Inside the Outdoors: Antlers send a message to deer and hunter alike

Just a few days before the Nov. 7 start of our firearms deer season, late afternoon found me crossing a grassy clearing. I was headed toward a stand of sapling-size aspen, beyond which stretched a thicket of hazel brush, which in turn tapered down to towering alders and wetter ground. Wetter now, especially, since it was a week in which nearly six inches of rain fell in little more than two days. There had been only one night with temperatures below freezing, the most tangible evidence being frost on rooftops the next morning, and the thinnest skim of ice on the few puddles that remained. Recent temperatures mattered, because I had hoped to find a few woodcock in those aspen and alders to which I was navigating. Woodcock are sensitive to freezing temperatures, for when they’re unable to probe soft soil for earthworms, they will depart on their southward migration.

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