One of the recent changes in my hunting season over the last few years has been the addition of Christmas Eve to the days when I can hunt. When I was a kid, way back in the 1900s, rabbit season ended after Thanksgiving, and did not return until after Christmas. We now can hunt after Turkey Day but before Christmas, from the end of the rifle deer season through Christmas Eve, and then hare season starts the day after Christmas. Christmas Eve hunting, you have to understand, was never a holiday tradition in my family. It was Illegal back then. I have to say, it has become one for me.
If you don’t know me, I can tell you that I am prone to being absent minded. I have walked around the office looking for keys that were in my hand. I never know where a coffee cup might turn up—I am notorious for putting them on high, flat surfaces to keep the dogs from stealing a lick or two. As a pastor, I am always losing my vehicle in hospital parking garages and parking lots. I once rushed from a hunt directly to a hospital to see a church member who had been in a car accident. I was wearing bibs and wool.When I finished the visit, I wandered the hospital parking garage looking for my truck, going from one floor of the garage to the next. A hospital employee found me trudging In my boots along the sloped floors of the parking decks.
“Can I help you?” He asked.
“I can’t find my truck,” I scratched my head, “I forget where I parked.”
“Oh,” he said, “Okay. We thought you were a homeless guy casing out the place to rob an unlocked car.”
“What?”
“You looked like a homeless guy,” he pointed at me to make It clear.
“Oh, what does a homeless guy look like?” I asked.
“You here as a patient?” He asked.
“Nah, I was visiting a church member who was rushed here and I didn’t find out about the wreck until recently.” I gave him the card that enables clergy to get free parking.
“You have a good day, Sir.”
Anyway, the point is that I lost my truck, and I have done it before then and since. If you have ever been to Geisinger Hospital in Danville, Pennsylvania, then you have seen the largest parking lot I have ever seen. They have a shuttle that loops around the expansive lot and then to the hospital entrance. I rode that thing for a half hour to find my car one time. My current Beagle Mobile has a rooftop tent, awning, and a massive rear bumper with storage cabinets. I obviously have all those things to travel with dogs and be comfortable when I go to field trials to hunting trips.
“Why do you have all that stuff on your truck?” I was asked at a field trial.
“So I can find it in parking lots,” I answered. I am forgetful. I miss things in the news, and I can be out of touch with pop culture.
My first Christmas Eve hunt was with Andy Purnell, not many years before he died. I had no idea that we were even allowed to hunt that day.
“You got church on Christmas Eve?” Andy asked me on the phone.
“Well,” I was sarcastic, “It Is Christmas Eve, what do you think?”
“But that stuff is all at night, right?” He knew the answer to that question. Many don’t know this, but Andy was an acolyte in The Episcopal Church as a kid.
“I am free till 7 o’clock,” I said, “What’s up?”
“Let’s rabbit hunt In the morning!” He said.
“We ain’t allowed,” I said.
“It has been rabbit hunting season since deer season ended!” I heard him laugh.
“Shut up!” I said.
“I’m telling you the truth,” Andy said, “But I can hear you typing to double check me.”
Sure enough, rabbit season had been expanded. “Well I’ll be,” I said.
“How do you not know this?” He said.
“Meh, I miss things. My wife gets mad all the time when I do not notice haircuts that she gets.”
“I will meet you at 8 o’clock,” he said, “Let’s get breakfast at your place.” That meant the restaurant close to my house, which has the best home fries in the entire world. They also serve homemade pepper relish, which varies by batch but ranges anywhere from extraordinarily hot to a flavor just cooler than magma. Yum.
“Alright,” I said. This meeting place meant that we would hunt close to me, and use one of my spots. Andy had lots of spots, and if I am honest he showed me more hunting holes than I ever showed him. He carried his .410 pistol, and we walked into some pines. A brush up against the snow filled boughs had him emerge from a group of pines with his beard covered in snow, and he was puffing frantically to keep his pipe lit. To be honest, he looked a bit like Santa Claus, If Santa started jumping around and complaining about snow falling down his back while wearing an orange vest.
“That is cold!” Andy said. The dogs started a rabbit and headed towards the bottom as we laughed at the snow fiasco and listened. The chase was going great and we could not stop laughing at the sight of Andy trying to keep his pipe lit through the plop of snow,
“What were you doing off the road?” I laughed. Everyone knew Andy wasn’t big for getting into the cover.
“I was turning my back to the wind and didn’t know I was that close to the trees,” he said, as as soon as he uttered the words he knew how he left himself wide open to an insult about his proclivity to shoot from dirt roads and starting laughing, “Ha ha ha!” he said.
I barely composed myself to talk through the laughing, “You accidentally left the path!” I wheezed, “And then your laugh was almost a Ho Ho Ho! That would have matched your white beard.” We walked over to watch the chase.
