Refugium

 Buck doing buck things. Which involves neck stretching, thrashing at vegetation, poking twigs into their pre-orbital scent glands, peeing, snorting, pawing and facing off.

 Refugium: A safe place. A place you can go to get away from everything else that's going on. Indigo Hill has always been a refuge, for animals and for us. I keep this blog as a refuge for me, for you. But even Indigo Hill can be compromised, invaded.

I have been holding these photos since I took them October 22, 2018. I didn't want anyone to see them and know that these beautiful bucks were frequenting our meadow. I held them until after hunting season at Thanksgiving, and then I planned to hold onto them until after the two-day gun season December 15 and 16.  No way was I going to blow these big boys' cover with a blog post while men were about with guns. And then on December 16 all hell broke loose in our world, and it has taken me until now to even begin to emerge and remember who I was and the things I was doing before that, to remember the joy these animals brought me. I remember as through a fog or a screen. My joy has been badly beaten. It's still there, the way a pilot light glows blue in the back of the oven, waiting. Wishing to burst back into flame, knowing that isn't going to happen.

I don't want to write about hell. Screw that. There's enough hell in this world. I want to remember looking out the window and seeing this enormous eight-point beast shuffling up the meadow margin.

 

And because that wasn't enough, along came a nine-point monster to complete the picture.

Such incredibly beautiful, fine, mature animals. Their racks are high and their tines are very long. Surely the finest brace of bucks I've been blessed to see here.

I knew the moment I saw them that I'd tell no one, show no one their magnificence. They were too beautiful to share. And sharing them during hunting season could get them shot.

I grinned as I watched them showing off for each other, and for any doe who happened to be peeking from the woods. They tried to moosh their scent glands up as high into the brush as possible, to say that a big one passed here.

Then they drew close together and my heart almost burst.

The span of their antlers seemed to go on forever. They looked almost like mule deer, or elk.  I wondered if they were brothers. Twins, even. What a thought.  Looking back on them, they're but apparitions to me. I can hardly believe they were ever here, hardly believe I had them in my lens, my heart pounding out of my chest.

 I've no idea if they survived hunting season, but chances are better than usual. It was miserably wet all week, with cold driving rain, and the hunter numbers were greatly suppressed. I can hope they escaped. I can hope they hid in this refugium we offer. And wouldn't it be wonderful to trip over one of those antlers some gray February day? To see tines sticking up out of the sere grass? To pick up a shed antler and marvel at its weight, smoothness, and beauty? To bring it home and add it to my basket of bloodless trophies? I can dream.  I did dream, and my dream looked like this.

 Click on this photo to see them all at proper size and definition.

The Zen of Shed Hunting

This is how it feels to find a beautiful shed. "Shed" is what country folks call dropped antlers. You start looking for them in December, and you keep looking for them, off and on, all year long.

This was my first in years. Decades.  Found Feb. 6, 2015. 

You're walking along, and there it is. That's my favorite thing about finding them. Your mind can be a million miles away and suddenly it's right there, buzzing, every cell focused on this gift on the ground before you.

Chet, come back here and see what Mether found.

If you will look at my pawdyprints in the photo above, you will see that I already found this. Would you like me to bury it for you? It is fresh and it needs buried.

Sheds are gifts from the deer. Imagine growing such a fine rack of bone on your head, and then having it just fall off. Maybe it feels wonderful to be free of it, once the blood supply ceases and the bone deteriorates. Maybe they walk off without a backward glance. But sometimes I wonder if they wish they had a means to carry them around.

The beauty of shed hunting is it gives me an excuse to get out and cover miles in the woods and fields at the time of year when the skies are low and weepy and I tend to be, too. There's nothing that will light up your day like finding a shed antler. Or "shed," as we who hunt and find them like to call them.

There are all kinds of places you can take shed hunting. I have friends who make a goal of finding BOTH antlers off the SAME buck. Now THAT is shed hunting. 

Fantastic as that would be, to me that's taking it a bit too far. It seems too much like hubris, to expect that you're going to be able to root around and find a matched set of antlers from the same buck. True, the hormonal and blood supply changes that cause antlers to drop tend to occur on both sides simultaneously, but what if he carries one around for another week before dropping it?

