It All Begins Again!

When the season of great anticipation began, with its hopes of possibility that the big buck from from the year before was still out there sauntering through my hunting grounds,

and an early autumn picture showed indeed he still was, only now much bigger, with an immense thick chest and blocked head with graying muzzle,

and I knew this aging buck living on public land was a cagey, crafty old fellow, because for many seasons he had figured out what it took to survive on pressured land, and I spent the season wondering where he was hiding, trying in earnest to find him, sacrificing time and money to be where I thought he might be, calling in sick to work, jeopardizing job and relationship,

sitting on stand for long hours waiting for that one chance, listening to the echoing booms of the hunter over on the next ridge and the defiant report in return from the hunter across the big woods, wondering if somewhere the monarch had fallen, hoping against all odds he had somehow made it through.  And the fleeting months passed without one chance sighting of him, then on a late January day on my winter trapline a scrape popped up where one wasn't the day before, then another, and a trail camera went out and I hoped that just maybe it was him,

and when the picture came in it wasn't the best, but by all accounts it could be, and after all this was said and done it's then I realized -- it all begins again.