Dec 15, 2017 By Ben Moyer for The 5 min read

The 2017 deer season is history, not unlike an anticipated holiday feast that’s over too soon. For the Game Commission, which regulates the hunt, available measures to assess the season are limited. The number of licenses sold, and the deer-take total are the only criteria for gauging success of the hunt.

But the individual participant enjoys a different perspective, and diverse ways to evaluate the experience. That thought arose after I’d remarked to my wife that I’d savored a “high quality season,” despite the warm weather and nearly complete lack of snow.

I was fortunate to get out a lot, hunting both in the mountains and lowlands. A legal buck never came my way — that I’m aware of — but I did feel the thrill of seeing more deer than in recent years including four different bucks that did not meet the threshold.

Another buck, I’m still not sure of. I watched it walk over the ridge to my left, no more than 50 yards away. The rack was apparent, but I could not count its tines as it stepped through brush. To my surprise, the deer laid down in plain sight, but with its rack obscured except for two prominent points on the right antler. I sat concealed among the root-stems of a massive oak, where I strained to count more tines through the scope but could not be sure.

For more than two hours I watched the deer, both of us motionless. Finally, it stood and walked away, never offering a clear view of its rack.

Other wildlife entertained while I sought a deer. Several mornings I walked under flocks of roosted turkeys. Even though I’ve heard it often, their lumbering flight from the treetops in the pre-dawn dark, when I’m trying to be quiet, always delivers a shock. Throughout the day their yelps and clucks rang through the woods as they sought to regroup. I’d searched for just such a setup, to no avail, in the turkey season last month.

Twice I encountered small flocks of a less obvious bird of noteworthy presence. Once in the mountains and once in the valley, groups of golden-crowned kinglets foraged nearby. These are tiny birds that are seldom seen, known by the small patch of bright feathers on the crown of the head — orange on the males and yellow on females. Kinglets are far northern birds, at home in Canadian forests, that have expanded their range southward in recent years. To see them off the mountain is even more unusual because kinglets need conifers like hemlock, spruce or pine to thrive, but their small size and distinctive crown are unmistakable.

I always enjoy seeing fox squirrels, and the big orange-hued rodents did not disappoint. Especially abundant in the lowlands, fox squirrels have the habit of foraging all day, even in bad weather, while gray squirrels are more active near dawn and dusk. Fox squirrels are also a lot bigger than grays, and less skittish when they spot a human intruder. Several times, a big tawny fox squirrel perched nearby and scolded me with its barks and cough-like alarms while flailing its ample tail. With their warm-red coats, fox squirrels make quite a sight stretched out on a limb in the winter sun. I thought about how good they are on the table, stewed in gravy with dumplings, but I haven’t taken a mess of squirrels home from the woods in years. I have no immediate plans to change that but am not sure why.

Friday and Saturday of the first week offered a unique treat. Both evenings, as I left the woods, the Super Moon rose above the wooded ridges. It was not a sight one could ignore or take lightly. That broad disc demanded attention as the sun’s waning light yielded to lunar glow. As it rose on Friday I cranked the scope to 9X to study it better. The next morning, I discovered I’d forgotten to reset the optics to a lower magnification, a blunder that can cost you a shot, as any hunter knows.

The season also brought opportunities to share the outdoors with family and friends. I got to hunt with my son for a day, and he killed a deer, which pretty much made the season for me from that point on. We shared campfires with friends and relaxed while owls hooted from the woods.

Treading quietly along the ridgetops, I felt closer to my dad than I do at any other time, knowing how fortunate I was that he took me there as a child. It was a moment both sad and uplifting, just one more among the many reasons you get up early, in the cold and dark, to do these kinds of things.