Every year when I deer hunt, I pretty much sit in the exact same spot. Let's just say I have the view and all its surroundings memorized. It may rain, it might be windy, or in a real good deer year, I may get a foot of snow, but the trees, brush, branches and rocks, are the same ones that were here last year. And maybe just maybe, so are the chickadees that I see each season. They are my only annual visitors.
Last season after deer season I thought about making a bird feeder for my deer stand. You can only watch the same trees and rocks for so long. So this past summer I remembered the bird feeder idea and I set aside one little plastic coffee can with a seal tight lid. This past Saturday morning after I finished my deer hunt breakfast I stuffed that coffee can with some torn up bread crusts from the previous days dinner. I put one nail in my shirt pocket, out into the predawn darkness I trudged. I was more excited about hanging that feeder, than shooting a thirty point buck.
After the first hour of sitting, motionless, trying not to breathe to loud or spook a deer in any human way, I couldn't stand sitting still any more; I reached into my pocket for the one lone nail. I was smiling as I went down the ladder, quiet as I could, picked up a rock, came back up the ladder and nailed that plastic coffee can to the big tree not three feet from my face. I pounded that nail good and loud too, I was breaking every deer hunting noise law of the land, I mean what the heck, No sense shooting one of those real easy to shoot deer. Then I opened the lid, exposing the dried bread crusts, to all winged woodland comers.
First I saw a squirrel about forty feet away. He was just scurrying under and around a stump that has served as a salt block for quite a few years. After a while I heard a crow, then before eight thirty in the morning I saw a raven and from below me, flitted in not one, but two chickadees. Then two more. The first one landed on the lid. He gave a short little dee, dee, dee, snatched apiece of bread like he'd been there many times before and perched on a branch abit higher as he noshed. The second went in the can, scratched things up a bit, took a piece of bread crust, off it flew to a nearby balsam. All of a sudden, it was just a flitting feeding frenzy. I watched the chickadees come and go, fly in and fly back out, all morning within an arms length of me.
Then at one ten in the afternoon I shot a buck, it was great getting my deer. So down, out of the stand I did go. I had to take care of all the stuff that goes with shooting a deer. When I started to drag that deer down the trail I looked back at the new bird feeder. It was empty. So tomorrow, since I wont be hunting, I'm just gonna hike back out here, fill up the feeder, and watch what comes to visit. The trout whisperer
