Nov. 10-16, 2019

Weather | 11/10, 36°, 53° | 11/11, 1.5" snow or 0.16" moisture, 19°, 29° | 11/12,  3°, 20° | 11/13, 10°, 33° | 11/14, 25°, 35° | 11/15, 17°, 49° | 11/16, 23°, 48° |

• Sunday, 11/10: Mary washed sheets, furniture covers, and jeans. She also watered the garlic and cleaned up and froze 4 packages of cranberries we recently bought. I drove to Fastlane, a Conoco truck stop, and bought 10 gallons of gas for the tractor and wood splitter and 2 gallons of 91 octane gas for the chainsaw. Then I cleaned the spark plugs on the 8N Ford tractor and sharpened a chainsaw chain. Mary and I drove down Bobcat Trail and cut out a section of a large white oak tree that fell on the trail, then cut enough firewood to fill the wagon. I unloaded the firewood, while Mary did the chores, except feeding chickens, which I did. Mom texted me that Len Kuntz died after open heart surgery at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. She also said it snowed 8 inches overnight and Circle, MT is expected to hit 0, or below, tonight.
• Monday, 11/11: Woke to a snowstorm...snowing hard with a 30 mph north wind. Our high temperature was in the morning...temps dropped all day. All told, it snowed about 1.5 inches. Snow ended at 3 pm. Left the chickens inside. Nice day to stay inside next to the woodstove. The only outside task I undertook was to hang the oil-filled electric heater up in the coop and turn it on for the chickens. Mary baked 4 loaves of bread. We watched Lincoln and Darkest Hour. Bill texted us that a meteor fireball went across the St. Louis sky, from east to west...some neat videos of it online.
• Tuesday, 11/12: Sunny day, but started at 3°F. Mary did house cleaning. I cooked up 8 old eggs for chickens. Let them out at 2 pm...they went out for about a minute and went right back into the coop to stay, so I closed the door. Went to all of my deer stands and blinds, adding reflective trail thumb tacks where needed, and clipped or sawed away branches that were in the way. Saw a yearling deer at the cherry deer stand, 2 bald eagles, and heard a deer snort at the southeast deer blind. Saw deer tracks everywhere in the snow. Mary made a wonderful venison stew with biscuits for dinner. I cut out pads in some new battery-operated Warmfits boot heaters and tried them in my military bunny boots. They'll be perfect for sitting at deer stands/blinds in a few days (deer season starts Sat., 11/16).
• Wednesday, 11/13: Strong south wind, so even though it's warmer outside, it feels damn cold. That's what chickens said, so I left them in with the chicken door shut and fed them another batch of cooked-up old eggs. Mary & I split a bunch of bigger logs from the past 2 times we sawed up firewood. Mary separated them out into dry, so-so, and wet piles. We'll leave the wet stacked in the machine shed, where an open east end and partial open south end means a good wind blows through to thoroughly air out the wood in a week or two. While watching out the west living room windows, we saw 2 falcons dive from way high to the ground west of us. It was quite a sight. I got a migraine while doing evening chores, so took a couple acetaminophen pills and slept for an hour. Fortunately, since getting older and losing all of my brain cells, I don't get much of a headache, now. Had to endure venison stew leftovers and the first of our acorn squash from the garden. Life is tough.
• Thursday, 11/14: Saw the telltale sight of a deer's white tail bouncing off to the north through the woods when I dumped morning ashes from the woodstove. After seeing an Aldi flyer last night, we went to Quincy today and bought 2 Honeysuckle White turkeys for 59 cents a pound, plus other groceries. Also picked up dog and cat food at Farm & Home, plus a bag of sunflower seeds and a pecking block for the chickens. Ate pizza we bought at Aldi. I cleaned my good 30:30 rifle and stitched up the left hand of my chopper elk hide mittens where the stitching of one side and the thumb had broken apart. Mary worked on a cross stitching ornament. The Quincy Herald-Whig newspaper says the low temperatures on 11/12 and 11/13 were all-time record lows.
• Friday, 11/15: Mary raked leaves and broke up a head-high pile of long branches in the machine shed for kindling. I sighted in my best 30:30 rifle...it was shooting left and high, but after 4 shots, I got it right on. I also got my gear ready for hunting. Called mom on her 85th birthday. Tried to get to bed by 8 pm, but didn't make it until 9:30.
