I am writing this column from the deep woods, about 25 feet above the ground in a self-climbing tree stand attached to a big white oak. (It is early November 2008.) I am using a really nice manufactured surrounding-seat stand I bought many years ago on sale in the sporting goods section of a discount store with birthday money.  You can work it way up a branchless tree in a matter of minutes.

I have had some enjoyable days in tree stands like this one, and have seen some really unusual things, and a killed lot of deer this way. Someday I might be able to write a pretty good book on what I have observed and experienced in a tree stand. Once about 20 years ago, I ran one of these self-climbing tree stands up a big oak and the sound of the metal scraping against the tree caused a buck to come running toward me thinking he was hearing another buck scraping his antlers against a tree, and he came to within 40 yards, his ears all perked up and his tail twitching, snorting just a little.  He was a nice eight-pointer, and obviously not the smartest buck in the woods. But I never worry about whether I get a deer or not. I usually do, but not a trophy. I don’t hunt for trophies.   I feel a little sorry for those who do. Some of them are my friends and we argue a lot about how nuts they are for doing    that.

I can’t fall out of this type of tree stand and that simplifies life somewhat.  When I was younger I fell out of one that I built once.  I have built a bunch of them. Without that worry, here there is a freedom which can be felt, but not easily expressed, especially with a cold pen and a half-sized notebook.  Everyone wants this freedom of the soul that I so often find alone in the woods or on the river. But it doesn’t go well with making a living unless you like venison as much as beef and chicken. Out here in the woods I quite often thank God for so many blessings I never had a regular job and I feel a little bit like an Osprey that sits in a dead tree watching the lake for a fish. Like him I don’t know what is happening elsewhere in the world nor what is in my bank account, nor do I care. Honest!

I lost my train of thought there for a moment.  A button buck just walked by about thirty yards away.  He would have been awfully tender and tasty, but there wouldn’t have been much of him to eat.  I don’t know if you have thought about this, but even though the loin of a mature buck makes about three times more steak than that of a button buck, it is about half as good to eat.  Even up here in this tree, there are some pretty weighty decisions to be made at times.  It isn’t for everybody… you have to be fairly quick witted.

What I really would like is a good two-year-old buck, with antlers enough so that I could lie about them just a little bit in the story-telling afterward, without having to feel really guilty and having to confess to anything later. I recall sitting in a self climbing tree-stand once during the peak of the rut with my bow when two very heavy-antlered bucks met not thirty yards from me, one going north and one going south. There was too much brush for a shot.  I thought to myself, “boy I am fixin’ to see one heck of a fight now!”  To my surprise they came together at a fence, touched noses and stuck them way up in the air.  Then one jumped the fence and they walked off away from me, heading east.  It was as if two old cousins came together and one said to the other, “let’s go eat some acorns and drink some stumpwater and chase women!”

Most of this afternoon it has been overcast and just a few minutes ago the sun broke just below the clouds and just above the horizon.  It bathed the woods in an eerie sort of orange-glow with deep shadows, and now it is about to disappear. I hear some turkeys making putting and perking noises as they get up the nerve to try to make it up to that first big limb, a good place to spend the night.  It is soon going to be too dark to write and it is getting cooler. I don’t envy those turkeys, I don’t think I’d want to be up here all night, although I have been in tree stands pretty late at times, like that one time I couldn’t get the safety harness buckle to unlatch, and then that time Ol’ man Parker’s bull got loose.

Right now I think I will just run this thing down the tree and go to the house and build a fire. And see if I can write something while at my desk, while warmer.