Today we awoke to find the first dusting of snow on the ground. Today is also the first day of the 2008 deer hunting season in Minnesota. In Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, the first day of deer season is almost a religious holiday. Millions of hunters will flood the woods of these three states during the next couple of weeks in search of a trophy buck, or maybe just a doe or two for the meat.
Our neighbor and good friend John Newman is up at the lake for that very reason. He is taking his son Greg hunting in the woods across the street from our houses. Joining him is Clancy, the man from whom we bought our Leech Lake house. Clancy was kind enough to give me a frozen elk steak from a hunt he was on in Washington state a month or so back. That'll make a tasty dinner.
The weather conditions for deer opener couldn't have been harsher. The temperature today hit a high of only 28 degrees, the wind was very strong at 25-35 mph out of the north, the sky was grey and there were snow flurries all day. The lake was covered with white caps and large swells. Even though Tom's small boat sat in my harbor, there was no way I was willing to risk taking it out onto the lake.
I am not a hunter. I own a couple of guns -- a shotgun and a rifle -- but I don't hunt; not for deer, grouse, bear or anything else. My focus is exclusively on fishing. That's why this is such a difficult time of year for me. The weather is too rough to take the little boat onto the big waters of Leech Lake, but the ice has yet to form, so ice angling is still a month or more away. I guess that's why many people hunt -- to fill in the time between open-water fishing and ice fishing.
This evening I fried up the perch fillets for dinner. Kathleen and I thoroughly enjoyed what would turn out to be our last fish fry of our 2008 stay at Leech Lake. I'm already preparing myself for the difficult transition from our simple, quiet Northwoods life style to that of the fast-paced, busy and noisy life in San Jose.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment