The Tease...

     Can you hear it? I can...faint, barely audible, but calling out to me, ghostly. You can feel it on the breeze and hear it in the rattle of the leaves and see it in the vivid azure sky and star filled night. The calendar says late July, but Mother Nature is teasing us with early Autumn. Just a taste, just a hint, for we know that sticky, dull days of August lie ahead...but every bowhunter hears the same voice calling, the same whisper in his ear that accompanies the first cool morning and chill of night...

      Turkey season is a distant memory as the time between seasons is too long and the hunter has to be idle and wait for his turn again. We long for the coolness of fall, the crisp air, the sting of our lungs as we inhale that first breath of a frosty, pre-dawn morning. The sharpness of the changing colors, that time when the whole world is set ablaze. The lemon yellows, the watermelon reds of the maples and poplars. The tangerine, ambers and auburn of the oaks and hickories as the leaves wither and the trees ready themselves for the cold of winter...

      We pass the time preparing. Scouting trips in the heat, swatting mosquitoes and biting flies, wiping sweat from our eyes. We spy on the deer from a far, spotting scopes and binoculars at the ready. Hidden cameras are placed at likely spots, some heavily used trail deep in the shaded woods or a well worn corner at the edge of the bean field. Food plots tilled and planted, feeding stations checked and re-checked. Evenings are spent driving the back roads, watching the fields, hoping to catch a glimpses of velvet covered antlers and big bucks in their orange coats of summer.

      August arrives, muggy, damp and warm...Squirrel season rings in and helps take the edge off with a few mornings spent under a stand of hickory or walnuts waiting for a gray or fox squirrel to make his mistake and show himself. But fighting through poison ivy and dew covered spider webs in the heat of late summer chasing rodents is no comparison to the freshness of October and the majesty and grace of a whitetail deer...

      Arrows are shot and shot again. Shoulders and back strong from repetition...The targets are worn and tattered from repeated hits and being baked in the summer sun. Equipment is examined...knives sharpened to a razor's edge, broadheads keen and honed, ready to do their job went the time comes. The hunter compares notes with like-minded, when and where the big boys are moving, discussion about spread and points and inches of antler, typical and non-typical. Tree stands are placed and shooting lanes trimmed, all for that one moment.

      August is barely here and plenty of summer is left, but we've been tempted by the weather, a cruel tease, a bad joke. The hunter's heart has been piqued by the snap in the air, the clean, clear skies...Two months out, but the bowhunter knows his time is coming, days spent in the trees, among the wildlife, breathing in deep...So we anxiously wait for our turn, all the while listening to the whisper on the wind calling us to Autumn, calling us to October.