Of Men and Mooseand chores

Soooo, I'm driving up the road to the Bolt Hole when two emergency vehicles, one with an ATV trailer, pass me going the other way. This is a dead end road and I'm at the end of the power line soooo...

When I got here, Mark came right over to tell me the local news/gossip. The news: another elderly hunter bites the dust. That makes three in three years plus another just a few miles away. The EMTs who had to repack their equipment and were soaked to the bone were just leaving when Mark had arrived about half an hour ahead of me and he got the word from them. They had gotten a call from the guy's hunting partner about 10 AM and were just leaving at around 3:30 PM. It took them over two hours of cutting trail and negotiating a swamp just to get to the guy. It was about a mile up the old jeep trail/snowmobile trail that passes through the state lands, but another mile from the trail. Two years ago when there was a search for a lost hunter who was found dead, he was near an older well cleared trail. Not this guy. From what they told Mark, it was an apparent heart attack.

The State Trooper who answered the call, the ambulance that carried the body away and the doctor who had to make the pronouncement had all left earlier. The Trooper was looking for Mark, who has a real good sense of the woods here about. Mark was sorta glad that he wasn't called out to do a search. (The guys buddy lead the emergency folks to the body.) The EMTs told Mark that that wasn't why the trooper was looking for him. Actually, the trooper wanted to show Mark a photo of something that they found while making the recovery...a moose! Apparently there are several making use of the vlys around here. ("Vly" is another term for old beaver ponds turned to mostly swamps. Lots of grass, alders and such that the moose just love.)

BTW, I went out this morning for a short walk with my rifle and did a little recon of the woods behind me. Most of the snow that fell early last week has melted. We had around 10" on the ground last Wednesday. Mark says there was very little wind, however, so a lot stayed on the trees making any walking in the woods a very wet activity. He was out with a hunter friend from the area looking for a bear den and says visibility was also a problem with all the snow on the branches. They followed fresh bear tracks for 3 or 4 hours and saw where the big Doofus was making snow angels. They finally caught sight of him as the sun was setting and they turned up to the jeep trail to return to camp.

Oh, while I saw some sign of deer--droppings, tracks, etc.--I didn't see any deer. It was growing warm as the sun came over the hill but the clouds kept it in the 50s instead of the 60s the weather man says will be here tomorrow.

Getting back to the cabin at 9 AM, I stripped my hunting clothes and went to work on some chores. I cleaned up one of the sheds and moved the lawnmower into it. (It has a raised floor while the garage does not. Melting snow and rainwater have a habit of flooding the garage and then everything gets frozen. Plus the garage roof leaks.) Then I had to run down to Lowes for a new screen door for the porch. The old one had rotted away due to snow and water piling up on the bottom. That cost me just $20, which surprised me in a good way. After another walk in the woods tomorrow morning, I'll tackle the sliding screen door for the living room. The one the bird flew into and ripped to shreds. I've got the materials and it's a matter of puling the old spline out and replacing the nylon screen. I think the sun may have weakened the old screen before the bird hit it but if I put aluminum in there the mesh is much, much harder to look through. I have two window screens that need replacement too because of sun/critter/ice and snow damage but they will get aluminum.