By Jeff Moyer
Every year around late summer I start getting what I call the “fall itch”. As the days shorten and get a little cooler, I start thinking about hunting season. By that time I’ve been shooting my bow for a month or so and it’s feeling familiar, then it’s time to decide where to put the tree stands and pop-up blinds, sharpen broad heads and knives, make sure the guns are all lined in and ammo loaded for them, look for places to set some traps, make sure the wood shed and the propane tank are both full, try to get a little coon hunting in, glass the deer out in the fields to look for bucks of interest, I’m sure you get the picture by now. Mom said long ago that I was borderline hopeless and she was probably right.
Now here we are on the backside of what has been a particularly cold and icy and generally disagreeable winter so far and a different sort of itch might be setting in. I’m not sure if it has anything to do with the fact that I missed all of bear season due to an ongoing bug, very little rabbit hunting was accomplished due to the weather, and trapping was just successful enough to keep my interest piqued and make me want more traps and equipment. I had a successful and enjoyable fall hunting season so that shouldn’t have anything to do with it, but my mind seems to be drifting past February, perhaps part of March, and tiptoeing into April.
While out checking my traps about a week ago, I saw a buck that had already lost one antler. From somewhere in the back of my mind, the need to walk the woods and look for shed antlers started to flicker and smoke a bit despite the fact that there was still enough snow on the ground to make walking a bit difficult. Last night I found myself looking for a ramp hoe. For those of you not familiar, it’s a rather specialized implement for digging ramps in spring. For those of you unfamiliar with what ramps are, they’re a type of leek or onion that grows wild in the spring and is particularly wonderful in fried potatoes and meatloaf. Despite the fact that I’m told it will probably be sometime in May before we can get into the area we dig in, the need for a hoe is suddenly important. Who knows? A sudden warm-up and early spring might result in an early ramp season and one needs to be prepared. Fortunately a friend of mine with a hardware store sells a variety of such equipment and can address my need (itch?).
I blame our daughter for part of it as she’s already looking at seed catalogs. Now every time I walk past our garden or raised beds, if I look just right I can see strawberries, asparagus, and assorted vegetables waking up or peeking thru the ground. There is a similar instance going on with the raspberry and blackberry vines, when I walk past I could swear they’re waving at me like an old friend that hasn’t seen me for a while. I looked down into a certain hollow at the old apple tree that resides there recently and could have sworn I saw morel mushrooms popping up and down thru the snow like a game of whack-a-mole. When I looked back though, there was nothing. Does this new itch include hallucinations?
I walked into my wood shop the other day and almost turned around and walked back out. It was cluttered and needed a good sweeping and yet it beckoned me to throw the bay door up, fire up the planer or a saw, and work on a project while my hound dozes in his chair by the door. I did gather up the raw materials for a planned project and put them on the work table so there is hope.
I’m getting a burning urge to cook outdoors again. Every time I open the freezer, a package of venison steaks or a pork roast seem to ask me where I’ve been these last few months. I don’t know how much longer I can resist. We were walking down the meat case aisle in a grocery store recently and I had to physically restrain a big package of chicken from jumping into our cart when Nancy wasn’t looking. The struggle is real!
I am constantly impressed with the amount of willpower I show lately with each time I’m in Walmart and don’t come home with a new spinning reel for a wispy little ultralight rod I have whose previous reel finally collapsed after one too many bouts with a trout. Even tho my fishing partner and I agree that it will be a while before the rivers get down to fishable levels with all of the snow melt and rain, it pains me to see an unclad and unprepared fishing rod. I was a boy scout many years ago and “always be prepared” has stuck with me all these years later. Yes, there apparently is a spring itch, I have it, and there appears to be no cure, but that’s fine with me, I’ll cope as best I can.
