Best of times ('Tis the hunting season)

For now through Thanksgiving are the best of outdoors times.

There is just simply so much to do. Maybe even too much, if that is possible.

Though fishing buddy Bob Ashley has been whacking the steelhead and Paul Liikala has found the night-time walleye bite, my evenings have been spent deer hunting and the mornings chasing geese.

Alas, I have to give in to this evening by covering Lake Metroparks' park board meeting so I'll have to rearrange things. Maybe I'll go deer hunting in the morning. That worked Monday.

In any event there is just so much going on afield that it is difficult to hit the streams too.

This morning was spent in the goose blind and two friends and I bagged four birds out of several flights that maybe totaled 300 geese. Neat thing was three of the birds were dry-land retrieves for my two Labrador retrievers while Berry got wet fetching up the forth goose. And what a party that one provided. I managed to hail it from a long, long way off and we watched it glide straight into the decoys. Nice piece of work.

One of the tempting things too was hearing a tom gobbling its head off in the woodlot across from the pond we were hunting. That gave me another option to think about.

And come Friday morning I'll be at the Club in search of any pheasants that may be left over from a pair of recently held field trials. It's something that I do each year and I rally look forward to the experience.

I love November, fully realizing that after Thanksgiving things move pretty quickly and it will all be over in an eye blink.

For now, however, I'm in seventh hunting heaven.

- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischkorn@News-Herald.com