The end of one year and the beginning of a new one

Nothing will change the way this season went. What went well and what didn’t. It was what it was and nothing and more and nothing less.

Sure, some hunters will chase bobcat, coyote, fox, rabbit and squirrel yet. But I look at a lot of that as actually starting about the time the chasing of deer, birds and fowl end. So for most the 2021 season ended and albeit slowly; it just seems like it’s done at year’s end.

Happy New Year by the way, wishing you a wonderful, prosperous and healthy new year! I don’t like when it ends. It’s not a fun time of year. I hate to term things as depressing, but the fall off from the intensity leaves you feeling boredom in its place. I’m like, “Well, what am I going to do now?”

Things that used to get done after dark now can be done in the daylight. But since projects get done during the day what do you do after dark, and there is a lot of dark now. I get restless and my wife doesn’t like me when I’m restless so I get told to find something to do.

I even bought some icefishing gear a couple years ago. It takes a couple of weeks to get back into the mindset of preparing for the season. At least we found out what week we drew for turkey season this spring.

One of the other things that happens at the end of the season always seems to be some disagreements come to the surface, some healthy debate so to speak. I blame it on post season depression.

I think it comes from all that time in the stand, the blind, glassing, traveling when a hunter’s mind wanders. Hunts collapse from too much hunting pressure, poor weather conditions, or changes in the patterns of game.

It might not happen every day of the whole season, but when it happens during a hunter’s precious week or two to chase elk, hunt the rut, hunt waterfowl, or chase upland birds the mind wanders and frustration sets in.

I know two hunters that hunted sheep this year. One shot a ram of a lifetime and on a hunt he spent a lifetime to draw on his second day of hunting. The other budgeted 16 days for the trip. Two days out, two days back, one to reorganize gear and check zero of rifles and such, one to fly to base camp and a day back. That left nine days to hunt. They were fogged in for seven and a half of those days and never saw a killable ram. He read both books he brought along three times. His mind wandered; he came home frustrated. Social media seemed to get a lot of blame in a lot of places this year for things that didn’t go well. One well known hunting family didn’t have a discussion about St. Nick and his elves around the holiday dinner table I can pretty much assure you, unless they headed outside and settled it in the back yard before dinner. Even Great Lake State’s bird hunters were blaming social media for the crowding of public hunting grounds. They were crowded, but they have been getting crowded for several years now. I don’t really blame social media.

I blame the fact that the federal lands, state lands and even a lot of private forest in the Appalachian forests have been so poorly managed they no longer have grouse. I call them out in Wisconsin for under harvest and the loss of suitable habitat for grouse providing less ground for even Wisconsin hunters to hunt on.

But hunters and fishers are the consumptive users not pure as the wind driven snow like the non-consumptive users like hikers, mountain bikers, kayakers, and such so what can we expect. Except that pile of fertilizer has once and for all been proven to be just that and anyone still peddling that falsehood - full of it.

We might talk about some of these things this year, cuz it’s the slow, cold and dark time of year.

But for today I’m planning on venison roast cooked to an internal temp of 125 degrees, with wild rice, roasted veggies, a salad, and fresh baked dinner rolls. Maybe a dram or two of scotch while it’s cooking, a good novel, and a nap. It’s also that time of the year too.

Happy New Year!

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