Only eight more months

It’s time for a change.

Of clothes.

Of behavior.

Of diet.

Since the first of September I’ve been hunting more days than not. Now the season is over and there are eight long months to navigate until it starts again.

My wardrobe is the first to change. The old green uniform pants I’ve been wearing all season -- the ones my wife abhors – will be exchanged for jeans, my blaze orange cap for a blue one with a bobcat on it, and my shooting gloves for something warmer.

I’ve taken off the whistles I wear on a lanyard around my neck, emptied my vest pockets of old granola bars and hard candy, and put on shoes instead of boots.

It will be a bit more difficult to change my behavior. I still wake before dawn and go outside to check the weather. I still yell at the dogs like there’s no one to hear me but them. I still walk fast even if I’m not chasing something.

Anything that remotely resembles the sound of a flushing bird – even the rustling of a potato chip bag – will grab my attention for a couple of months.

And while it is a bit of relief to no longer be carrying a loaded weapon day after day, I already miss the reassuring heft of the shotgun in my hands.

I’ll make plans to regularly walk the dogs and then quit after a couple of weeks. It’s not hunting.

If I could start fishing right away, the end of hunting season might be easier to take, but open water is months away and ice fishing leaves me cold.

I have an extensive honey-do list to keep me busy. However, work, like most everything else, is a poor substitute for hunting.

We ate most of the birds fresh that I shot this season. There are only a couple left in the freezer and they’ll soon be gone. No more stir-fried pheasant or chicken-fried sharptail until next fall. Beef will have to do.

I suppose I wouldn’t lament the passing of hunting season so much if I didn’t live surrounded by so many reminders of it. My home is decorated with heads, horns and vases of feathers. The surrounding countryside is ripe with game and fowl.

I can hardly watch a sparrow in flight without figuring how much lead to give it.

It was a wonderful season.

It always is.

It will be again.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]