Grouse Hollow Journal for October 25, 2012 by Greg Koelker

On Friday evening, I could have gone to several football games, I could have gone fishing, I could have sat on the porch or by a campfire with a cocktail, then there was the Farm to School Harvest Challenge competition, or I could have gone and sat in a tree stand. Such decisions are sometimes too hard to make so I went with the easy one because all of my gear and clothes were already packed in the pickup.

The colors on the ride over the ridge were still pretty good. One long valley down into Chipmunk Coulee was so appealing that I had to stop for a picture. I parked at the back gate to our ridge, and took my time getting my clothes on. I used to be in a rush to get in a stand this time of the year. Not so much now as I have learned that no matter how fast you get there, it doesn't make a hill of soybeans of difference in the quality of the hunt, so I take my time.

After an interlude of tugging on coveralls, spraying down boots and bow with scent killer, and getting all of little stuff – grunt call, camera, scent dispensers, string release, stowed away in or on its particular spot, I walked to the Oak Stand area. I picked a hole in the fence to enter the woods, well not really a hole, the wire is just down low enough that I can step over it. The buck brush and multiflora rose is getting thick here, okay, thicker that where it is getting just thick. Some of the bushes are so big, I can't get my tractor over them anymore.

Anyway, I strolled down a lane I cut a couple of weeks ago with the tractor and and sat on a downed elm tree across the path. The sun was still high enough that the colors filtering through gave everything a yellow or orange glow. An occasional leaf would drift down, flutting to an almost but not quite silent landing on its already fallen fellows. The air is thick, rich if you will, of the aroma of those decaying leaves. In my daydreaming the time, the leaves sweet, musty and yes slightly acrid scent takes me to places I have been and would return to again and again. Like turned earth or new mown hay, the fall forest scent triggers days spent at my grandparents' farms, walking with an old dog or out “helping” pick up walnuts or hickory nuts, or staying out of the way of the men cutting wood and then running the sweet smelling chunks through the snarling and rattling tractor driven buzz saw to split them. I am with Grandma Potter in the wood shed while she expertly swings a big hatchet to split hardwood kindling for the firewood box on the porch. You could reach into it through a door in the kitchen wall to grab a couple lengths to feed the old green wood cook stove that warmed the kitchen and made so many wonderful biscuits and huge family dinners. I am with Uncle Celie and Uncle Buck Elskamp as they get a huge black witches brew-sized kettle onto a bed of shimmering hardwood coals behind the corn crib. They have rigged up a pulley and hoist system from a high hickory limb; they kill one of the hogs in the pig pen nearby with the sharp crack of a .22 followed by a stampede of the other half-a-dozen ham dinners on the hoof down through the hog pasture. I can see the blood running on the ground from the large incision sliced by Buck under the victim's throat with his pocket knife. They grab the carcass with hay forks jabbed through the hocks and drag it back feet first to the hoist. Before long the pig is dipped head first in the scalding hot water, scraped clean of hair and dirt and then gutted and quartered and readied for the cutting and wrapping up in the house on the kitchen table. I think of the pear tree in Grandma's fence yard. My sister and I would climb in that tree all sumer long and then play war with the green pears until we brought Grandma's wrath down on us. I wonder if there were any ripe pears during the years we were little kids. It is 1957 and I am with Grandpa Potter and Uncle Buck at the huge (well, it seemed huge to me at the time) cable spool turned picnic table in the sun of the back yard with maple leaves falling all around us. The boys of October are on the brown leather-covered transistor radio: Hank Aaron, Lew Burdette, Eddie Mathews, Del Crandall, and Warren Spahn are names I recall. Grandpa laughs and lets me suck up the suds off his glass of Holiday Beer after he refilled it from the quart bottle resting nearby. They sip their beer and smoke, and occasional share a “That a boy” or an expletive. I remember Buck's favorite growl was, “Sow cat bitch!” Whatever it meant, he didn't say it in front of Grandma. Later I thought about a squirrel hunt I finally talked my dad into one fall afternoon where he let me carry his automatic .22. Things started off badly when my little brother, Del, tripped and his BB gun went off hitting Dad in the calf. I won't repeat what was said. Needless to say, Del did not recock his Daisy that day. Dad saw a squirrel and I was able to get the critter off a limb after only two shots. I think we got two that day. Dad didn't hunt unless nagged by me or my brother in those days. He had hunted in his younger days but really didn't much care for hunting anymore; he really liked animals, and he disliked most wild game as dinner fare - “Poor man's meat,” is what he said after a childhood of eating everything from squirrels to muskrats. Then I thought about a dirt bike ride with my son. I was sitting by a spot where I once had to tip over my dirt bike to get it under the fence or go back down through the brush I had just motored through. I remembered I had a very young Mark with me, and he, the one who leaps off of cliffs and snowboards down icy mountain faces today, was sniffling in his worry that we wouldn't be able get home or worse that we would have try to go back the way we came. I remembered the day Ben came in with his first two squirrels taken on his own with his own 20-gauge. He was wearing camo from head to toe including a Jones cap. I used to love those, but they have fallen out of fall fashion that's more in favor of ball caps I guess. Anyway, he was all grins and wanted a picture. He cleaned them too, with a little instruction and encouragement. I remember a walk with Ellen and the boys when they were little up on the ridge in the fall where we stopped by a downed cherry tree nearby where I was dreaming and the boys ate their lunch on it, bouncing it a bit. El and I still refer to the day as a marker when refering to that woods: the place the kids sat on the tree to eat lunch.

Anyway, the fall is full of memories that seem more poignant to me compared to the other seasons I guess. As it happened, I did not see any deer that night. I did take a couple nice pictuers of the sunset.

Until next time, get out - the Wisconsin DNR has posted a link to the Wisconsin Hunter Challenge idea - http://dnr.wi.gov/education/outdoorskills/hunterchallenge/. The challenge is for sportsmen and women to get more people involved in the sport. The hope is that we all can recruit new adults into hunting. Any hunter can become a mentor. Hunting is not just for boys and men anymore. Recruit your spouses, girl friends, and daughters into hunting. Teach your children's friends to hunt. Take your daughters and sons hunting, take a neighbor who used to hunt out for a hunt, and/or help clubs and other outdoor organizations recruit new hunters from your community. The DNR says that mentoring someone into the hunting tradition is the surest way of protecting our heritage. Enjoy.