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The Best Time to Hunt and Fish

 

I didn’t get much sleep Thursday night.  A thunderstorm seemed to persist all night.    The thunder was so loud it sounded as if it was at the foot of the bed.  The lightening was so dramatic it lit up the entire bedroom and the rain pelted against the vinyl siding of the house less than a foot from where my head was on the pillow.

I finally crawled out of bed a half hour early (2am) realizing I wasn’t going to be able to get much sleep.   I stepped out the front door headed for work and spied the critter in picture on the landing where the steps turn left.   This toad is a fixture in the flower beds next to the porch.  He’s seemingly lived there for as long as I’ve owned the home.   However, it marked the first time I’d ever seen him in the month of February.  

To say we’ve had a mild winter is an understatement.  Last week on a return to West Virginia from South Carolina I encountered the first real snow of the year when I was passing through Wytheville, VA and Princeton and Beckley, WV.   The snow was fully expected, forecasters had been calling for it for days.   It was such an anticipated event VDOT and the WV DOH had dump trucks of salt positioned in strategic areas to keep up.    TV news people had "live reports" from all over creation.   It was as if they were afraid they might reach spring without the first winter storm coverage/panic of the year.

It’s not the first time we’ve had a mild winter.   I recall some of the times I spent a typical cold weather day doing warm weather activities.   

December 4, 1982 I was a freshman in high school and our team played for a state championship in football.  We played the game in Crozet, Virginia and the temperature that day was 81 degrees.  A lot of fans showed up in shorts and tee-shirts and many of the male students shed their shirts during the game.

I can recall deer seasons on several occasions when temperatures were in the 70’s and I worried the meat might spoil before I could get it out of the woods and to a processor.   One such time was in 1985.  I was hunting with my dad in Wytheville, Virginia.   We had endured a driving rain all week and the temperature was in the 70’s.    He killed a buck, but we couldn’t leave camp because we had to drive through a stream to get out of the place we were hunting.  During the week the stream flooded with the intense rain.   We were delayed two days getting out of there.  We saved the meat.

Conversely, I have a story or two about winter weather arriving when we though it was well over for the season.   April 1, 1989 I was a student at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.   The "April Fools Storm" as it was called dumped well over 18-inches of snow on downtown Knoxville and paralyzed the campus.   Classes were cancelled for the day-the first time such a thing had occurred since the 1960’s.   In typical college student form we took advantage of the day we were released from class for safety reasons to hang onto the bumper of a four-wheel-drive truck and ski along Andy Holt Boulevard.

It’s been a crazy year for the weather for sure, but a wise man once said, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it."    That’s a profound statement.   If you’re planning a fishing or hunting trip for weeks and the day arrives and the weather is terrible, go anyway.   Because like I have always said, "The best time to got hunting and fishing is WHEN YOU HAVE TIME to go hunting and fishing."

 







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