Deer trails are very handy for running through the woods more quickly - saves me the trouble of having to identify and avoid poison ivy. I was rollicking in the woods behind my house after I got home from school this afternoon (it's a beautiful day, etc., and no more school this week), smashing sticks with other sticks and whatnot. Tulip poplars seem to have both the toughest and most lightweight wood of any of the trees around here; I found a branch of about one-point-five inch diameter, broke it off at a handy point with some effort (I had to wedge it between two trees and kick it), and went around demolishing those pansy oak branches. It was like hitting them with an aluminum baseball bat. More often than not, the poplar would break its targets into three pieces - one above where the target was struck, one below, and a small chunk right where the poplar had struck, made so hasty by the impact that it would speed off without waiting for the other, larger fragments. The overall effect of this was that a small portion in the middle of the target branch would suddenly be several dozen feet away, and the two remaining pieces would spin off at a relatively sedate pace. I spent about about fifteen minutes tossing oak and pine branches (of a similar diameter to that of my armament) into the air and whacking them so hard that the broken pieces would whizz off and lodge in the mud of the nearby creek. Great fun - I would've spent longer at it, but my dad was yelling my name and I managed, by some unhappy turn of fate, to hear him. He wanted me to sign cards, for Aphrodite's sake.
I also pegged my first kill using my air rifle's recently zeroed scope. It's an odd thing - when I shoot birds without killing them, downy feathers go everywhere; but when I actually take them out, they drop like stones with nary a bit of plumage lost. Maybe it's because the shots which don't kill them just skim off feathers as opposed to striking actual birdness. "Flesh" would be the word, I suppose.
posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2003
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