Robert Hitt Neill column
Published 12:00 am Tuesday, November 16, 2010

At a birthday party for our oldest (4) grandson (“Sir”) Saturday night, a friend asked, “Opening Day of deer gun season was today. Did you get one?”
I had to answer in the negative. Matter of fact, I had not even gone to the woods: I was in prison that morning early, at the Yazoo City Federal Correctional Complex.
Those of us who work in the Kairos Prison Ministry go back to prison just about every Second Saturday, so I wasn’t dealing with wildlife that day, though I could have made a case for the fact that I was dealing with men who had in many ways embraced a wild life, to get where they are now.
Actually, I hadn’t even considered that the season had opened yet, I’m so conditioned to thinking that it’s in the Bible somewhere that gun season opens on the weekend before Thanksgiving, so even if I had not been in prison that day, I would not have taken a gun to the woods.
But his query started me to thinking about Opening Days in the past, and the joy of anticipating that official day of going back to the woods, although I mostly knew that chances were that I was not going to shoot on Opening Day, unless a real trophy buck came by.
Opening Day has usually been a celebration of seeing nature at its best, and the gun in my hand was just an excuse for Being There. That gun also provides the heart-thudding anticipation that I might get a shot, when I catch a glimpse of antler gleaming in the sun, or detect a movement in that paw-paw thicket.
Seems like on the pre-season scouting trips without a weapon, that excitement isn’t there when one sees the game.
Okay, many hunters have been going afield for a month or so by now, with bows and arrows, I know that. An Ole Miss football injury – a badly separated shoulder that I probably should have had surgery on – prevents me from using a bow. I can draw the string back without any problem, but holding it at full draw sometimes locks the shoulder, for some reason, and that ain’t a happy circumstance when one is fifteen feet up in a tree.
I could get a crossbow, just never have gone that route. So, the Opening Day of gun season is what cranks me off.
I am fortunate that I have always been a closet writer, even though I never published anything until I was 45 years old. But I wrote down a lot of memories (even if I did burn most of them up later on, in the house fire!) and can recall many great times simply because I did write them down. I reached the conclusion long ago that the gun in my hand was just an excuse for going hunting.
There was one bright golden morning when I was up in a basket-type tree stand big enough for two, sitting on a bucket propped back against the railing, with my 30/06 laid across the stand on the rails.
At one point, the sun suddenly focused on my gunstock, carved with a buck jumping a log scene by my father fifty years ago. Seconds later, one of those huge black-with-blue-purple-highlights butterflies lit on the stock, basking in the sun. It was breath-takingly beautiful. Had a trophy buck come ambling by, I seriously doubt that I would have disturbed my companion of the deer stand that morning.
It wasn’t Opening Day, but the last day of one season when I glimpsed a brown movement just before I crossed a creek branch. I froze, and an otter emerged from upstream. He spent two hours swirling and catching fish in the little pools dotting that creek bed, and I never even got to my stand that morning.
One turkey season Opening Day I spent over an hour watching as a momma squirrel moved five or six tiny kits from her den tree 10 feet to my right, to another tree maybe thirty yards in front of me. On each trip, with a kit in her mouth, she almost had to jump across my outstretched feet. After she finalized her move, I tried to climb the old den tree to see why she had felt motivated to move, but I was beyond tree-climbing age, by then.
I’ll Be There next weekend, but once again, the gun will be just an excuse!