• Saturday, 11/16: WHAT A DAY!!! Got up at 4:30 am, dressed in warm gear, ate a sandwich and went hunting. Mary walked dogs, lit a fire and had a big tea, since sleeping is impossible with "clicky, clicky, clicky...sniff, sniff, sniff...why aren't you up?" dogs. Went to the Cherry Tree Deer Stand in the NE area of our property. A partial moon illuminated everything well and the grass was crunchy with frost. I heard a deer snort to the north as I got to the stand. After it started to lighten up, but well before the legal time to start shooting, a deer walked directly under that stand. I could have dropped something on it. It was too dark for me to make out whether it had horns, or not. Later, after the legal shooting time, a doe walked north to south a few yards east of me. When I got the rifle up, it was behind a honey locust tree, then turned east, walking away from me...would have been a bad gut shot...so, I waited. By the time it turned south, or broadside to me, there were too many branches between me and the deer, so I never shot. I kept hearing animals stepping in the water at the Swim Pond, getting a drink. At 7:40 am, I thought, "Only 20 minutes and I'm leaving," then I heard a deer beyond the cedar trees immediately ahead of me. Took my leather mittens off...no sound...put the mittens back on. Then, there was the deer's head. It looked up right at me, then started walking forward. I quickly dropped my mittens, brought up the rifle and took a right-handed shot. Aimed for the neck and it dropped instantly. Waited to make sure it didn't get up and texted Mary that I got one. She heard the shot and said she knew it was my gun, since it sounds like a cannon, compared to the .223 caliber tinker toy guns that some people use. Walked back home, got Mary, started the 8N Ford tractor with the trailer behind it, drove back and field dressed a yearling doe. It had fat on it...had been eating corn from the neighbor's field. We hauled it back home and washed the cavity out with the hose off the outdoor hydrant. I hung it up in the machine shed, then we ate breakfast. Sharpened knives and I skinned it. I blew out the right shoulder with the exit of my bullet, since I shot from above while the deer was walking up the hill. The bullet exit wound was about 3 inches in diameter. After de-boning the meat, we came up with 25 packages of meat in the freezer, which is a lot for a yearling with a blown-out shoulder. This doe was long. The long bodies always surprise you with the amount of meat you get out of them. While cutting out the shoulder stew pieces of meat from the deer carcass in the machine shed, Mary spotted an opossum, climbing in and out of boxes nearby. She was talking to it, when I showed up and said, "Talking to your deer carcass, huh?" She pointed out the possum, and we kept an eye on it while we finished cutting meat out of the carcass. It came within 1 foot of our feet, before wandering off to another part of the machine shed. We then ate vegetable soup. Mary moved firewood that might get wet with tomorrow's rain while I drove the carcass and hide to a hilltop on the east side of our property for coyotes to have. While doing chores, Mary spotted something in Gandalf's (a gray cat) mouth...turned out to be a small prairie king snake, tied in a half hitch knot. She brought it out to me, so she could lay it in my hands while she undid the knot. Mary laid it in tall grass near the wood ash pile and covered it with grass to give it more protection. I counted the chickens after getting them into the coop and was missing one. Found it, dead, at the north end of the chicken run...head hanging by a thread and half eaten. Mary saw claw marks that were wide and the tell-tale sign of white bird poop. It was killed by a raptor...a hawk, or an owl, and partially eaten. (Update: Mary spotted a big red-tailed hawk flying over the closed-up coop Sunday, 11/17, returning for another chicken dinner). Out of 10 hens we got the summer of 2018, we have 3 left. With this year's 2 pullets, we now have 5 female chickens. I took the dead hen body north and left it in an animal trail...another coyote offering. We changed and went to a Quincy Symphony Orchestra concert. The first piece, by Mendelssohn, was good. The second, a piece by Franz Strauss, featuring a French horn soloist, wasn't as good. The orchestra was fine, but this guy on the horn wondered off on his own beat...he was like the Willie Nelson of French horn players. The final piece, Johannes Brahms Symphony No. 2, was really good. I spotted Diana and Chet Brown in the crowd. I trained their dog, Harley, when I was a dog trainer at Petco. Didn't go say hi...didn't feel sociable. Mary had an urge for hamburger...something about cutting up meat earlier in the day...so we ate at Burger King. Got home at 10:30, lit the fire and had a big tea. Got to bed at midnight. WHAT A DAY!!!