October brings out best in special hunting spot

Every year I tell myself it’s time to quit the Old Belfast Hunting Club. Just when I’m about to cut the cord, I go to The Hollow.

The Hollow is my box stand in a hardwood strip between a couple of pine thickets where two small creeks unite at the foot of a hill. Mike Romine gave me this stand in the spring of 2009 when he brought me into the club, and I’ve been here ever since.

Most of the trees were small and scraggly then. The oak tree out front where two lanes meet was barely more than a sapling. Now it is tall and straight. The vegetation abutting the lanes was dense and unforgiving, with a wall of briars that shredded any flesh or attire that challenged it. It was a sunny place, and there was always grass in the lanes until mid November.

At the end of that strip was an ancient Remington feeder with an archaic rotary timer. You stuck little steel pins into holes for the hours you wanted it to throw feed. When the pins contacted a post, it completed a circuit that activated the motor.

I was being treated for Stage III rectal cancer when I came to The Hollow. The pain magically abated during the hours I spent in its pine-scented solitude, so I was there a lot. I kept a 3-gallon bucket in the stand and a big packet of wet wipes for the side effects that accompany that particular malady, but they seldom struck when I was there.

Deer visited frequently and in number, but only in muzzleloader season. I seldom saw deer there in November and never in December.

My son Daniel was the first of my children to accompany me to The Hollow. We used to park my four-wheeler next to a big pine tree and walk to the stand. There, at age 14, he killed his only deer during the 2009 muzzleloader season.

My youngest son Matthew was my more frequent companion. During the 2010 muzzleloader season, I realized his vision was profoundly impaired when he couldn’t see a doe at the feeder.

My daughter Amy came for a modern gun youth hunt. One of the biggest bucks I’ve seen on the property strolled into the clearing 30 yards away. He looked at the stand and calmly strolled away while Amy struggled to find him in her scope. When we returned to camp, a raucous crowd praised a boy that killed a 7-point buck.

“Mine was bigger,” Amy whispered to me softly. She was disappointed, but she honored the boy’s moment. That’s the kind of person she is. She lives in New Zealand now, head of human resources for a large health care provider. I have not seen her in four years.

Matthew serves in the Oklahoma National Guard and attends the University of Oklahoma. He quit hunting and fishing when Daniel died in 2016. That’s also the year I stopped hunting The Hollow.

I came back this month. The trees are much bigger now. It’s spacious and airy, and mottled sunlight pours through the leaves with the glow of stained glass. The feeder is long gone, but portions of two legs still poke from the dirt. The thicket from which deer once materialized like ghosts is open.

Years ago, loggers thinned the thicket on the hillside. A lane leads up the hill to a more modern feeder. A third lane where Daniel’s deer fell needs only a little cleaning to be brought back into play.

Inside the stand is my decrepit office chair and a second chair where my kids sat. An empty Rockstar Energy Drink can is still inside. My oncologist ordered me to stop drinking Rockstar in 2010 after he determined that the beverage made my cancer markers spike.

On Thursday, after I finished sawing and pruning, I took a few moments to be still and remember. I can do that now with fondness instead of bitterness.

I can’t justify staying in this club. I don’t have enough deer tags to accept all the invitations I get every year to hunt better places.

But then I come to The Hollow and see faces and hear their voices that I dearly miss. I remember every word of our conversations that we shared in those chairs. I had some mighty fine hunts here by myself, too.

The Hollow is more beautiful than ever, and it feels good to be here. It feels like home.

I guess I’ll scrape together my dues for one more year.