 I was wedged solidly in the pitch dark and I began to sweat. My gut instinct was to wriggle out of this trap as my breath began to quicken. I would be busted with wriggling or even audible breathing. I heard others breathing but they could not sense I was there. They passed slowly and I began an extraction that would later produce some dandy bruises - but which would also win me the game.
"Squirm" was always my favorite. It was a night game, one of many night games my three sibs and I invented, especially for long Minnesota winters when we were cooped up and driving Mom crazy. That was before video games, marathon TV and internet. Squirm was turning out the lights in our linoleum tiled basement, with one person "it" at one end of the 30 foot room, and the other three at the opposite end in pitch darkness. The object was for the three to make it past the one to the other end and "safe" without getting tagged. The first to get tagged was "it" for the next round. If we all made it safe, the "it" person had a do-over. Man! Was that fun crawling silently over and under furniture, the upright piano, etc. and trying not to get busted with the sound of our own breathing. I had managed to get myself wedged behind our upright player piano, behind which I had artfully belly-crawled to avoid being tagged.
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| Summer visitor |
Me on my stand with bait in background, watching crows circle the bait |
Visions of Squirm danced through my mind as I faced off with Skunkzilla in the pitch darkness of a Minnesota September woods. I had descended from my tree stand in nearly pitch dark on the first day of bear season hoping to sneak out undetected by nocturnals. I did not want to booger up my bear bait so I was not using a flashlight. As I crept past the bait, I heard a hissy growl. Stopping short, I switched on my red LED PalLite toward the source of the snarl. There was a large skunk, appearing the size of a beach ball with its hair all on end, teeth bared, tail up, ready to defend its supper (my bait crib).. I have never seen the Alien movies, but this growling, fiery-eyed critter sure looked like the previews I had seen.
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| Me baiting end of August |
Bow and bait set up |
"A skunk," I muttered to myself, turning the red LED light aside to walk the path out. But my retreat gave Skunkzilla a heady sense of confidence and he lunged at me as if to demonstrate his prowess at having driven me off. Turning the red light back on the beastie & thus blinding him, I slowly backed away. It kept snarling. Once 8 feet away, I turned tail and ran – in my leafy camo suit, my Mathews bow bouncing on my side from its bowsling, my pack on my other shoulder, my .357 in my left hand and my flashlight in my right – leaping logs and vines like a wild woman fleeing from the devil himself.. I am not afraid of the dark or skunks but I had no desire to get sprayed after all my efforts to be as scent-free as possible.
Day two was more of the same. The same nocturnals scurried in the forest understory at dusk, and my utter fascination with them left me in my stand so late that the pitch darkness had me packing my gear by Braille. I had my bow clenched between my knees affixing the quiver when a raccoon at the foot of my tree did a sudden bark-growl in the dead quiet to ward off the critter in the tree (me) who might have designs on the bait crib. Startled, my bow fell from between my legs to the ground, and broke, that is, the string jumped the idler wheel. I was forced to use my flashlight to clean up the mess and stalked out quite disgruntled with myself.
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| Linda's kitchen - Bear Cafe |
Bear hunting in Minnesota seems to be the same every year. I put over a hundred hours a year on my stand and do everything right, pretty much. But if a bear ain’t there, you can’t kill it. I archery hunt at close range which adds to the odds being against me and that’s okay. I enjoy the hunt part much more than the kill part. I used to wonder if I was doing things right until I hunted Manitoba twice and saw the outfitters doing exactly what I did back home. In Canada however, the baits seem to be dancing with bears and bagging one seemed pretty easy there. Here in the south Mille Lacs areas, it’s not as easy.
I use an above ground bait crib of heavy six foot logs as recommended by Dr. Ken Nordberg, because bait pits fill with rain water. The opening weeks of bear season see baits hammered, but then deserted because of competition from other hunters and acorn drop. But I never give up and continue to hunt till the end of season. Five years ago I had a shot at the biggest bear of my life on the day before season was over.
And besides, I like to play in the dark and what better way to do that, than hunting.
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