This Season’s First Hunting Trip

Mike McBride, from Lake Carmel, his Son, John, from Fishkill, and Kevin, also Lake Carmel, with Kevin’s 9 point, North Carolina buck taken last Monday at East Carolina Outfitter’s, from a tree stand at a tree stand overlooking one of the farm fields, out of 30,000 acres leased by the guided hunt outfitter’s. LYNN GREENWOOD It was a quiet night here at the Greenwood house on Halloween, in spite of having a large bowl of candy for visiting ghosts and goblins to pick from for their gathering bag, and we had back up bags of assorted candy in case we got a rush of Trick or Treat visitors. But luckily Doctor Ben Casey, or was it Dr. Kildare, showed up in his skull cap and green surgeon’s uniform, with his sidekick, Terrance (Tinkerbell’s boyfriend)), in a uniform that included wings to fly, but we recognized Grandsons Kevin and Kyle Greenwood right away—being escorted by parents Carl and Karen helped a lot, though. With both parents monitoring their selections closely, the kids could only grab a handful each, and with that the only two trick or treaters to show up, Mama and I won’t have to buy any candy for a long time, although with the bowl still full on the table, I can’t hesitate to grab something every time I pass by.

Kevin with his 2nd buck, an 8 pointer. LYNN GREENWOOD Writing this column I realized that I have yet to get out hunting (for anything) this fall, reminded mostly by meeting my Friend Mike McBride and his son Kevin parked next to my son Carl’s house when Mama and I stopped by Sunday. Mike gave me a plastic container of venison cuts, that weighed about 8 or 10 pounds, from the yield of the McBride hunting trip to the leased hunting land around their base in Scotland, North Carolina. I knew Mike was going on the trip, but wasn’t sure when he would get back from the 5-day guided hunt with the 3 McBride boys, a cousin, and a co-worker friend of John’s, harvesting a total of 9 bucks and 5 does.

The hunting party and guide: Kevin McBride, John McBride, John Caragliano (Mike’s Cousin), and Amando Marino, who works with John. LYNN GREENWOOD It was a long trip to Scotland Neck, NC, 533 miles to hunt for five days, with an early Monday morning rise to be on their tree stands for the 5:30 to 10am and then return in the afternoon to hunt from 3 to 6:30pm. Mike said deer didn’t seem to show up in the fields in vision from his stand until 8:15 or so each morning, and only appeared late in the evening. Far reaching rifles with mounted scopes are the order of the day here, with most shots taken after a buck or decent doe is spotted emerging from the heavily wooded areas that line both sides of each field, where their stands were located.

With only a five-day limited time hunt to bring home the venison, there was no time for snoozing, as the hunters in the stands scanned the fields with their binoculars for a sign of emerging deer, or in the direction of squirrels and other woodland noisemakers that always keeps a deer hunter on the alert. Other sounds that break the monotony of waiting in the tree stand for something to happen is the whistling wings of ducks passing overhead heading for morning feeding grounds in the corn, soy bean, tobacco, and peanut fields that dot the North Carolina country, or local or migrating v-formations of honking Canadian geese that pass overhead heading for their feeding grounds. With swans, cranes, and noisy crows and ravens also working their way across the skies overhead, it is never quiet under southern skies, and Mike and his crew all stayed alert during all of their AM and PM hours on their individual stands, spread far from each other. Mike took a four point buck and a spike buck, Kevin bagged the best bucks taken on the trip with a nine-pointer and an eight-pointer. Southern whitetails tend to run smaller, weight-wise, than those we find here in the Northeast, with Kevin’s nine-pointer weighing around 130 pounds. Mike came back late this afternoon and we went up to Kent Town Hall to pick up our free bow and muzzle loading licenses we didn’t know enough to ask for when we bought our regular hunting, fishing, and big game licenses earlier during the summer. I asked the clerk how much a trapping license was, and she applied for that on line too, and handed me the trapping tag. I asked “how much?” and she said, “Oh, at your age that license is free too!” At my age, life continues to offer me surprises every day, it seems, and although I probably won’t run a regular trapline, like my late friend and Oasis member, Morgan Seymour, did every year until his passing, there are a few raccoons around here that decimated my flock of chickens and a rooster over time, to the point I now only have one hen left to feed and tend, and my egg production is down to one a day.

I do have an Oasis story to tell now. The club offers a $25.00 prize each year for the heaviest deer taken with bow and arrow, but we haven’t had a winner of that prize for a few years now, with no archery-taken whitetails entered. Sal Santamorino, from Putnam Valley, a relatively new member of the Club, is someone I could always count on for a good fishing story. This past Saturday night, shortly after darkness fell, I got a call from Sal with a great bow hunting achievement, his story told as he waited patiently for a friend to show up that was going to help him get his ten point whitetail buck, up in the rack below the bumper of his vehicle. Sal said itg was an easy drag downhill from the top of the mountain in northern Westchester where he brought the buck down with a single broadhead hunting arrow, but the deer was just too to lift up on the rack by himself. Sal told me he thought the buck weighed 180 pounds, maybe more.

It is not likely anyone else will get a heavier deer with a bow this fall, or a buck with a bigger rack, so Sal has an excellent opportunity now to take the Club heaviest deer with a bow, and the separate “Big Buck” pool that members paid $5 to enter. That contest runs through the fall gunning season, and the follow up muzzle-loading and bow hunting seasons. So all Sal has to do now is wait to see if his deer hunting time investment will pay off. With my deer hanging pulley on loan to Mike McBride, still up at their cabin in Hancock, NY, I had to call Sal back and tell him I wasn’t capable of weighing his buck, and he said he would have his butcher weigh it if he could. In the meantime, while putting my leaf blower back under the arbor last night, I found a second hanging pulley attached to a rafter under the roof. I could have weighed Sal’s deer after all, could have gotten a picture of him with his trophy, and had it developed to accompany this story. The picture will have to go next week, but will make a great pre-gunning season bonus to the days before the opening of the gunning season on Saturday the 21st.