Watch out in those woods

Now is the time to be careful walking in the woods.

They’re out there! The would-be hunters, that is.

Hunters are starting to be out there. Some of them prefer shooting to looking first to see at what they’re shooting.

I think I’ve told this story before, but it was real and should get you to be careful out there. I was walking up a wooded hill in western Maine, a few miles south of Bethel. I heard a man’s footsteps coming down from above, so I slowed down and looked ahead carefully. Sure enough, a hunter was tiptoeing through the leaves — leaves thick enough to allow me to hear him — from above me.

He didn’t shoot me, and I didn’t shoot him. But one of us could have, and that would have left the other probably dead…very dead. I’d hate to be dead on a beautiful fall day in the woods, which also are beautiful in the fall.

I don’t recall what we said to each other. Maybe we were too embarrassed to say anything. I just recall that neither of us shot the other. We passed each other.

Hunting is fun if you don’t get shot. As a matter of fact, walking in the woods is fun if you don’t get shot. If you’re a deer or a rabbit, hunting probably isn’t quite so much fun.

I’ve seen deer and moose when I was walking in the woods in the fall. Deer tend to disappear in yonder bushes. Moose tend to stand there and watch you watch them. The moose I’ve seen have eventually trotted away, in a hurry, so I wouldn’t shoot them.

I drove home once to a cabin in which we were staying. A big … big … moose was standing outside the cabin. I watched him, and he watched me. After a while he walked away…walked…away. And I sat there in the car. Eventually, I climbed out of the car and walked into the cabin.

I wonder what would have happened had I walked up to the cabin, walking as in walking without a car around me.

I’ve come onto moose prints while I was walking in the woods. When you’re several miles from the car, that make you kind of nervous. At least it does me. I don’t know if that makes the moose nervous too, probably not.

I’ve only met a coyote once, while I was driving on a country road surrounded by woods. He or she trotted across the road in front of my car and disappeared. That still startled me.

Anyway, I suspect I’ll still go walking in the woods this fall.

Hope Mr. Moose doesn’t choose that same time to go walking in the woods…especially on the same path. That has happened to me, it was a mama moose and her calf I met on a woods road, just before I turned onto a path that went deeper into the woods. The mama moose just stopped and watch me. I stopped and watched her.

I liked that.

We were both being polite … on a path in the woods.

Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at lesstraveledway@roadrunner.com.