Darren
At least once a season, I go to my farm with a bag packed for 70-degree hunts when I should have packed for 30-degree hunts. This usually happens during the middle of October when we get our first cold snap. There are a couple of reasons I continue to make this mistake, well, three, if you count just plain stupidity. The first is that my mind is still stuck on the miserable, sweat dripping sits I did when the season first opened. As I pack for first October trip, I again grab my lightweight hunting clothes, no hat, and then a light jacket as an afterthought. Sure, it’s supposed to be cooler, but that will be a nice change of pace, right? Wrong! As I have adjusted to a body with 50 plus years on it, I have learned that, along with my memory, my tolerance for the cold is fading. Unfortunately, my mind still thinks I’m in my 30s and it would have me in the bush covered in nothing but mud and hunting down the closest Predator. So it takes a couple of outings in colder weather before the two come to a compromise and I dress appropriately for the conditions at hand.
The other reason for not packing heavy clothes is a self-defense mechanism of sorts. If you have ever been to my dad’s home, you will know exactly what I’m talking about. Dad lives in a big, old, drafty house that takes a while to heat up and is hard to keep that way. His only heat source is a wood stove and he feeds that thing with the fervor of an engineer on a steam locomotive. And since there is no such thing as building a little fire, unless it’s near zero outside, it’s always a tad warm inside Chateau Haverstick. To further compound matters, the stove he has breaks all the laws of thermodynamics by producing more heat than its fuel contains. Throw a handful of wet elm branches on the three tiny coals in the firebox and you soon will be opening all the doors and windows to cool the house down to the mid-80s. Horseshoes could be forged on its surface and I once saw a mouse vaporize when it scampered too close to the Iron Sun. Thus, dressing for an outdoor adventure in the morning can be a bit tricky. On one hand, you know that you will need X number of layers on to be comfortable during your hunt. On the other hand, you know that you can only put on Y number of layers before you succumb to heat exhaustion. Can you make it out the door, carrying the (X minus Y) layers, before passing out? Have you voided your bowels and bladder before starting this exercise? That added time will figure directly into your chances of survival. As you can see, it’s a complicated process and I’m not in the right frame of mind in mid-October to make these kinds of calculations. Hence, I always run out the door half naked and end up paying for it on the stand. Note to self: your safety harness does not count as a layer of insulation.
So that brings us to the hunt that started me thinking about all this. When I left Dad’s house that morning it was a cool 35 degrees outside. I was going to hunt on the ridge behind the barn and all I was thinking about as I threw my stuff in the truck was the plethora of buck sign I had seen up there the day before. I had on an extra shirt as a feeble attempt to make up for my lack of insulated clothing and I figured I would most likely be good to go. I got to my hunting spot well before daylight, climbed a nice, big hickory, and settled in for the magic that was about to happen.
That magic turned out to be the 25 mph winds, straight out of the north, which turned the cool 35 into something more like a frigid -147 with the wind chill factored in. As I sat there, wishing for the 100th time that my safety harness had wider straps and a fleece lining, I decided it was probably in my best interest to pack up, climb down, and go hug the nuclear furnace in Dad’s living room. Unfortunately, I was so cold by then that my muscles couldn’t operate my climbing tree stand. My mental faculties were also beginning to shut down so, instead of thinking of a way to get out of the tree, I just fixated on the embarrassing way I was going to die – semi naked and afraid. I thought it best that I at least try to leave my loved ones a note and I remember my hands feeling like clubs as I dug around in my pack for suitable materials, a small roll of toilet paper and a half-eaten bar of chocolate. With my last remaining bit of body heat, I softened the chocolate and then added a few drops of doe pee to make a writing medium. Then I gnawed a feather off one of my arrows and, using it as a makeshift quill, started scrawling out my last will and testament. Even in my catatonic condition, though, the irony was not lost on me that I was using smelly, brown ink and toilet paper to document my crappy demise.
So, as I scribbled in midair for a while, trying to record something profound in chocolate, the sun continued its climb in the sky and the combination of its radiation and my physical exertions allowed my extremities to finally unlock enough for me to be able to begin my descent. Woohoo! No death today! But what’s the old saying? “Out of the frying pan and into the fire”? Did I mention earlier that I was in a hickory tree?
Despite what botanists will tell you, there are really only two species of hickory, Shagbark Hickories and Steel Pole Hickories. If you are a veteran of climbing tree stands, you know that you should stay away from shagbarks because they are moderately easy to climb up but almost impossible to climb back down. The other variety is prized for climbing, mainly because they are straight and usually don’t have any limbs on them for the first 100 feet or so. Their only drawback is that their bark is so tough and smooth that getting a good bite into it with the tree stand’s teeth is a very hard thing to do. Going up is not so bad but, coming down, you may find yourself in an unplanned accelerated plunge to the base of the tree. Yeah, that’s what happened to me.
Now I don’t remember the exact series of events, but I can kind of fill in the blanks. As I was working the lower part of the stand to bite into the tree, it suddenly slipped down about two feet, and this caused me to pitch way over the sitting bar on the upper part of the stand. In an effort to arrest my fall, I overcorrected in the opposite direction and smacked my head, face first, into the tree’s steel side. I guess I must have blacked out after that and my aluminum elevator, and its passenger, continued in freefall to the ground. All I know is that I woke up a few minutes later, half hanging out of the stand, dazed and confused. I felt a warm fluid running down my face, which I first thought was blood, but the expected coppery bouquet had ammonia notes instead. My dad has a neighbor who lets his hounds run loose 24/7 in an effort to keep the deer properly exercised. One of those had come by while I was incapacitated, taken a sniff of my toilet paper testament, and decided to highlight my work with an ink of a different color. I now stared at the world through my urine-colored glasses and remarked to myself that at least I was alive, and I was certainly no longer cold.
After untangling myself from the tree stand, I gathered up all my gear, dried myself off the best I could from my canine golden shower, and then walked back to my truck. Dad met me on the front porch as I walked to the door and, after getting a whiff of his son, made me strip off my soiled garments in the chilly front yard before allowing me into the warmth of the house. Yeah, the hits just kept on coming. They say that a person does not truly learn a lesson unless there is a sufficient amount of pain attached to the experience. I think I can safely say that I will never pack too light for a cold weather hunt again!
