Although it's still in the 90s, the breath of fall is in the air.
Even in the middle of the day, there is a hint of mercy in the humidity that is absent in the ruthless days of July and August.
My dogs feel it, too. Even my elderly collie frolics like a puppy for a couple of hours in the morning until the sun gets up. He hates the 10 a.m.-6 p.m. window, but those hours are more humane than normal.
Dove season started Saturday, a week later than usual. I've spent many an opening day baking in brain-addling heat. This year it's nice. Hot, yes, but not too hot.
All in all, Miss Laura and I have been grateful for this beautiful summer. We made our best garden ever, and we turned on the air conditioner only three times.
Light is what I love most about fall. Soft and saturated, it makes the greens seem more full and plush. Come October and November, it makes the orange, yellow and red foliage of the oak, gum and hickory trees vibrant.
The goldenrod is luminous in my little corner of Hot Spring County. A few leaves on the apple and cherry trees that I have tended so lovingly all spring and summer have turned gold. They remind me of the silver that streaks my hair. Their foliage will be young again in April. Mine will not.
My thoughts dwell on the coming hunting seasons, particularly for deer. I love being in the woods on a cool autumn morning or evening, blending in with the foliage and watching the various animals going about their business.
These seem to be carefree days for the squirrels and cardinals, but there's an urgency in their business. All the food they are eating and caching is necessary to get them through the winter. I am happy they don't have to look too hard for it this year.
I've been busy, too, clearing brush from the edges of shooting lanes and clipping branches that might deflect a bullet. An annual project is clipping branches that intrude into the trails leading to my stands. I leave some because I've observed over the years that deer prefer certain trees for scrapes. Those branches overhang the trail about shoulder high, with a few fronds that drape over like lampshades. Starting in late October, there's a veritable trail of scrapes every 50 yards or so.
I sometimes wonder why I bother with all this because I increasingly spend more time hunting public land, at least in the early weeks of muzzleloader and modern gun seasons. I key into this area later, after the best hunting has passed.
The hunting stayed good all last season. Maybe it was because of the intense, protracted cold or because of all the clearcutting on our lease, but mature bucks were active well into December. We saw bucks chasing does and behaving in classic whitetail rutting fashion more than any other year I've been in this club. Maybe it's because we've been killing a lot of does over the years and our buck-to-doe ratio is finally getting close to right.
A few rifles are ready to go. My Ruger M77 "Swede" is dead on target, as are my all-weather rifles. I got a new toy late last year, a Winchester Model 70 Featherweight in 7x57. It shoots 139-grain Pvt Partizan ammo as straight as lasers. When I sighted it in late in the spring, it created one big, jagged hole in the paper at 174 yards.
Another pleasant surprise has been a Browning A-Bolt .25-06 that I've had for a few years. I developed two pet loads of Reloader 19 powder being a 117-gr. Hornady Boattail Spire Point that are exceedingly accurate. This week I tried several more. They were 120-gr. Nosler Partitions, 110-gr. Nosler Accubonds and 100-gr. Hornady BTSP in front of various charges of IMR-4350, IMR 4831 and Reloader 22. It shoots them all into the center of a tea saucer-sized target without requiring any adjustments to the scope.
The Savage .22-250 I've been messing with shoots any 50- or 55-gr. bullet accurately with 34 grains of Varget. Give it 35 grains, though, and it shoots wild. It took about 100 rounds to break in that barrel, and now it shoots the way a Savage should.
It's all enough to make me say I'll give the Swede a break this year.
I say that every year.
Sports on 09/07/2014