“That rabbit is gonna cross the spoil pile,” I said.
“You still got that sight hound in there to follow footprints In the snow, right?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“We will be fine,”
It then occurred to me that I had Christmas cookies in my pocket. Good ones. Church Lady cookies. The kind that are made with club crackers and layers of butter and chocolate and other stuff.
“Say,” I cleared my throat, “Do you want some Christmas cookies?” I said to Andy as we stood on a steep bank, watching my dog take the front through the shale and dirt that was covered with a coat of fresh snow, using his eyes to see rabbit tracks.
“Hold this,” I handed Andy my shotgun as I rooted into my inner vest pocket to track down the zip top bag of snacks. “I gotta get Santa his cookies while he watches my dog work and lead his mutts through this coal mine.” I snickered
He laughed as he grabbed my back with a big paw of a hand and kicked my legs out. He eased my weight to the ground and pushed me down the steep bank towards the bottom where the dogs were chasing, “Don’t get my cookies wet!” He yelled as I slid about 30 yards down the hill. “HO HO HO!” Andy mocked me with a laugh as I rolled over to my stomach and looked uphill at him as I slid away.
It was Christmas Even and we were acting like little kids. Did we shoot rabbits? A couple. We shot a couple.
“You bring the coffee?” He asked as we loaded dogs back into the truck.
“You know I did,” I said, grabbing my thermos, “Those cookies make you thirsty?”
“Yup.”
“I filled his travel mug 2/3 with coffee. Andy always added about a half cup of that powdered coffee creamer. French vanilla or hazelnut. Maybe more than a half cup, as it obliterated the coffee taste entirely. He carried a container of it in his glovebox! I have hunted Christmas Eve since then. Some years we have snow, some years we do not. But I always think about my first Christmas Eve hunt with Andy, and then I go home and get ready for candlelight services at church.
My father and I made a ritual of hunting snowshoe hare on the day after Christmas, every year. That was opening day for hare here in Pennsylvania, and not many guys knew where to find them back then. I lived in the northern part of the state and could walk to a stand of hemlocks that was full of the white ghosts. We frequently chased them, but the short season meant that we were only able to get a few each year. By the time we could hunt them, I all but had them ready for the hunt, running them for months. When you run the same hare all the time they get playful and almost don’t fear the dogs. Like a beagle club bunny. I was always so enthusiastic on the first day, and dad could see the excitement on my face.
“Relax, we will be there soon enough!” He said one year.
“Yeah, but there is this one hare that Is massive, you won’t believe it, and I know right where we have to stand to get him!”
And we did just that, and the hare was the biggest I have ever killed even to this day. And if we managed to get our daily limit of hare (2 per person per day, at that time) then we would relocate to a brushy bottom near a farm and try to get some cottontails too. It was just what we did on the day after Christmas. We hunted all day with our beagles. It was my favorite day of the year, dad and I hunting on the 26th of December. And while he never ate candy, for some reason dad brought peanut brittle to the woods for the start of every hare season. We would eat rock hard peanut brittle while listening to the hare loop. My life has pretty much gone to the dogs ever since then.
Last year I was hunting Christmas Eve on a piece of land a friend of mine owns. I was putting the finishing touches on my sermon for that night, and thinking about Christmas. How Christmas can make us sad, when loved ones have gone before us. I thought about those hunts with dad on the day after Christmas and the hunts with Andy on the day before Christmas, and the way that Christmas is a non hunting day sandwiched between my new tradition of hunting cottontails on the 24th and my older tradition of chasing hare on the 26th. As the dogs chased that Christmas Eve cottontail last year, I grabbed a hatchet from my truck and cut down a small spruce tree to put in my house. It was small enough to fit in a bucket, covered with a small tree skirt. My wife has been a fan of artificial trees, especially since they invented those pre-lit ones. We had not had a real tree for a few years. I decided that I would put this small spruce on a table in my office.
On that Christmas morning a year ago, I drank my coffee with the odors of that spruce filling the room. It was in the pines where Andy pitched me down the spoil pile on my first Christmas Eve hunt. It was in the hemlocks where dad and I spent our December 26th hunts. That little spruce seemed to do the trick to conjure both traditions, and both evergreen species, to the forefront of my memory. While the rest of my family was seeping, I sat in my office with that tiny tree and had breakfast. Oh, did I tell you that I stopped at the grocery store after cutting that tree down and bought some nasty French vanilla flavored powdered creamer and a small box of peanut brittle? I poured the flavored powder into my coffee and grabbed a rock hard piece of brittle. As daylight began to overtake the morning, I forced my nostalgia to stay in the dark, as my family began to stir and we prepared to commence with celebrating the light of the Christ child. Holidays can be tough, but we owe it to our beloved dead to continue with our lives. We must make sure others have cherished memories and traditions, and that is somewhat dependent upon us. Merry Christmas everyone, and keep ‘em running!
