I have been busy, with family, guns, and this humble hunting story

I have been doing some handload testing, firelapping bores, and various other things so I haven't been much of a participant lately, as the weather locks me in Iwill try to unravel some of the gun related stuff and share.Since these events I am about to realte are recent ,and secure my excuse for absence i wanted to share. Yes it all happened, and yes it is meant to be mostly funny (I hope that comes across)
How this time of year brings humor, frustration, joy, and what I call "happiness"
I will begin by explaining my "Modus Operandi" for deer hunting and progress to a chronology of events since the opening of season on Oct 1. The "unique" things that seem to happen are but a small part of the overall events but they tend to be highlighted within the frameworks of the mundane.
I have four goals when the season starts. I want to spend the night before opening setting up my camp and then opening day crusing a bit, enjoying the opening day follies, and seeing if the presence of others has changed the habits of the animals I observed in my pre-season scouting. Second goal is to spend as much time as I can "Up there in the hills". Thirdly I wish to spend my birthday, the 15 of October, as I have many years, hunting. Somewhere in this is fitted, having a chance to bring home a deer of the recently deceased variety.
Friday night, with the season opening Saturday mormimg, I am "Off to the hills". This, of course is not such a big deal in that, "the hills" start about 6 miles as the crow flies, or 12 miles by road, from my front door. Hardly crossing the Great Divide.
I had selected a camp sight on earlier trips. There is a large campground known in the area and I wish to be about a mile from it. Short of lacking running water I am golden. I get there, darkness is falling and I managed to spook a couple of does on the way up, this is a good sign. I nose the truck in, to use the headlights to set up camp. I have never actually set this tent up before but I have unfurrled it to make sure, roughly, that it is intact.
It is a wise man who sets up a tent a couple of times BEFORE he actually has to use it. I will have to write that somewhere else for future reference. OK that was another reason for a solo campsite, I get all embarrassed looking like a monkey, dancing with a football. After a false start with the tent I get it all done. just at the moment a raindrop the size of a large waterballoon hits the back of my neck and runs down my back. The startled "yelp"I let out was muffled by the thunder and for a brief second I get a full daylight type view of my camp, provided by the lightning that occurred at exactly the same second as the thunder. (experienced outdoorsman, please explain the significance of that to the greenhorns). We had a storm folks.
Honestly I really didn't expect an on sale Coleman inflatable mattress to work perfectly. I put two of my old foam pads underneath it for it's own good. Those pads came in very hand when the inflatable partially deflated slowly during the night. There was just enough air in it to make "Mr. Groggy" think nothing was quite wrong, until I rolled over and banged some portion of my anatomy on the deck. But no complaints about the tent.
I had just gotten up, coincidentally the life span of the air in the mattress was good timing for about an hour before day light, I packed my gear, in the rain and crawled in to the truck to start it up, get warm and ease out to the rather open forest where I could watch thing lighten up and formulate a plan for the day. At this point I must point out that I have a perculiar but firm habit, I do not, will not, "road hunt" by the headlights, nor will I load a rifle until it is legal shooting time. Since I respect our LE people who enforce the laws about such things I figure I can make their jobs easier by not even giving the appearance of impropriety. How I wish everyone thought that way. For those of you who like to bend the law, Pay attention.
IF you, and a truck full of your buddies, want to fly below the radar, CRUSING DOWN A MAIN LOGGING ROAD at 45 minutes before sunrise AT 3 MILES AN HOUR, with the windows rolled down AND A FLASHLIGHT out the passenger window, ATTRACTS A LOT OF ATTENTION FROM SUSPICIOUS PEOPLE!
Now then buddy, if it isn't even your truck, and you and you are using the COMPANY TRUCK I am going to bet your boss is going to be real impressed with you ADVERTISING with the signs on the truck by getting busted in it for poaching. Oh and don't forget, if you don't get busted, other folks know your boss.