April 14, 2015. It was a good spring for shed hunting. This antler now hangs above my drawing table from a loop in a bit of monofilament. It's my back-scratcher. I use it many times a day as I'm working. I keep one in the bedroom, too, for those morning itches. Sorry if I just made your back itch. Had to reach for my antler and give myself a good scritching.

And one amongst the bluets!!~ I found two this blessed warm April afternoon. What could be more beautiful than polished bone in bluets? Ahh, April. Come she will.

You can carry shed hunting well into spring. You hope when you find them they still have that polished bone sheen that makes them a smooth delight to handle. Old weathered antlers are referred to as "chalks" and the weathered chalky surface means they aren't near as nice to hold. 

April 16, 2015. Just two days later, I came upon this magnificent antler partially buried in rubble beneath a barbed wire fence crossing. That makes sense, that it would fall off where the buck either leapt or struggled through wire. Sudden jolts, as in jumping, or impact with objects can jar them loose, help them fall. But only when they're ready to drop anyway. And that time is anywhere from January through April.

I took a four-mile hike yesterday down into Dean's Fork. I say "down into" because Dean's is a deep holler. When I began my walk at daybreak up top of the ridge, it was positively balmy. I was shooting without gloves! The snow was melting fast and I was seduced by the warmth and the gentle hints that there might be enough sun to go on a good hike. So I began my descent into the holler.

I had my long lens with me, which is a heavy habit I've picked up since surgery and shingles slowed me down in December and January. I figured if I couldn't go at a decent pace, I might as well lug the big rig and come back with some decent shots.

As I climbed down, the temperature dropped and dropped. It was easily 15-20 degrees colder down by the creek than it had been up top in the hayfields. Snow still adhered to everything. The cold air had just settled in the Fork and was lying there, waiting for me. Brr!! Well, I was committed to the hike and it was beautiful, and best of all the mud down there was still frozen, making for much nicer walking.

I put up two big deer and something in the heaviness of their thudding hooves and their build and overall darkness told me they were bucks, though there were no antlers to confirm that suspicion. 

This is where the camera tells me so much. If you click on this photo you can see his nuts. Aha!

Big as he was, he floated like a butterfly. I never tire of photographing deer on the fly.

Further invading his privacy as a certified cervid paparazzo, this  handstand shot revealed even more. Do click to enlarge the photo. 

But the best? Click on this one to see his fresh, still bloody pedicel scar, February 12, 2017. There's likely an antler or two in that black raspberry thicket somewhere, and chances are I'm never going to find it.

While we're admiring him, check out his barrel chest and muscular forequarters. That's something you won't see on a doe. I'm getting better at sexing antlerless deer from a distance, but there's always more to learn. This kind of knowing is where hunters have it all over most naturalists, and why I love talking with hunters. They know things that you can only know by doing a lot of naked-eye observation, by getting your hands on the animal and inside it, too. 

Falling far short of learning by killing, I absolutely love the things I'm learning about deer just by studying my own photographs. I could never put together their stories or understand what little I do of their natural history, their social bonds, and their behavior without my trusty Canon 7D.  These big, fascinating animals walk among us, and they've got stories to tell if only we will slow down, stop, watch and listen to what they're saying.

Speaking of seeing...a nice set of fresh bobcat tracks from the little cemetery just a mile down our road, February 10, 2017. The forepaw (right) is just under 2" across, and the span between fore and hind tracks is around 8".

And dead fresh tracks from Feb. 11, on my way down into Dean's. My gosh. I looked all around to see if the cat was still visible!

And last evening, I just couldn't come inside. I decided to stalk deer out in our meadow. And it occurred to me that it was a little more than a week early, but it was just the kind of night--60 degrees and loamy--that a woodcock might decide to fly. Nothing but silence and distant coy-wolves yipping, until at 6:27 pm, the weak sunset still illuminating the west, I heard the twitter-fall of a single woodcock, testing the evening air. No peents, just a brief liquid song and wing-twitter, as if he'd been flying over and just had to take a quick tumble over this likely spot.

February 11, 6:27 pm, Whipple Ohio--the first woodcock flies.

It was a Hey There! from heaven, straight to my leaping heart.

Magic Bones

I'd had a rough day. One of those where everything you're facing seems impossible, daunting and endless, and it seems things will be this way forever. I'd lost my way again. I lose it all the time.

