Originally published December 4, 1998
by Adam Zurn

Monday was the first day of deer season and that sure brought back memories.

I'm not quite sure what the mentality toward deer hunting is here, but back home it borders on a national holiday. In fact, the first day of buck season is so popular that nearly every school in the area has the day off.

Why, you ask? Because when the schools did have class on that day no one went. They were all hunting including the teachers. So in the long run, it was easier to just not have school.

You have to understand the area in order to know why things work the way they do. Susquehanna County is very different from this part of Pennsylvania. For example, it is just as expensive to call Susquehanna County on a cell phone as it is to call California from here.

Not to mention, it is guaranteed to be at least ten degrees colder there than anywhere else in the state (except for Edinboro).

Some people are so poor in Susquehanna that they attach railroad ties to the front of their vehicle and hit deer for food in the winter. They then hang the deer carcass from a nearby tree in their yard and cut off the meat as they need it.

You can see why so many people hunt in the area. It's more for the food than the sport of it. Then again some people hunt because they've hit a deer with their car totaling it in the process and are looking for some kind of revenge. Revenge is a dish that is best served cold. You had better believe that it's cold out there when you're hunting.

I remember my first time hunting-the memory is not a fond one. As I was explaining earlier, hunting is not really a choice. It's just something you are excepted to do-a rite of passage.

I had to be up at 5 a.m. in order to be in the woods before sunrise.

There's more than just getting up really early. The whole process starts weeks in advance. You don't shower for a week because the deer can smell soap and shampoo. You need to have that natural smell. The clothes that you are going to wear stay outside in the barn for weeks so that they lose the human scent. Then comes the best part. You smear fresh doe urine all over yourself so that you will attract the biggest buck. Only after all of this are you ready to enter the forest to hunt.

So there I was, 30 minutes till sunrise, a mile from anything, and I was sitting on a stump in six inches of snow.

I was told to stay at my post all day because there would be drives to move the deer past me, and I wouldn't want to miss them. So there I stayed all day.

I forgot to mention, it was bitter cold. The kind of cold that passes directly through a bright orange hunting jacket, three sweatshirts, and two shirts. It was almost as if Mother Nature was personally trying to make me go home.

Things only got worse. By 9:30, I had eaten most of my lunch and had yet to see a deer. Squirrels were in no shortage, though.

You would think that a 100-pound deer moving through the forest would be easy to hear. I was wrong. However, you can hear a one-pound squirrel 300 yards away. Go figure.

As I was trying to remember what the first stage of hypothermia was, I was faced with a real dilemma. I could go to sleep which would numb the cold and help the time to pass. The only problem was that I might never wake up.

The second choice was that I could stay awake, shoot a deer, and get the heck out of there. The problem with that idea was that I was assuming I would see a deer at some point.

I finally decided to go with the napping option and took my chances with not waking up. At worst, it would be my big chance to get away from it all.

At around 4 p.m. my stepfather came and got me. I never did see a deer that first time out, probably because I spent most of the day sleeping.

I didn't mind too much. I was glad to still be alive, and I was looking forward to a hot shower when I got home. Do you know what the real kicker was? After all the fun I had that first year, I went again the next year. I must have suffered some brain damage out there at the hands of the cold.

Ever since then, I have hated the cold and how it immediately chills me to the bone. Now I'm the type of guy that likes global warming. It's hard to complain about the weather when it's in the low 60s in late November, isn't it?

Hunting calls for a special breed, and it's not me.