Matthew Dickerson, Addison Independent, May 27, 1999 (reprinted by permission)
This week I offer a few random notes from wood and water. As an avid angler and hunter, I avoid anthropomorphisms. Every once in a while, however, I get the feeling that animals are taunting me. Although I grew up fishing--I was eight when my father took me on my first 5-day fishing trip to Maine's Allagash Wilderness Waterway--I didn't hunt much as a kid. Just the occasional squirrel for my grandmother's stew. So I felt privileged last week when my father came to Vermont to spend three days bow-hunting with me. It was our first time hunting together, and my first experience bow-hunting. Not surprisingly, though we saw lots of deer, we didn't manage a shot.
Three days after my father left, my friend Bill Frey stopped by with his bird dog Molly and we spent a Sunday afternoon walking the woods in search of grouse. With Molly's help, we flushed a few birds, but none that offered a good shot. So when I woke up this morning and saw three deer standing just seventy yards outside my bedroom window, along with a dozen grouse only thirty feet away, I couldn't help but think they were laughing at me--adding their voices to the cackling of the six wild turkeys who stand at the edge of my driveway every morning and watch me drive to work.
I've caught some trout in the past weeks, in both rivers and ponds. I've tried a number of offerings, but ever strike I've enticed has come on an imitation fish of some variety or another. So if you're thinking of heading onto the water, I'd recommend for the fly-fisherman a Mickey Finn or a little brook trout streamer, and for the spinner a size #3 or #5 Rapala in the RT colors.
With the notable exception of Randy Butler--who was able to make use of his archery tag last weekend--none of the bow-hunting friends I've talked with have yet gotten a deer. I've read that the overall success rate of deer-hunters in Vermont is approximately 1 in 10. (About 100,000 licenses are issued annually, with around 12,000 deer taken). If you measure "success" by getting a deer, then I suspect the success rates are even lower for bow hunting. There are, however, other measures of a successful hunt.
As I confessed earlier in this very column, I failed during my last outing to get any grouse. Nonetheless, I've never seen so many grouse in my life as I have this year. Friends have confirmed this observation. Two friends of mine almost drove their car into a whole flock on route 125 up in Ripton last weekend. Despite several mild winters in a row, however, the coming season might be a rough one for Vermont wildlife. Neither the oaks nor the beeches--favorite crops for bear, deer, and turkey as well as mice, squirrel, and all sorts of rodents--are producing this year. Beeches have a mast year (major nut-production year) about every three or four years, with mast years for oaks even less frequent. Oaks may produce a small crop of acorns on an off-year, but this summer's drought has eliminated even that.
The Red Sox, on the other hand, are showing signs of a bumper crop. After several years of drought--over eighty since they've had a real mast year--things are looking up. I'm not quite as optimistic as Mr. Lindholm that they'll go the full distance, but I wouldn't call Karl an acorn or the produce of a beech tree for thinking so. They went 8-4 against both New York and Cleveland during the regular season. Even Mr. Kirkaldy may remember that as early as September 1, I was predicting the Sox to win the ALCS. The Marlins do have a better name, though.