“The Memories of Fall”

[Sliverslinger]

Another short story I just finished.

“The Memories of Fall”

I saw one of those memes the other day of an old bench on a sidewalk asking the question, “if you could sit here on this bench for an hour with anyone, who would it be?” I never answer these social media information fishing questions, but I realized I knew the answer immediately. The reason the answer was so front of mind was because it is fall and fall has a smell. Bear with me while I explain what I mean.

Most people have noticed that their sense of smell is closely connected with their memories, especially those with strong emotion. This is known as the Proust phenomenon and the mechanism for this is that the olfactory bulb is located  in close proximity to the part of our brains related to emotion and memory. As a result, scent takes a nearly direct path to the limbic system, whereas other sense such as sound have a bit more of a detour. The brain essentially imprints certain smells to emotional memories in such a way that the same scent immediately brings back both the nostalgic memories and the emotions that accompanied them.

Fall brings its own unique smells, sights, and sounds for me, especially when it rains hard. Fir forests and cedar boughs, piles of maple leaves fluttering down and dancing across the forest floor, the cool breezes scrambling one way and then the other. The smell of chanterelles, pine needle duff, of distant wood smoke, and the rhythmic plodding of rain drops sifting through the trees hits me every year and the memories follow with emotions strong on their heels. My senses tells me it feels like fall, and fall means deer season, and deer season is synonymous with my fondest memories of time with my dad and grandpa.

If I could sit on a bench with anyone for an hour it would be them, but I can’t.

Each year I spend the fall hunting and thinking of them often. I can’t talk to them, but I still hear them every time I go out teaching me nuggets about hunting and about life.

“Pick your feet up when you walk.”
“Don’t walk down the middle of the grade, walk on the edge so you don’t get caught in the open.”
“Slow down, really look around you.”
“Enjoy this, it won’t last forever.”
“You’re wearing corked rubber boots, stop stepping on your own feet.”
“Be a good man, it’s the most important thing. Be honest. Give a man your word you better keep it…”

Every year I hunt deer mostly alone, but the smells immediately bring back their words and whisper them in my ears as if they were standing right behind me. At least once each fall I’ll be sneaking through a timber patch and the memories will start stirring until without warning I will choke back the tears without success. Some of you may know what I’m talking about.

I hunted and harvested a good buck yesterday while replaying things they taught me up to the moment I pulled the trigger. It was pouring rain and the wind was all over. I knew a good buck was in the area because I had caught a grainy night photo of him on my game cam and I had tracked him up and down every trail in the area that morning before realizing he was bedded somewhere within a couple hundred yards.

“Be patient, don’t rush it.”

Everything was extremely thick with only quad trails gridding the area, so I backed out and came back that evening. I knew I’d bump him out if I continued.

“Think about what you’re doing. Don’t just do it to do it.”

The predominant wind was blowing across the bedding area from my only direct approach. A young man was parked nearby grooving in his car to a solid bass beat I could hear from a couple hundred yards away. I decided the deer if pushed wouldn’t go that way, so unbeknownst to him I used him as a “blocker” and made a huge loop to come back into the bedding area from the other side.

“Don’t be lazy. Go slow, look at everything. Don’t get discouraged and start stomping through.”

I crept through the pouring rain, 2-3 steps at a time before pausing and glassing every inch of the 30 yards I had of mixed visibility through brush off the side of the trails. I knew there were 4-5 does and the buck. That’s a lot of eyes to sneak up on. I came to an intersection with an upper and lower quad trail that met back up 50-60 yards ahead with a connecting trail. I paused for several minutes over the seemingly minute decision. Normally I took the lower trail, but the wind just barely favored the upper trail, so I went up.

“When you come to an intersection, hug the side and don’t just go stomping up to the middle before looking around. Slowly peak around the corner before you expose yourself.”

Grandpa told me that one when I was 10 on a rainy day just like yesterday while we walked an old grade above Mayfield Lake - not far from where I was standing. I can see it and hear him like we just were out together.

I crept up to the quad trail intersection hugging the right side of the trail while he whispered the reminder in the torrential downpour. I peaked just around and over the brush to see the tail of a deer 10 yards away walking quickly down the trail away from me. I didn’t even need to see the head. I knew it was a good buck from the tail shape and color and the back of the haunches, which was all I saw.

“Get ready to be ready. Make the mistake once, but don’t make the same mistake again.”

As I’d been stalking I was thinking about how Grandpa and Dad told me to rehearse and practice the motion of flipping off the lens cap and the safety in one quick motion. Nothing worse than pulling the trigger with the safety on. In the 30 minutes of stalking prior to seeing the deer, I had rehearsed flipping the lens cap up with my left thumb and the safety with my right thumb while raising the rifle in one motion at least 5 times. It seems so simple, but I’ve practiced it thousands of times over the years after embarassingly missing an opportunity in front of my grandpa when I was about 12.

I don’t even remember doing it, but the rifle was shouldered, the caps open, and the safety off in a split second as I side stepped slowly around the corner as the buck was follow several does down the trail. He was walking directly away from me head down, but a doe in the front turned to look back. When she did, so did he while turning just slightly. His antlers lifting from the head down position and spinning to look behind him were all I needed to see. “That’s a shooter buck,” was all I thought.

“When you get the opportunity, take advantage. You start goofing off and overthinking it and you’re going to miss your chance.”

There was no hesitation. I shoot with both eyes open and I checked the does were off to the side slightly as the trail curved and the buck had turned just enough to give me a small window behind the shoulder. I took one step back to the right to give me another couple of inches of clearance and fired before he had a chance to react. It was probably 3-4 seconds max total from me seeing a tail, raising the rifle, taking a few side steps to the left to clear the corner, one back to the right to improve the angle, and the buck hitting the ground bang, flop, down, dead -  25 or so yards down the trail.

As the rain poured down my neck and the breeze blew across my face, my very first thought as I slowly lowered the rifle was very distinct. “I wish they could have seen that.” I thought for a moment about them both. I remember the exact look they each gave me the last time I saw them alive and awake. It was years apart for each of them, but the look was the same.  Eyes that said they had a feeling it was the last time and eyes that said they were proud of me. “I bet they would have been proud of that to,” I thought to myself.

The truth is, that’s why I write these long stories of every successful hunt with so much detail. I share them, but they’re not actually for you. They’re for me and for them. They’re for me to remember these moments by when I am in their shoes and my memory begins to get hazy just like all old men’s memories do. I want to read these stories down the road and be able to recall the thoughts, the smells, the moments, and how it felt. I want to relive yesterday when I can’t live it anymore. I want my kids and grandkids to be able to read these stories one day and maybe remember a little bit more about me. And I want the small lessons Dad and Grandpa taught me to be memorialized in a way where they can carry on. I’ve had a fair amount of hunting success over the years, but every success story could be infused with these memories and traced back to the lessons they taught me.

And this is what the smells of fall conjures up in me every year. When the leaves start falling and the colors glow orange and red and yellow, the breeze carries the smells of autumn and the memories come with it every year. It’s like I get to remember them a little more clearly, like they’re just a little closer for those few hours. If I listen closely it’s almost like I’m a little boy again and they’re still leaning down and whispering to me in my ear, just like then.

Everyone has a different reason to go deer hunting. This is mine.

[Sliverslinger]

.

[Boss .300 winmag]

Oh boy the dust is getting in
My eyes.

Nicely done.👍

[Taco280AI]

Nice write up and buck 

[dvolmer]

Sweet!!!!

[ljsommer]

Wow. Thank you for sharing. This totally captivated me when I should have been working, and it was time well spent. I am so happy to have read this. You mentioned sharing these stories with your kids and grandkids, and I hope you do - but not just in digital. You should absolutely create hardcopies of these stories in addition to the digital.
I never got the chance to hunt with my grandpa but he was an amazing man that would've gotten along well with your family, I imagine. Thanks for giving me a glimpse into what that sort of family dynamic could look like.

[Pacific Ghost]

Well, thank you for this; I'm right there with you. Oh, and nice deer too. 

[Noneselected]

My you write well.  "Pick up your feet" was a constant rebuttal to my tripping on blackberry vines. 
Deer hunting holds a special connection to my late father too. It was the only time you could count on him to be sober and fun to be with. He was a very mean and tough drunk at 6'3" and a boxer in the army.  He knew how to hurt you and enjoyed doing it, but always sober and relaxed in the woods, and that was really something to enjoy and cherish.

My memories now are around the sounds of my young kids so many years ago trying to walk up the road quite in the darkness of the mornings. Sometimes, I hear their steps in my sleep at night. When I walk that road now by myself in pitch darkness I can almost hear them with me. I whisper back occasionally into the darkness as if they are with me. "Doing ok? Let's rest. Don't get sweaty, we have time, listen to what the woods are telling you".  Or to the old labrador I grew up with “easy girl, go slow, don’t spook the ducks in the swamp. We’ll flush them on the way back down. I can be hunting anything I want.  I love walking in the dark that way.  I can be with everyone I used to hunt with, dogs included. With care, I end up where I wanted to be and wait for daylight.  If I'm very lucky, no quads have roared by me yet with their loud exhaust spraying gravel and my fantasy is unbroken. 

The small birds know before it gets light. You hear them calling to each other. I tell my kids "Hear that? They are calling each other to see who survived the night.  Everything has to eat something to survive. Small birds are on a lot of menus for owls, mink, weasels, snakes, coyotes, wondering house cats, bobcats, foxes, and they know it.  That's why they are singing. WE MADE IT TO ANOTHER DAY!"  I know I'm whispering into the dark, but I still hear the questions my kids whisper back about wildlife and what goes on at night while we sleep.  What a time and place it is to be someone's daddy!  I knew it then, with all my soul I knew it. This was a good as life gets and I cherished every moment of it. I pray it never gets light today. 

There's a moment in every hunting day where there's enough light where shapes can be noticed, but are still too much in the gray realm to be seen clearly. Is that a snag, or a bedded elk? Could go either way. In a moment of time hardly noticeable colors appear and possible trophies become the old snags they always were.  Owls fly back to their roosts before the crows mob them, and many a deer decides to start browsing their way back to the timber, or that swamp alder thicket no man has gone before.  It's the daily miracle of light taking back a dark night and today I hate it like evil itself. My time pretending is over now. I'm alone. Kids are grown up in other states with families of their own, anchored by distance, work, and non-hunting spouses. (There's some advice for you young hunters. Don't marry outside your hunting faith!) Ken's not with me, we laid him to rest a few years ago, ditto Ray who always wanted to be that guy pushing the brush for us, and John's too old for such folly according to his wife who has an endless list of things he's behind on.  You'd think Ray won the lottery when one of my kids took a deer he moved out of a thicket. I've changed too. I'm no longer looking at the hands of that 29 year old man who's wind never failed him.  I'm in my 60's now with arthritis, cancer, and my hands look it. I used to be that deputy who could stop a bar fight just by walking in the door, or climbing and top trees on the weekends for hunting and fishing money.  I'll stay a while and watch this corner of the world then start back down the road to the gate and home by noon.  I still have the same wonderful wife waiting for me. No need to make her worry any more than necessary.  I'll grab a few mushrooms on the way down, or pop a coyote if I see one, but I'll pass on a buck. there's just no way I could deal with dragging one out of this steep hole today, but part of me really wants to go back down there and just rest till it’s always dark and my friends are with me.

[String Bender]

Very nice write up, you are an excellent writer. Whether you know it or not, you hit us all between the eyes. Your intentions were to write it for yourself but it relates to all of us. I have not hunted with my Grandpa for a very long time ,but after reading your story, all the trips with him popped in my head! Thanks for the write up.

[blackveltbowhunter]

Great story.  Nicely done on the write up and buck!