but has been kind enough to let me hunt his property for over 10 years now;
• My dad; another non-hunter whose property I hunted in the early days;
• Linda; my stepmother and the only parent I have left.  I'm hoping Brett kills his first buck at your place.

"Be good and you will be lonesome,

Be lonesome and you will be free,

Live a lie, and you will live to regret it,

That's what living is to me,

That's what living is to me." - Jimmy Buffett

 

Dead Deer Removal - $20 Off This Week Only

The weather has finally turned cold, and deer are on the move in Fairfax, Loudoun and throughout the Northern Virginia area. 

Unfortunately, many of them will get hit by cars and wind up dead on the side of the road.  Or even worse, they  may end up dead in your yard!

If this happens at your home or business, just call (703)431-0182 to make that dead deer disappear.  And now through November 18, mention this post and get $20 off our already reasonably priced dead deer removal service.

Meanwhile, be extra careful driving for the next couple weeks especially at dawn and dusk.  Watch out for deer because in many cases they're amped up right now and not watching out for you.

Hunting With Kids on Virginia's Eastern Shore

Virginia's Youth Deer Hunt took place a couple weekends ago, and my son Brett and I travelled to Virginia's Eastern Shore for the hunt.  Along with good numbers of deer, the shore is home to my stepmother Linda and other members of our eastern shore "family."

Brett's buddy "AB" got to hunt for the first time ever, and - while neither young man took a deer - we had a great time, as we always do when we go "off 13" in Northampton County.

The highlight of the hunt for Brett and myself came when deer emerged just before dark on Saturday.  In a 10-minute time period that seemed like a lifetime Brett decided to pass on a small spike as well as a doe with a fawn.  Both deer passed within 10 yards of us as Brett does a great job of being still and quiet in the woods.

Deer also tend to be less aware during the Youth Hunt than at any other time during Virginia's long deer season.  They haven't been hunted yet, and it's always a great opportunity for kids to get a shot at a first deer or buck before the deer realize it's hunting season!  Brett took his first deer - a doe - at the age of eight on the Youth Deer Weekend two years ago.  My son Jake also got his first deer during the youth hunt way back in 2011.

The trip would have been worth it even if we hadn't seen a single deer.  Hard to believe it's been more than 15 years since I first travelled to my dad's farm on Virginia's eastern shore and even harder to believe it's been more than seven years since we lost him.  I'm so grateful to Linda that we still have a home there and it's always such a great feeling when we see our friend AB and other members of his family coming across the field to greet us.  I know I don't get there often enough, but God knows I surely try.

With no meat to rush to the freezer, Brett and I were able to take our time on the return trip, stopping for lunch at the Fisherman's Crab Deck just east of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

It's bow season now (even if it does feel like the middle of summer) so it'll be awhile before Brett can take to the woods again with the Thompson Center Impact muzzleloader.  When he does though, hopefully this will be the year Brett gets his buck!

Butte, Montana Trip: World Musuem of Mining

To learn about Butte, Montana - its people and its history - there is no better place to start than the World Museum of Mining.  Located right next to the campus of Montana Tech, the museum was one of the first places my son Jake and I went on our recent visit to Butte, also known as the Richest Hill on Earth.

Butte and Silver Bow County are rich in history and much of that history revolves around the mineral wealth that came from beneath the small city's surface.  Silver and gold got Butte started as a mining camp, but copper was what later made it one of the American west's greatest boom towns. 

The World Museum of Mining is located on the site of an actual copper mine, the Orphan Girl, and features daily underground mine tours at depths of 65 and 100 feet.  We took the 100-foot level tour led by a guide who previously worked in the mines as an electrician.  Hard hats with head lamps are required on the tour and for good reason.  Clearances can be low in the mine, and the hard hats are necessary to protect visitors from hitting their heads as they pass through timber framed doorways.  At one point, our guide had everyone turn off their head lamps, plunging us into absolute pitch darkness.

In addition to learning about how late 19th and early 20th century mining worked, we learned from our guide about some cultural aspects of the Butte/Silverbow area.  One such lesson was on the origin of the  traditional Butte way of saying goodbye, which is "tap 'er light."  I'm hesitant to try and retell this as I may get something wrong, but I will say it has to do with blasting in a mine shaft and "tapping" sticks of dynamite into holes drilled in the wall.  You probably get the idea; I know if I had to do that I'd tap 'er pretty light too.

Along with the mine tour and historical and mineral displays, the mining museum features a replica 1890's mining town called Hell Roarin' Gulch.  This is fun to tour and provides visitors with some great photo ops, but on the outskirts of the little town is what I found most meaningful at the World Museum of Mining.

The Memorial Garden is home to a wall listing the names of 2,500 people killed in the area's mining industry from 1865-present.  The plaque pictured below sums up what hard rock mining has meant to the world and to this country and reading it reminded me that many American heroes have been just every day working people, going to a job every day and trying to feed their families.

I found on the wall three fallen miners who shared my last name, and I looked them up when I visited the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives.  I couldn't find evidence that I'm descended from any of these men, but I did learn quite a bit about my family's history in Southwest Montana at the archives.  I've written a little about that on my other blog and will provide more information on the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives in my next post here.

Butte Montana Trip: Lunch at M&M Cigar Store

One of the first places my son Jake and I went to eat on our recent trip to Southwest Montana was the legendary M&M Cigar Store on Main Street in Uptown Butte.  The M&M first opened its doors in 1890, and when I told locals that my grandfather was a Butte native they assured me that he would have patronized the M&M.  We hit the M&M for burgers right after our underground mine tour at the World Museum of Mining.

The food was really good, and the M&M has a good selection of cold draft beer.   Like everyone we met in Butte, the staff was super friendly and helpful.  You can learn more about the history of the M&M at ButteAmerica.com (link above) but I think the bar's story is best told by the local band Dublin Gulch in its song Tap 'Er Light.

Check out the song below. Be sure to listen to the words; and when you leave be sure to tap 'er light!

 

Butte, Montana Trip: Our Lady of the Rockies

 

I had the great privilege to spend Father's Day morning at a beautiful site that is actually dedicated to mothers around the world. 

Our Lady of the Rockies  is a 90-foot statue of  the Virgin Mary standing atop the Continental Divide and overlooking the Southwest Montana City of Butte.  Completed in 1985, the project took six years with much of the work done by volunteers from Butte.  It is one of the most interesting attractions in Butte, a small city that is rich with history and character.

My visit to Our Lady of the Rockies was part of a weeklong trip to Southwest Montana I recently took with my oldest son Jake. We arrived at Butte's Bert Mooney Airport on June 13 and left on June 20 with lots of great memories and plenty of stories to tell.  I'll tell  as many of them as I can this summer, here on this blog and on my other blog dedicated to my parents and other lost family members grieftravels.com.

 

White-tailed Deer in the News

My friend Judy Loose of NoVA Deer Shield pointed out on her company Facebook page today that white-tailed deer will be giving birth to fawns over the next few weeks.  According to Judy, whose company offers protection of landscape plants against deer damage, lactating does need to increase their caloric intake by 50%.  Hungry momma deer mean more browsing on landscape plants and a greater need for the protection of NoVA Deer Shield.

It also means those does will have to move around to find that food and that Northern Virginia drivers need to be alert. Every year I get a late May-June increase in calls for dead deer removal, with the majority of those deaths resulting from vehicle crashes.  I always figured the spike in deer crashes had something to do with fawns, but I wasn’t sure exactly what caused it.  Judy’s information on does’ increased need for calories this time of year makes sense as an explanation.

Meanwhile, the National Park Service is seeking comments on its Deer Management Plan and Environmental Assessment for C&O Canal and Harpers Ferry National Historical Parks.  The plan and EA is a 246-page document rich with information on the parks and on managing white-tailed deer.  The plan outlines various alternatives for managing deer in the parks and contains information on deer management strategies employed in Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia.  I've only had time to read about 25 pages of it so far, but here's something that jumped out at me on Page 21. Maryland's 2009-2018 White-tailed Deer Management Plan states:

"No other management strategy for managing deer populations is as effective or as economical as deer hunting, and hunting is necessary to keep deer populations from growing beyond their biological carrying capacity."

Of course, we all know it's not hunting season now, so non-lethal methods of controlling deer are the best options.  These can include changing landscape plant and crop selections, exclusion of deer using fences or other enclosures and using repellents.  There are lots of these available at retail outlets, and some are more effective than others.  Just like with any pesticide or herbicide, when it comes to treating your plants with deer repellents, I recommend consulting a licensed professional like Judy Loose of NoVa Deer Shield.

For more information on managing your local white-tailed deer herd, please visit my new website at emgprofessional.com and feel free to call me at (703)431-0182 with your questions about deer or other local natural resources. 

First Look at the New Blog

A few weeks ago - or maybe a few months - I wrote a post saying it was time to move on from this blog.  I immediately started working on a new one and then almost immediately after that quit working on it.  I picked it back up tonight though and, after typing a new post, realized the only thing that's going to motivate me to keep up with the blog is people reading it.

I'm still not ready to share it on social media, and I'm not sure if anyone reads this blog anymore  unless I at least post  it on Facebook.  Just in case you stumble upon this, however, the new blog is about my parents.  I lost my dad seven years ago and my mom in the fall of 2011.  I realized this year that I'd never really grieved them in a meaningful way, and I decided that writing about them might be one way to do that.

I picked up a cool domain name for the blog, and I have a few posts.  Read it, let me know what you think, and I'll write some more.

You can find the new blog at GriefTravels.com.