Opening Day and Beyond

In 1996, I turned 47 after the end of deer season. Unlike today, I could make rigorous, long-hike hunts in a local state game land to the top of a mountain where Dad had discovered frequently used deer crossing shortly after World War II. He, other family members, one of my friends, and I hunted there for many years. It was rare that at least one of us did not tag a buck. Later, after the PGC embarked on its public-land deer decimation program, it became rare to even see one.

Anyhow, 1997 was the second year that I did not sit alongside my son, Bob, on our deer hunts there. He was 16, had t...