Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 22, 1994 TAG: 9411220120
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
\ Jerry Davidson first thought the drizzle that arrived with daylight Monday, opening of the general firearm's deer season, would be a positive factor for a hunter looking for a buck.
It would take the potato-chip crispness out of the leaves, making a walk through the woods more sponge-like than explosive. Stealth would be possible.
"Then all of a sudden the rain and wind came," said Davidson, who was hunting on private property in the foothills of the Peaks of Otter in Bedford County.
The sky blackened, turning daylight back toward night. It rained buckets, and even thundered. The wind whistled through the bare branches of the hardwoods, ripping off dead limbs and flinging them to the ground.
"We had at least 25 mile-per-hour winds," said Gene Parker, a ranger patroling the nearby Blue Ridge Parkway. "Tree limbs were coming down. It was dangerous to be in the woods."
Especially to be in a tree stand.
With water seeping through the seams of his blaze orange, Davidson climbed down, but unlike many hunters he didn't head for home. He decided to see if he could flush a deer by moving through the undercover.
When a doe popped out, he killed it, then a buck jumped from its bed and he killed it.
"Not much to look at, but good meat," he said, when checking his two soggy deer at the Northside Supply in Bedford County.
Maybe Davidson's two shots were the ones Vernie Kennedy heard - the only two. For Kennedy, "it was the quietest opening day in 20 years."
"Most places were fogged in," said Kennedy. "I never had any visibility beyond 50 yards."
Last year, