So there I was, sitting at the edge of a clearing, waiting hopefully for some unsuspecting buck to come lalalaing on by so that I could shoot him. It was the last two hours before sunset, and I’m a horrible fidget, although I was trying very hard to hold still.

At one point, I was being inspected by three tiny squirrels and a titmouse in a tree. I was pretty sure the bird and I were cool, but the squirrels were highly suspicious. I froze, although my eyes were rolling all over the place trying to watch them all. Squirrels will rat you out to the deer, the little furry weasels.

One of them was bouncing up and down trees, headed in my general direction. He popped up onto my stump; all I could see without moving my head was a tiny fluffy tail. Then he disappeared behind my back. I could hear him making little squirrelly noises, and was just waiting for the shoe to drop.

Then in about a microsecond, he zipped up my back, over my shoulder, rotated in mid-air, and landed on the barrel of my rifle facing me. He looked at me and I looked at him for a few beats until I blinked.

He went, “Eep!” and launched himself back over my shoulder, using my thumb as a springboard for his sharp little toes. He must have thought I was just an oddly blinking stump, because he didn’t really sound the alarm. A few minutes later, and here came one of his partners in crime, up to my right knee. That one didn’t quite get on me, but he zoomed up the trunk of the tree right next to me and scritched pieces of bark off onto my head to see if I would move, all from the lofty safe distance of about a foot over my head. I was holding back a serious case of the giggles at this point, expecting at any moment to be wearing a four-ounce squirrel hat.

Eventually they moved on, and I still sat. The only large things I saw moving were two-legs, and they’re not hard to hide from if you just hold still. No deer, but I sat in the quiet long enough for my ears to stop ringing and the noise in my head to settle out and just be.

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This was an impromptu day trip with Marvin. This is what I’m saving vacation days for, after all, and on a Friday, I only have to blow a half-day’s worth. So I got up at 3 AM, and we drove to get there in time for first light.

We sat and walked for a couple of hours, and then road hunted during the middle of the day. I knew Eric was up there somewhere, and sure enough, he passed us. He didn’t stop, but he had a water truck hot on his ass and a guy in the passenger seat, so I knew he was busy. When we stopped for lunch, we came upon the water truck guys, and they told me where he was working.

Marv and I drove on back to overlook Salt Springs Reservoir; you could see the fish surfacing, the water is that clear.

We found Eric just on his way back out to the mill with a load of chips. I was so happy to see him (it’s been since June, although we’ve been talking on the phone a lot) that I was grinning from ear to ear and forgot to drag my camera out with me. Fortunately, he was grinning too. He told us where he’d seen bucks in the early morning hours, which is how I came to be squirrel bait, gave me a kiss, and went on with his job. We went on too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now that I’ve reacquainted myself with this area (it’s been five years since I hunted it and I only bought a tag for that zone this year so I could hunt with Eric) I may go up by myself for a weekend. I’ll put the trailer at the logging camp, maybe ride around with him on Saturday, and then he can stay with me instead of commuting home. He’s got his rifle in his truck; I giggle at the thought of an eighteen-wheeler pulled over to the side of the road with the driver trying to load a buck up onto the chips. It’s really tall!