If you don’t know me, I can tell you that I am prone to being absent minded. I have walked around the office looking for keys that were in my hand. I never know where a coffee cup might turn up—I am notorious for putting them on high, flat surfaces to keep the dogs from stealing a lick or two. As a pastor, I am always losing my vehicle in hospital parking garages and parking lots. I once rushed from a hunt directly to a hospital to see a church member who had been in a car accident. I was wearing bibs and wool.When I finished the visit, I wandered the hospital parking garage looking for my truck, going from one floor of the garage to the next. A hospital employee found me trudging In my boots along the sloped floors of the parking decks.
“Can I help you?” He asked.
“I can’t find my truck,” I scratched my head, “I forget where I parked.”
“Oh,” he said, “Okay. We thought you were a homeless guy casing out the place to rob an unlocked car.”
“What?”
“You looked like a homeless guy,” he pointed at me to make It clear.
“Oh, what does a homeless guy look like?” I asked.
“You here as a patient?” He asked.
“Nah, I was visiting a church member who was rushed here and I didn’t find out about the wreck until recently.” I gave him the card that enables clergy to get free parking.
“You have a good day, Sir.”
Anyway, the point is that I lost my truck, and I have done it before then and since. If you have ever been to Geisinger Hospital in Danville, Pennsylvania, then you have seen the largest parking lot I have ever seen. They have a shuttle that loops around the expansive lot and then to the hospital entrance. I rode that thing for a half hour to find my car one time. My current Beagle Mobile has a rooftop tent, awning, and a massive rear bumper with storage cabinets. I obviously have all those things to travel with dogs and be comfortable when I go to field trials to hunting trips.
“Why do you have all that stuff on your truck?” I was asked at a field trial.
“So I can find it in parking lots,” I answered. I am forgetful. I miss things in the news, and I can be out of touch with pop culture.
My first Christmas Eve hunt was with Andy Purnell, not many years before he died. I had no idea that we were even allowed to hunt that day.
“You got church on Christmas Eve?” Andy asked me on the phone.
“Well,” I was sarcastic, “It Is Christmas Eve, what do you think?”
“But that stuff is all at night, right?” He knew the answer to that question. Many don’t know this, but Andy was an acolyte in The Episcopal Church as a kid.
“I am free till 7 o’clock,” I said, “What’s up?”
“Let’s rabbit hunt In the morning!” He said.
“We ain’t allowed,” I said.
“It has been rabbit hunting season since deer season ended!” I heard him laugh.
“Shut up!” I said.
“I’m telling you the truth,” Andy said, “But I can hear you typing to double check me.”
Sure enough, rabbit season had been expanded. “Well I’ll be,” I said.
“How do you not know this?” He said.
“Meh, I miss things. My wife gets mad all the time when I do not notice haircuts that she gets.”
“I will meet you at 8 o’clock,” he said, “Let’s get breakfast at your place.” That meant the restaurant close to my house, which has the best home fries in the entire world. They also serve homemade pepper relish, which varies by batch but ranges anywhere from extraordinarily hot to a flavor just cooler than magma. Yum.
“Alright,” I said. This meeting place meant that we would hunt close to me, and use one of my spots. Andy had lots of spots, and if I am honest he showed me more hunting holes than I ever showed him. He carried his .410 pistol, and we walked into some pines. A brush up against the snow filled boughs had him emerge from a group of pines with his beard covered in snow, and he was puffing frantically to keep his pipe lit. To be honest, he looked a bit like Santa Claus, If Santa started jumping around and complaining about snow falling down his back while wearing an orange vest.
“That is cold!” Andy said. The dogs started a rabbit and headed towards the bottom as we laughed at the snow fiasco and listened. The chase was going great and we could not stop laughing at the sight of Andy trying to keep his pipe lit through the plop of snow,
“What were you doing off the road?” I laughed. Everyone knew Andy wasn’t big for getting into the cover.
“I was turning my back to the wind and didn’t know I was that close to the trees,” he said, as as soon as he uttered the words he knew how he left himself wide open to an insult about his proclivity to shoot from dirt roads and starting laughing, “Ha ha ha!” he said.
I barely composed myself to talk through the laughing, “You accidentally left the path!” I wheezed, “And then your laugh was almost a Ho Ho Ho! That would have matched your white beard.” We walked over to watch the chase.
“That rabbit is gonna cross the spoil pile,” I said.
