Outdoor Adventures

[trkyhntr]

Just a quicky report from our visit to camp this past weekend. I got there about 3:00 PM on Thursday and started a fire in the woodstove. Temperature in the cabin was 22 at the time I arrived and it takes about three hours to get the cabin warm with just the woodstove, so I put a couple of gallons of venison vegetable soup on the stove and then took a walk to do inventory. Snow depth at the cabin (1941 feet above sea level at the front lawn) was a couple of inches of crusty and crunchy stuff, but as I gained elevation it got a bit deeper. The north-facing slopes still had about a foot or more and that made walking downhill a bit challenging. Lots of tracks to subject to analysis. A fairly large pack of coyotes made the rounds, plenty of deer tracks, and a fair number of turkeys scratching the forest floor for a living. As to the coyotes, the ones I have seen are not the large critters yinz guys encounter in the north country. Ours might go 25-30 pounds for a big one.
There is an old homestead on the hillside below a PGC food plot that is not worth being called a food plot. I traipsed through the area, noting the heavy deer travel through it. What remains of the homestead is a stone foundation and, for some strange reason, the privy is still standing. There is an old trash dump that I keep intending to explore for old bottles but for some reason never get around to doing so. We had a ladder stand near there where my buddy Larry got the nice eight point in archery season. The area close to where it was located is heavily used. I continued on downhill to an old logging path that parallels the creek and then crossed the stream to investigate the laurel thickets on the other side.
Most of the deer beds I encountered were clustered under hemlock trees, presumably to get out of the heavy snow and other precip. I continue to be amazed at how the numbers have recovered in the area. I crossed the creek one more time and climbed the hill to camp. When I returned the inside temperature was up to nearly 50, so I loaded more wood into the stove and went outside to fire up the chainsaw. There are a number of standing dead trees on our property, and I get anxious to convert them into cabin warming wood. By 5:00 I was pretty well done with wORk, so I went in to sample the venison veggie soup, which by the way was pretty decent. The weather comedian was forecasting light wintery mix for the morning so I wondered if my buddy Dave would show up in the morning.
Dave hoved upon the scene about 10:00 AM on Friday. He reported that an accident had shut down US Route 30 just west of Bedford so he had a detour to make. On the news that evening we saw that the accident involved a propane tanker and had the hazmat crews hopping for several hours. We decided to take another walk, this time below the road and across the swamp. Many more deer, turkey and coyote tracks. I am getting the feeling that a trip to camp with the shotgun may be in order with the aim of harvesting a coyote for the Museum. Friday afternoon we worked on splitting some of the wood I had cut the day before. When the temperature is in the 20s it is an adventure trying to start the wood splitter and we finally gave up and did the splitting with an axe and mall. That certainly works up an appetite, so we made inroads on the veggie soup.
Our chores on Saturday included filling the feeder, downloading photos from the trail cameras, and repairing to the living quarters to watch the Nascar race. Exciting ending was hardly the word for it. We agree that without restrictor plate racing that final lap wreck would probably not have happened, but I digress. This is an outdoor message board, but come to think of it, auto racing does take place outdoors, doesn’t it? Toward evening, a couple of guys from a neighboring camp showed up and we swapped lies. The temp on Saturday afternoon rose into the fifties and the snow is now pretty much gone. It was so nice out that Dave and I actually sat on the porch and had a cigar and a beer. Life is tough, but someone has to do the hard stuff. Dave tried out the reloads I did for his .300 H&H and pronounced them “good enough to kill a bear.” I finally got around to sighting in the .250-3000 Savage I bought from Big Ken last year. It is accurate and I plan to take a deer or two with it this coming fall.
Not much was left of the soup by the time we got ready to leave on Sunday. I took the rest of it home. When I returned home to reacquaint myself with the woman who lives there, nobody was present to thump me on the head except for She Who Rules the roost. She Who Rules pronounced the soup to be edible. I spent Sunday afternoon reloading a few rounds and thinking about the next trip to camp. I did watch the end of the cup race. Mark Martin can still drive pretty good for an old goat, can’t he.
For those so inclined, here is the recipe for the venison vegetable soup:
Into a large (at least three gallon) stock pot, place the following ingredients.
One pound of stew meat
One bag of frozen peas
One bag of frozen green beans
One bag of baby carrots
One chopped onion
Four fairly large peeled and diced potatoes
Two gallons of water
A large dollop of beef soup starter
Dash of Worcestershire sauce

Put the mess on low and go about your business for several hours while it becomes soup. A really lazy man’s recipe, but then, I am an expert in such stuff.