Well that was the first of the day. I watch the sun rise and it is having a rough time making it's presence known through the clouds. At the altitude I am at the clouds are hugging the ground giving about 20yds of visibility. I decide a move is in order. On over the hill I go. There is another moment of "Huh?"that awaits me. There is a deep canyon with a road making a "U" around the very end of it. At the end it isn't ALL that steep but after it was logged, about 10 years ago, it became a favorite spot of many to watch the opposite side of the canyon from the road above. It hay be hard to imagine, but follow along as if you do. Apparently, yesterday, or earlier in the week, a group of geniuses decided to set up their tents IN THE valley where the deer roam, about 80 yds down hill from the apex of the valley and the bottom of the "U" . Given the fact that there is a campsight on higher ground, created by the 'firewatch" during the logging, this placement was stupid as it gets. With a ramshackle collection of tents and tarps that had been tied together no self respecting deer was going near the canyon. It was also stupid for another reason. Remember the windstorm the night before? I was safely protected, guys on the top edge of a canyon, that acted as a funnel for the wind, were not. Notice I used the phrase "had been tied together"? Well, some of them looked like they had been connected, and I could only assume they had been tents at one time. The hits keep rolling.
I roll down to a nice meadow I know that is generally below the cloud/fog line. I am hoping that no one has camped in the log landing that is sort of next door to it. This little meadow is one of the few places I know that has given up several deer and elk as well in the past few years. I get there and part of my wish is granted, nope the didn't camp in the log landing, They camped in the middle of the meadow. It is only about a ten-acre meadow and I somehow feel that a tent, truck and trailer may, just may be a bit "off-putting" to the deer. The area around the meadow is a little rough but, I never miss a chance to hunt that timber area and I am not about to pass up the chance that their presence has caused the deer to detour around them. I make a wide circle around the meadow in my best "teepee creepin'" style to no avail. It appears as though the folks in the camp have either slept in or have taken another vehicle to hunt somewhere else after bolloxing up this, usually great place.
OK, so I have a way of finding places rarely visited and I hunt one of them until noon. We are having what we call " spotty rain" It rains in one spot, but thirty -feet away it's dry, until they switch roles. Usually, by noon I am kinda thinking that I will decide where I am going camp for the evening. I will set up close to,But sure not "IN", the place I intend to hunt. I have decided to return where I spent the previous night. Since it is around noon I will swing by the nearby camp ground and see if I know any of the residents. Next to the campground is another meadow of about thirt-plus acres. It is of historic (Indian site) and biological (some rare meadow flowers) interest and vehicles are not permitted. As I approach the fog is spotty. In the meadow I see something, that in all my years I never thought I'd ever see. There is a man in the meadow and he has a raincoat on and a rifle? in his hand, at least I take it to be some kind of rifle I am unfamiliar with. " wait" I think, what is that in the grass in front of him?" there is a dark object in the high grass ten yards in front of him. "A pheasant? Is the season still open? That must be some kind of shotgun." I stop to watch. The object leaps in the tall grass. It is a little doxie type dog. His "rifle" is a $&%^% POOPER-SCOOPER. in the middle of a meadow in the forest he is carring a pooper-scooper, for a doxie. My wife complains if I only bring home a squirrel or grouse, I can't imagine impressing her by bringing home a bag of dog doo-doo. I know some folk get all "environmental" but really, compared to all the other animals up there, and the humans, a doxie scat doesn't amount to well, shit. I roll by the campground and don't recognize any vehicles but I see on with California plates, I decide not to stop.
After lunch I am doing my casual walk in the woods around my camp I am concluding that everyone has been put off by the weather so my campsight is safe. I putter to yet another area. I didn't even get the truck stopped before I run into the OSP Game Officer. It is the first time in 15 years I've been even casually checked, and this is pretty casual since he and I know each other and frequently shoot the bull at the LGS. He does the usual pretending to hate to ask to see my papers, I tell him he doesn't have to do the act with me I know it's his job, and he returns the compliment by telling me he knows I have it because he was there at the LGS when I bought it. We laugh, shoot the shit about hunting, I tell him about the pooper-scooper dude "Damn Country, (laughing hard) I gotta get up there and tell him about that bear scat on the road back there (indicating down road) I wouldn't want him to go home without that, it would look so good on the mantlepiece"
Opening day is a "tradition"I take it as seriously as any hunting day, or so I tell the wife.