A Day in the Woods and Water

I’m new to hunting; growing up, our leisure time was primarily spent on hiking trails, with a small amount of fishing.  It wasn’t until after I graduated college that I was invited on an upland  bird hunt in the Panhandle.  I came home with a couple of quail and a bag full of rabbits, and I’ve been a hunter ever since.

For a few years I was content with my yearly trip to Guymon,  but my last outing left me wanting more – mainly because I didn’t get a single good shot at a bird, and there wasn’t a rabbit in sight.  Taking a long trip and coming home empty-handed was maddening, and I spent the month of December tortured by my freezer’s lack of game.  Finally, I had enough and decided to try my luck again.  This time, I pointed the minivan south toward the Blue River Public Fishing and Hunting Area.  My strategy was simple: no matter how the hunting went, I could come home with a limit of rainbow trout.  It was fool-proof.

Of course, I had not anticipated the torrential rains that preceeded my expedition.  When I arrived at the lovely Blue, it was a yellowish-brown flood.  I put on my waders and bravely took on the rapid waters, but the trout decided not to show up for the party.  I spent the better part of the morning dropping my line below the raging waterfalls, but to no avail.  So much for my sure-fire plan.

Plan B was to trade my waders for a blaze orange vest, and my spinning rod for a Mossberg.  I figured I would at least get a nice hike and see some new country, and I set off into the walk-in wilderness area.  The gravel trail brought me through the woods into a large clearing, interspersed with small boulders, rain-fed rivulets, and patches of tall grass and prickly pear.  Stands of scrubby oaks fringed the area, with tall cottonwoods lining the riverbank in the distance.  It seemed like as good a place as any to start bushwhacking for small game.  I began to thrash a patch of tall grass around a small brook, and no more than ten feet from the trail I scared up a big rabbit.  She took off like a house on fire, and I let off three quick shots before she stopped under a fallen tree.  I had a dove plug in my magazine, so I had to reload, never taking my eyes off the dead tree.  I slowly walked up on the spot, ready to unload on that rabbit again.  Imagine my surprise to find her lying on the ground, already dead.  There was no sign that I had hit that cottontail, yet here she was.

“Did I just scare this rabbit to death?” I thought.  It was a humbling idea, that after my long hunting dry spell, my trophy died of a heart attack.  I sheepishly stored the cottontail in my vest, and set off down the gravel road again.  Along the way I watched for squirrels in the trees, and chatted with anglers beside the river.  Eventually the road turned away from the Blue and into the stunted forest.  I sat down for lunch on a boulder at noon and ate most of a Lovera’s summer sausage,  then made the long trek back to the car.

The happy ending to my rabbit hunt came during the cleaning process (which is normally the worst part of the expedition).  I found that I had, in fact, hit my target, and my losing streak was at an end.  I packed my kill away in the ice chest, and exercised some more fishing futility for another hour before giving up and going home.

There’s nothing quite like pulling in the driveway knowing you’re bringing something to the table.