In my youth, I spent a lot of time outside with my grandfather, “Gramps” as his grandkids knew him. By the time I was old enough to manage myself around the woods, not yet necessarily helpful, mind you, but old enough to manage, my grandfather hadn’t quite yet retired. He still worked part time for my father’s plumbing company and the rest of the time he dedicated to endeavors such as his garden, beekeeping and cutting firewood.
Earlier on in his life, the process began when he selected the tree to fell himself. Several of those times I would accompany him into the woods. During those adventures, I can remember walking or, better yet, riding in the wagon as he drove the tractor through the woods. I knew he was scouting which tree would be the next to end up in the log splitter. What it took me several more years to understand was that he was always scouting trees when in the woods…even if we were there for a different reason.
For several fall seasons I followed him around the woods, my nose runny, my hands in my pockets and my toes cold as we made our way from here to there. The idea was to drive deer to wherever my father or his brothers happened to be sitting. In the process Gramps would frequently stop at a nice cherry tree or maybe an old maple and look up into the branches. I enjoyed these opportunities as it gave me a chance to look up too. In doing so, I could get the snot to run down the back of my throat rather than having to sniffle. Sniffling, or otherwise making noise of any kind, was frowned upon when deer hunting. Though I failed to see the problem as we never once flushed a deer from the tops of all those trees we stopped to ponder.
I occasionally had the urge to suggest to Gramps that, perhaps the deer were hiding on the ground today. Yet, as a respectful child I didn’t want to question my elder’s methods. Not even when, during deer season, he stopped to look into the branches of a large, straight, cherry… obviously hoping to find those elusive tree deer. Instead, I’d stand next to him straining my eyes in assistance, my head tilted up just far enough to keep my nose running back down my throat, rather than down my face.
When I would accompany gramps on a wood cutting mission many weeks later, we would arrive at that same tree where we had both stood, peering into the branches. He had already felled it and we were to cut it up. I figured Gramps must have been on to one of those big bucks they always talk about for him to want to cut down the whole tree to get it.
I don’t remember how many seasons passed before someone besides Gramps would tolerate a kid following them around the woods while deer hunting. I remember trailing my Uncle and how he made such a big deal of how helpful I better be. I was pretty confident I could handle the task. Not only did I know what to do with my snot, so as to be silent but I knew where to find the best deer because I watched Gramps.
As we quietly made our way through the woods, I kept my eyes on the tree tops. As I was peering into the bare, yet still thick, branches of an old maple I quietly dealt with my nose drippings. The silence was broke when my Uncle told me to quit daydreaming and keep a look out for deer. Well, now was my chance to prove my capabilities as a deer scout, and I explained to him where the biggest and best deer hid – omitting that I had learned it by watching Gramps, as I hoped to make my Uncle think I knew this on my own.
The perplexed look on my Uncle’s face no doubt reflected his surprise in how someone my age could possibly know so much about the habits of deer. For a moment I thought that perhaps I knew more about hunting than he did. That is, even I knew that someone laughing so loudly in the middle of the woods would not be conducive to a successful hunt. Though, to be respectful, I did not point this out to him. I remained silent and tipped my head back so as not to sniffle.