“You still got that sight hound in there to follow footprints In the snow, right?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“We will be fine,”
It then occurred to me that I had Christmas cookies in my pocket. Good ones. Church Lady cookies. The kind that are made with club crackers and layers of butter and chocolate and other stuff.
“Say,” I cleared my throat, “Do you want some Christmas cookies?” I said to Andy as we stood on a steep bank, watching my dog take the front through the shale and dirt that was covered with a coat of fresh snow, using his eyes to see rabbit tracks.
“Hold this,” I handed Andy my shotgun as I rooted into my inner vest pocket to track down the zip top bag of snacks. “I gotta get Santa his cookies while he watches my dog work and lead his mutts through this coal mine.” I snickered
He laughed as he grabbed my back with a big paw of a hand and kicked my legs out. He eased my weight to the ground and pushed me down the steep bank towards the bottom where the dogs were chasing, “Don’t get my cookies wet!” He yelled as I slid about 30 yards down the hill. “HO HO HO!” Andy mocked me with a laugh as I rolled over to my stomach and looked uphill at him as I slid away.
It was Christmas Even and we were acting like little kids. Did we shoot rabbits? A couple. We shot a couple.
“You bring the coffee?” He asked as we loaded dogs back into the truck.
“You know I did,” I said, grabbing my thermos, “Those cookies make you thirsty?”
“Yup.”
“I filled his travel mug 2/3 with coffee. Andy always added about a half cup of that powdered coffee creamer. French vanilla or hazelnut. Maybe more than a half cup, as it obliterated the coffee taste entirely. He carried a container of it in his glovebox! I have hunted Christmas Eve since then. Some years we have snow, some years we do not. But I always think about my first Christmas Eve hunt with Andy, and then I go home and get ready for candlelight services at church.
My father and I made a ritual of hunting snowshoe hare on the day after Christmas, every year. That was opening day for hare here in Pennsylvania, and not many guys knew where to find them back then. I lived in the northern part of the state and could walk to a stand of hemlocks that was full of the white ghosts. We frequently chased them, but the short season meant that we were only able to get a few each year. By the time we could hunt them, I all but had them ready for the hunt, running them for months. When you run the same hare all the time they get playful and almost don’t fear the dogs. Like a beagle club bunny. I was always so enthusiastic on the first day, and dad could see the excitement on my face.
“Relax, we will be there soon enough!” He said one year.
“Yeah, but there is this one hare that Is massive, you won’t believe it, and I know right where we have to stand to get him!”
And we did just that, and the hare was the biggest I have ever killed even to this day. And if we managed to get our daily limit of hare (2 per person per day, at that time) then we would relocate to a brushy bottom near a farm and try to get some cottontails too. It was just what we did on the day after Christmas. We hunted all day with our beagles. It was my favorite day of the year, dad and I hunting on the 26th of December. And while he never ate candy, for some reason dad brought peanut brittle to the woods for the start of every hare season. We would eat rock hard peanut brittle while listening to the hare loop. My life has pretty much gone to the dogs ever since then.
Last year I was hunting Christmas Eve on a piece of land a friend of mine owns. I was putting the finishing touches on my sermon for that night, and thinking about Christmas. How Christmas can make us sad, when loved ones have gone before us. I thought about those hunts with dad on the day after Christmas and the hunts with Andy on the day before Christmas, and the way that Christmas is a non hunting day sandwiched between my new tradition of hunting cottontails on the 24th and my older tradition of chasing hare on the 26th. As the dogs chased that Christmas Eve cottontail last year, I grabbed a hatchet from my truck and cut down a small spruce tree to put in my house. It was small enough to fit in a bucket, covered with a small tree skirt. My wife has been a fan of artificial trees, especially since they invented those pre-lit ones. We had not had a real tree for a few years. I decided that I would put this small spruce on a table in my office.
On that Christmas morning a year ago, I drank my coffee with the odors of that spruce filling the room. It was in the pines where Andy pitched me down the spoil pile on my first Christmas Eve hunt. It was in the hemlocks where dad and I spent our December 26th hunts. That little spruce seemed to do the trick to conjure both traditions, and both evergreen species, to the forefront of my memory. While the rest of my family was seeping, I sat in my office with that tiny tree and had breakfast. Oh, did I tell you that I stopped at the grocery store after cutting that tree down and bought some nasty French vanilla flavored powdered creamer and a small box of peanut brittle? I poured the flavored powder into my coffee and grabbed a rock hard piece of brittle. As daylight began to overtake the morning, I forced my nostalgia to stay in the dark, as my family began to stir and we prepared to commence with celebrating the light of the Christ child. Holidays can be tough, but we owe it to our beloved dead to continue with our lives. We must make sure others have cherished memories and traditions, and that is somewhat dependent upon us. Merry Christmas everyone, and keep ‘em running!
RSS Feed