Experienced hunters, and gatherers, are often slow to show high elation and directed action toward a single game when seasons first open and autumn signals readiness.
There are benefits to a slow, broad approach, which can alert and refresh an archer or birder or nutter by taking time to watch, listen, assess, and consider all things.
Many outdoor enthusiasts take notice of these things, ease into a season, and get reacquainted with a Wisconsin autumn morning before finding it necessary to take an animal’s life or cut a rose hip.
Bystanders greeting these gatherers are even more likely to miss the importance of these interesting moments and ask the outdoorsperson, “Did you get anything?” A hunter might find himself defending his approach or even embarrassed by these actions.
Here’s what it was like as I opened my season in a tree stand during an 80-degree day. I was so focused on becoming reacquainted with the outdoors and grabbed a shotgun thinking maybe a turkey would present itself. Even then I probably wouldn’t shoot.
Maybe a gray squirrel or ruffed grouse would be seen or heard,
A camera was as important as an implement to take an animal’s life. I grabbed a cloth bag in the event shagbark hickory nuts were dropping. They make excellent winter squirrel feed.
I left to walk to the bur oak at first light, not 30 minutes before sunrise. The green oak leaves hung still. The sun was rising over corn tassels and began to light a window framed on three sides with bur’s branches.
I’m pretty sure there were some three-inch turkey loads in my vest, but never checked to see. I did turn the ISO to 16,000 on the camera, though.
Dragonflies filled my window to the sky. Catbirds and crows were the first animal cries. Pea gravel, not limestone, on town roads measured the traffic speed of those in a hurry to get wherever without noticing the doe and fawn in their autumn coats.
Falling nuts, probably hickory not oak, sounded as they hit a few dry leaves. Dark purple smilax fruits mixed with white ones on a red dogwood shrub. Later I paused to carefully pick a fallen chestnut bur and slid it in the game bag to cut it open later and determine if fertilization had occurred and three nuts filled the fruit. I bagged two hickory nuts to open them later. Was there a fresh embryo inside, a hickory grub, or a blackened meat because something went wrong?
Not unnoticed, a lingering ruby-throated humming bird made her wing sound. Certainly that hummer was not a sound heard by a distant gobbler, but yes, Wisconsin’s weightiest bird sounded off, too. Really, he gobbled in September!
Several deer created a telltale sound of pulling dry husks from standing corn, not aware someone was listening.
Old white pine needles are yellowing and will abscise soon cutting the five needle bundles free to plummet to an acid soil. Few seed cones are present to drop seeds. No fall decoration material here.
Autumn mushrooms have been held back by absence of moisture, but watch the next two weeks for puffballs, sulphur fungi, maitake, and some beautiful, but poisonous, ones too, including Jack-o-lantern mushrooms.
Standing corn is being cut to become silage and will provide a few opportunities for doves, turkeys, squirrels and geese to glean the fields.
Young turkeys and their mother hens are rafted, so watch and wait for a clean shot of a single bird, any gender or size.
Duck, Canada goose, black bear, ruffed grouse and gray and fox squirrels are being pursued more directly now that the weather is more autumn-like.
Dozens of autumn objects are showing including bittersweet fruit, black walnuts, mushrooms, migrations, leaf fall, seeds, and blooming asters.
Doug Williams, at D W Sports Center in Portage, Wisconsin said roadside sumac seed heads are full and fall-like. “A few deer have been registered but nut pickers seem to be waiting for moderating temperatures and fewer insects.
“Fishing, for everything, has been good,” according to Brent Drake, at Tall Tails, in Boscobel, Wisconsin.
Bret Schultz, trout fishing sage in Black Earth, Wisconsin, is about to turn his attention to fly-tying. “I’ve zeroed in on about 15 patterns, the ones I used successfully this past season. It seems, too, that simpler is better. No need to put things in the pattern that do not attract and might in fact be a negative and turn trout away.”
For the rest of the season, ending October 15, Schultz will be on Black Earth Creek, mimicking a tiny May fly pattern and hoping to key in on the short hatch window.
Contact Jerry Davis, a freelance writer, at sivadjam@mhtc.net or 608.924.1112.
