Rambling, Man . . .

We've been a little scattered around Of Woods and Words lately.

I chalk this general discombobulation to two little words: deer season. Since the season opener eve last Friday, we've been hopping around between various locales: the cabin, Andy's mom place, and my parents'. In the last week, I've spent more nights in town than I have at the cabin. As much as I often claim to have an "urge for going," something about vacillating between home and your parents' place isn't quite as glamorous as heading to MSP and catching the next flight to say, Barcelona. Besides, being transient comes with a few pitfalls:

Full Disclosure: This is actually my childhood bedroom in Jan. 2005 while packing for a semester abroad

Since we live in an area still recovering from a recent wildfire, the deer population around the cabin isn't especially remarkable. As the undergrowth regenerates, there's been an obvious increase in the deer population, but Andy thought he'd have better luck if he hunted closer to town, where there are deer, literally, all over the place. Between dental appointments, freelance assignments, and various other commitments for me, it's just been easier for us to spend free time in town, especially since we're right on the cusp of "questionable driving conditions" season.

Andy'd had enough of town by this Friday morning ("Too many people" . .  . "What are these neighbor people you speak of?" Please, do remember that town has a population of less than 2000) so he took off for the cabin and I planned to stay with my parents until Monday.

But when I got back from an article interview yesterday morning, Dad mention that Andy'd called looking for my camera. Apparently, Andy'd gotten a large buck near the cabin. Guess that whole hypothesis about there being better hunting grounds closer to town was kind of flawed.

Not knowing if Andy needed some help, I hopped in the car and headed back up to the cabin. There was indeed a large buck hanging in the cabin when I arrived. I wasn't really needed to assist with anything, but Andy sure was happy to have me around to regale with stories of the hunt. To all my vegetarian readers, you'll be happy know that I arrived too late to take the mandatory "Andy with dead deer" photo.  I kind of think dead deer pictures are tacky anyway .. .

The deer was a 17.5" antler spread and a Boone and Crockett club number, at least the way we measured it,  of 112.5. We may have missed a couple of the spread measurements for the Boone and Crockett. (FYI, the record holding Boone and Crockett measurement for whitetail deer is 213.5/8"!!)

I have to admit I'm much more pleased about Andy's success now than I was last year. (Yes, he did shot the deer on the exact same date as last year. We figure he might as well wait until 7:45 on the morning November 12 to go deer hunting each year.) I've already been busily scouring cookbooks and the internet for new venison recipes. It's a good thing I got some practice with venison cooking last year, because Andy figures we'll probably get somewhere between 40-50 pounds of useable meat from this deer. That's about double the amount of meat we got from last year's doe and yep, that rounds out to a cost of  60 cents a pound when you figure in the cost of the license . . . heck yeah!

That's the news from Of Woods and Words. For now I'm off to town (and beyond!)  to catch up with some old friends. Tomorrow's filled with town appointments and errands and maybe, just maybe, on Tuesday we'll put an end to all this rambling.

Man.