My Health Is Always Better During the Moon of Painted Leaves
Larry Weishuhn
“See you’re upright and walking!” commented Dusty Vickrey as I strode toward the back door of the Choctaw Hunting Lodge. Before I could respond he continued, “I TOLD Bequette you’d be here! Don’t think he believed me, nor did anyone else in camp.” I smiled, “I knew there was no way doctors and surgeons were going to keep you from coming on this hunt!” I smiled and nodded, gladly taking Dusty’s welcoming handshake.
Together striding toward the lodge a northerly breeze showered us with reddish, yellow and brown oak leaves, not unlike huge brightly colored snowflakes. I truly appreciated the happening. It caused me to recall lines by a couple of my favorite writers, Havilah Babcock and Russell Annabel. Babcock back in 1947, the year of my birth, had written a book, My Health Is Always Better in November. Russell Annabel in his book, Tales of a Big Game Guide, titled a chapter “In the Moon of the Painted Leaves”. I had long loved and appreciated their description of October and November.
I had indeed been in and out of emergency rooms and then the hospital starting the night of returning from a successful black bear hunt in Maine with Randy Flannery and his Wilderness Escape Outfitters. We, my wife and I, had gotten home from the Austin Airport at mid-night. At 2 am I was up hurting badly from chest pains. At our local hospital’s Emergency Room, I was determined I suffering from pericarditis, excess fluid around my heart. This resulted in an ambulance transfer to a College Station hospital, many tests, then back home. A few days later I was back in the Emergency Room in College Station and from there was transferred to the heart care hospital in Bryan. A few hours after surgery, when I was visited by the surgeon, I asked about going deer hunting. “No, I think you best stay home for a while and rest!” said he. Certainly not the words I wanted to hear. “See you in three weeks!
My time at home was not particularly restful. I yearned to be in a hunting camp. Finally, the three-week appointment with both the heart specialist and surgeon arrived. I did not tell them I had by vehicle nearly packed to go hunting on the Choctaw Hunting Lodge. Numerous thankfully quick test, anxious moments and thankfully “You’re OK! All things appear to be back to normal, see you in six months!” said the heart specialist.” I must have smiled widely then before I could say “Thank You”, he added, “Let me guess you’re going hunting.”
“Tis the moon of painted leaves and my health is always better in November!” I replied just before closing their office door after thanking him. In my vehicle headed home, I called my wife. “I’m headed to the Choctaw as soon as I get there, grab two of my Stealth Vision topped rifles, Taurus Raging Hunter handguns and some Hornady ammo. Then kiss you good-bye!”
I heard a deep sigh of relief, but also an “I married an idiot!” comment said where she probably thought I could not hear…but then maybe she did want me to hear her words.
Back on the Choctaw I spent the week hunting whitetails. Doing so I shot an absolute monster whitetail inside the Choctaw’s high-fenced area. The hunt was not a hard one, but interesting. Rather long story cut short, I saw the buck I shot numerous times, passed him up each time. But then ended up shooting that buck while stalking a couple of bucks with Dusty and Jesse Baird. I stayed behind several steps, saw Jesse raise his rifle and shoot thinking he had shot the big buck I had passed numerous times. He waved me forward handed me his rifle and said “Shoot that buck!” The deer was in dense brush and trees. I could not see his head only his shoulder. I shot, the buck went down. All the while I thinking I had shot a really nice 10-point buck I had seen traveling with the monstrous buck I had passed on, or I had finished Jesse’s buck.
The three of us walked toward the downed deer. We stopped to look at the buck Jesse had shot, the one I thought I had finished for him. Both started laughing then pointed to another buck laying ten steps from Jesse’s, the buck I shot thinking it was the one Jesse had shot.
The buck I stared at had a monstrous set of antlers. I was speechless and totally surprised. Later at camp we counted my buck’s 44 points, including 8 droptines with a 37 ½-inch greatest outside spread. When I tallied the antler score for the Choctaw’s records my buck’s rack tallied 357 and some change. In all my years of hunting I had only taken three elk and one red stag that scored more than this whitetail.
As this is being written the taxidermists at Double Nickle Taxidermy and finishing the mount. Soon I will take it to the Choctaw Hunting Lodge where it will be proudly displayed, giving me additional excuses to head to the Choctaw to visit “my deer”.
That buck came after I hunted with my old friend, Jim Bequette. Jim and I had become good friends after I wrote my first article “Five Seconds to Success” for Shooting Times magazine for the September 1990 issue, where he was long the editor. A short time later I went on staff with Shooting Times as a columnist, “Lock Stock and Barrel”, and the hunting editor.
Fall, particularly late October and November, with their crisp, cool mornings, nighttime temperatures appropriate for campfires, and changing leaves have always been invigorating and exciting, anticipating and spending time hunting and in hunting camp with friends, old and new.
Aches and pains amazingly disappear like the colorful leaves falling from the branches of deciduous trees. During “the moon of painted leaves” even when at home I find myself drawn to our back porch, there to enjoy my AGARA coffee from BobbysBetterLife.com or raise high a wee dram to recall and honor old friends, stags bested and those which bested me, appreciating my favorite time of year while watching spectacular sunsets “painted” with Nature’s full spectrum of colors.
Cooling northerly October and November breezes laced the aroma of campfire smoke, real or imagined, beckon me outdoors in want of hunting adventures and to recall past experiences.
Years ago I wrote a column for Sporting Classics magazine titled, “The Longhunter” fashioned after those individuals who in ages past journeyed far from home for long periods of time in search of adventures, lured no doubt at least to some extent by changing leaves, and he promise of cooler temperatures as well as most likely what was then and still is referred to the “Hunter’s Moon”, the first full moon of November, a time when the male of the deer species are in search of receptive females, a time when most all wildlife was likely more active than any other time of the year.
Knowing the Hunter’s Moon’s influence on wild animals and humans lead to the writing of one of my books, Trailing the Hunter’s Moon; a title I later turned into a very popular outdoor television series DSC’s Trailing the Hunter’s Moon. During the years I owned and hosted the show it was one of the more popular shows on the outdoor networks. It was awarded numerous Telly Awards and even nominated for an Emmy. The show documented my doing what the title suggested, “trailing the hunter’s moon” and “the moon of painted leaves” in both the northern and southern hemispheres.
As I approach the age of four score, an age when many others have since passed or are no longer active it is the anticipation of the “moon of painted leaves” and another November that keeps me going strong, healthy and younger than my years suggest.