The Magic of November -- Dreaming About Big Woods Hunting All Year Long

The leaves have fallen from the trees leaving them standing like gray silhouettes. They will now lay dormant until spring will once again renew the forest. There is no sweeter smell to a deer hunter than that of those damp rotting leaves. The smell only comes to the woods once a year and it coincides with the deer season. I call it: essence of fall. Stepping into the woods on the first day of deer season to that smell still gets my blood running as if it were my first-time hunting. To me the stark gray of the hardwood trees silhouetted against the brown leaves on the forest floor is even more picturesque than the all the splendid colors of the fall foliage.

With any luck the temperature will drop enough for that first snow to start covering the leaves and painting a whole new picture on the landscape. It is now a mostly black and white world with a splash of green from the conifer trees. It is a lonely place and almost a surreal world, but to a deer hunter it is home. It is a place where the hunter can escape from every care in the world and take comfort in the fact that he is once more able to pursue the majestic Whitetail Buck. A true Big Woods deer hunter lives day to day all year waiting for fall to come so he can be in those woods. It does not matter whether it’s a damp rainy day or a cold and snowy day, for the deer hunter is content just being part of the magic.

Deer hunting in itself is a magical thing. Just the mystique of catching that first glimpse of a deer slipping through the spruce and thinking that just maybe, it could be the buck you’ve been dreaming about with those thick bronze colored antlers. Buck or not, your heart will still be beating faster as the adrenalin works its way through your body. The sight of that first brightly colored rub with gouges cut deep into the wood of the tree makes a deer hunter’s imagination run wild with thoughts of what the buck that made the rub might look like. But the most magical of all things is the sight of a square toed buck track punched into the first snow blanketing of the year. Those splayed out toes with the dewclaws set well behind and wider than the hooves mean this is the buck you’ve been waiting a whole year to follow. No matter where this track goes you will follow it and put all of your skills and knowledge to the test, in the hope that you might just outwit this master of escape on his own turf.

Yes, November is a magical time for deer hunters, but it not just about the chance to shoot a buck. It’s about building a fire to toast your sandwich and watching a chickadee flit around and land on your gun barrel. Then sharing that sandwich with Canadian Jay and watching him as he carries pieces off and tucks some of it away in a tree limb to help him get through the winter. It’s about watching a family of beaver adding freshly cut poplar limbs to their feed bed for the winter, before the ice caps over their pond. It’s also about being in camp and sitting around the woodstove at night after a long day on a track and telling stories with fellow hunters, while listening to the crackling of the fire as it slowly puts some heat back into your chilled bones. Most of all, the magic of November is, the look on a young hunters face when after they have shot their first deer. That is the look that tells you that one more has joined the ranks of the next generation of deer hunters, and knowing that you have done your part to keep the magic alive. If November was not such a magical time we would not be deer hunters. Enjoy the magic and good luck on the trail.