When I feel helpless to effect change, to break out of the prison of circumstance, I fight it for awhile, thinking and writing my way, meandering through it. Thinking and writing help me understand my feelings, but they don't actually change anything. In the end, I just have to give up, give under, be thankful for all I have been given and stop yearning for what I haven't.

 I go outside, under the limitless sky. It's always been more home to me than my house.

 Mammatus clouds look threatening, but I didn't think they'd open up and rain. I didn't care, anyway. Let it rain. 

Just moving and paying attention to my breath going in and out helped. I don't have to stay in this feeling. I can't. I have work to do. I can lope it out. 

I never knew the past owners of this abandoned cabin had planted pheasant's eye narcissus! I could smell them before I saw them, the rich pungent perfume carried on the damp breeze. 

Little Ferdinand danced through the row, sniffing. 

It wasn't the first time I'd envied my dog his simple take on life. 

Oh look. Narcissus! They smell good. 

And just there it was, in the wash along a deer trail, of course, just below a barbed-wire fence.

Had he gotten it hung up on the wire, shaken his head in irritation, only to have this bony weight come suddenly free? 

However it had come to me, here it was.

I needed these three

Small points of grace, mine being

Worn down to the bone

Recent torrents had washed mud and pebbles over it, moved it farther downslope. But it can't have been there long. It was perfect, heavy and smooth except where it was nubbled at the base. One point had broken off somewhere along the way, but the buck had smoothed the edge rubbing, pushing through brush, fighting. Who knows. All I knew was joy.

I don't know why shed deer antlers bring me so much delight. For me it's like finding an Easter egg or an arrowhead, a message that someone has been here and left a present for you. 

When we were learning to drive, my wise and occasionally benevolent father used to tuck dollar bills in the seat belt receptacle of our Volkswagen beetle, as instant positive reinforcement for buckling up. It worked like a charm, made buckling up before turning the key a lasting habit in the four girls, until my older brother Bob figured it out and started stealing the bills for date money. 

He cheated at Hearts and Monopoly, too. It makes me laugh now to think how we'd holler when we caught him at it. Wish we could play a round of Hearts and catch him again.

 Finding a shed, as we call them, is like finding one of Dad's bucks before Bob did. The mice and squirrels who quickly chew them to shreds being Bob in this scenario.

Though it went against the Zen principle to which I lazily adhere, I decided to turn my run into a shed hunt. I lay my new treasure by a fencepost where I'd be sure to find it again and headed for a patch of winter rye my neighbors planted to attract deer. All winter long it's been dotted with distant deer, filling their bellies on lovely green salad instead of that damned shelled corn the hunters also feed by the ton. I like to see the does and fawns out at the end of the meadow, eating something remotely natural. 

I figured that where a lot of deer spend a lot of time, there might be a shed waiting for me.

I walked the meadow, searching, finding nothing, and entered the woods at the end. My unbelieving ears picked up the rolling tattoo of a ruffed grouse. I hadn't heard that here at home for probably 13 years. The grouse, once dependable, have been utterly gone. So much development and logging. But when the logged areas recover, the brush grouse like comes back in, and eventually the grouse return. They're cyclic in nature. I hope we're on an upswing. I'm out every day, and this spring I'm finally seeing and hearing grouse again. This was my third...I saw two red-morph males in March. And that is a balm to the soul.

I stood in the evening woods, watching the sun throw gold across the trees and distant hills, listening to the grouse drum again and again. He's just down at the bottom of that slope, where loggers left downed trunks like jackstraws on the forest floor.

And as I stood in wonder and joy, the first ovenbird of my spring darted high over the trees and spilled out his crazy evening flight song.

This is April. This is what she does, every minute. But you have to reach for the buckle to get the dollar. 

You have to go out into the April woods and see what she's got lined up for you.

I turned to see Chet Baker, my guide, always leading me on toward the light. All right, Bacon. I'll leave the grouse and come with you. You know I could stand here forever.

 I walked an odd, meandering path, up and down the flank of the huge bowl that in winter we fill with screams and laughter, sledding. I couldn't tell you why I took the odd path I did, but I walked right to second shed of the evening, a small three point, gleaming and perfect in the evening sun.

Who expects a grouse

gone for decades, drumming now--

Ovenbird in flight

spilling crazy notes--

Quaker ladies' quiet blue--

Or, as if guided

by my father's hand

To stumble on magic bones

when I'd been hoping

Just to breathe again?