Thanksgiving break brings many positives for many people. Maybe it is the delicious food and time with family or maybe it is the shift from fall to Christmas, but for a wide variety of people such as myself, it is the transition from archery to rifle season.
The excitement that this time of year brings is incomparable to any other time of year.
So what makes this such a special time of the year?
Well, this season has several special aspects.
Peace and Quiet:
Every day people are always surrounded by noise and a chaotic lifestyle, whether that is in a school setting or a place of work.
People tend to become grumpy or overwhelmed by all this chaos and just need an escape from the world around them.
When you enter into rifle season it provides you a time to be alone.
You become your boss and make your own decisions. You can choose how long you want to sit, where you want to sit, and for the first time in a long time you just get to sit with your thoughts without the rush and the craziness of the world swarming around you.
You do not have to talk to anyone nor do you have to do any kind of work. You just get to sit in silence and observe the beauty of nature around you.
When we are consistently bombarded with life, we tend to forget to look at the little things in life and appreciate them.
It may be extremely cold during this time of year, and the woodland floors may be blanketed in snow but that doesn’t shave away the beauty within the forest.
If you take a minute to sit down in silence you may observe the crystal-white snow layered on the trees, or hear the rustling of squirrels scurrying around. You can listen to the chirping of birds and the pecks from woodpeckers.
But my most peaceful part is taking a nap in the tree stand.
Lots of lessons:
Hunting is not always about setting out for a trophy buck.
Throughout my lifetime I have spent countless hours walking in the woods, sitting in tree stands, and riding four-wheelers with my dad. I was accompanying him by the third grade, even though I could not shoot a gun because he wanted me to learn.
I have learned how to identify different trees, animals, leaves, animal tracks, and animal droppings, and I have learned what sound each animal makes.
My dad has always told me that it does not matter if you kill anything as long as you learn something new about the woods.
As you learn how to identify animals from certain distances, you grow stronger eyes. I can see deer from a mile away and I am the one who warns my parents if they are about to hit a deer at night.
I bet not many people notice that up on the highway right before the Route 15 exit, there is an eagle’s nest on the Susquehanna River that is accompanied by the same eagle family, year after year. It is small skills like this that you can develop from spending time in the woods and taking notice of the small things in nature.
At our cabin, by the time we hit 13 years old, we are put as drivers by ourselves without the company of an adult. A drive is where a group of cabin members walk a certain amount of land intending to push out deer to the watchers to shoot.
The members of the cabin do this because all the men up there teach and prepare us, kids, the ways of the woods. We learn how to walk safely and quietly in the woods, and we also learn how to identify where you are on the cabin’s property. We learn a sense of direction, as well as each logging road on our property.
How to tackle the cold:
As many of you know the month of December has been miserably cold.
This almost makes me not want to get out of my warm bed to go sit in the frigid temperatures. It takes a lot of preparation to keep myself from freezing.
Typically you do not want any kind of scent to fill your clothes because deer have an immaculate sense of smell, but when it is this cold you have to take that risk by bringing all of your clothes into the warm house.
Layers are key to staying warm!
Start from your base layers. It is very important to have well-insulated base layers. Then, slowly work your way up adding another layer, and another.
It is also important to keep in mind that tucking all your shirts into your pants is key to keeping off ticks from your body.
Wool socks are crucial to keeping your feet nice and toasty. Wool is going to become your best friend when you are hunting.
You want to include a winter hat, thick gloves, bibs, a heavy coat, and thick well-insulated boots on your outer layers. Hand and foot warmers also come in handy when trying to combat the rigorous temperatures and weather.
Besides all of these warm layers, it is necessary to keep in mind that you need to have at least 250 square inches of orange on your body according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission.
It is not all about killing:
I know that, at least up at my hunting cabin, we have members that sometimes kill just to kill.
They may already have a deer, but they feel the need to kill another and another until they have utilized every tag they possibly have.
This is mostly seen in the doe population. You can get multiple doe tags here in PA, and people slay these deer for no reason. They already have the meat from their buck or their first doe, but they desire more and more.
This hurts the population of deer because the fewer doe’s there are, the less amount of bucks are produced each year. Then everyone complains about not seeing many bucks, but they then remember how many they were slaying the past year.
It is not even all that we slay, it is also bucks.
Everyone is so determined to kill the first legal buck they see, but what would happen if we as hunters passed up on smaller bucks? When the following season rolls around those bucks will be larger and stronger and will be worth the kill. There is no pride and success in killing a small buck, but there is in a larger, worthy deer if a hunter waits another year to let that deer mature.
Another complication with the society of hunters today is that they have no respect for the deer.
I may be an emotional person as it is, but every time I shoot a deer I cry because it hurts that I am taking a life away from a deer.
Deer may taste good eating, and I know that I kill deer to eat too, but they have so much more potential than what meets most hunters’ eyes. They are beautiful creatures with beautiful bodies.
I love seeing the mom and her little ones out walking together. It is just so much fun to observe deer in their natural habitat doing their natural everyday activities.
Archery vs. Rifle:
What makes rifle season so special is the feeling of the trigger being pulled.
Why am I so against archery hunting?
It is not because I do not enjoy the fall season, it is because archery is inhumane to the deer.
Hunters shoot these deer with their arrows at distances that cannot guarantee a direct kill, then they leave them walking around wounded to the point where the coyotes start eating them alive.
The other reason these deer get eaten alive is that most hunters today get right out of their stands and immediately go and look for a blood trail. This is the wrong choice.
You should wait at least an hour after you shoot a deer to let their body run its course and die before tracking it. If you track a deer right after the shot you keep pushing the deer further and further away allowing it to keep running and running away. Eventually, you will lose the blood trail, and you leave that deer to slowly suffer and die.
Archery also screws up rifle season because the hunters, especially at my cabin, spend those six weeks ripping their four-wheelers around the mountain and they chase and push all the deer onto the neighboring properties.
We perform this drive at my cabin called the Hallows drive, and we push out at least one deer on it every year. This year we have performed the drive twice and pushed out zero deer. This is because the “archery chasers” pushed a large amount of the deer population on our property all over the place.
Welcome to the family:
The family dynamic at a hunting cabin is so special, and you only see it during rifle season.
Everyone has a job, and everyone does their job. You could go fetch wood from outside to keep the wood bins filled, or you could be on dish duty, or you could end up cooking.
The Friday before opening day we have all the groceries unloaded and a menu is prepared for the weekends in rifle season. We enjoy delicious meals, from fish and fries to spaghetti and meatballs and we all eat together.
All the members care for one another, and although I may be the only female member in my cabin I am accepted and treated just as the guys are treated:
I still contribute equally to the cabin maintenance duties.
I feel like I have a lot of men looking out for me, and supporting me.
We all celebrate our kills together and congratulate one another.
We help track, gut, and skin deer if another member needs it.
We have each other’s backs.
The lifestyle of a hunter may seem very different, and people often question the excitement one gets when rifle season rolls around, but let me open you up to a challenge.
If you ever get the chance to go hunting, go try it.
You do not have to carry a gun if you do not want to.
Just go sit in the woods, and see the peace and beauty that lies within the thick, luscious forests.
*Feature photo (at top): The sunset overlooks the top of the mountain, as the last day of hunting season comes to a close. This picture was taken on Saturday, Dec. 14. This photo was provided by Raigan Fredericks.
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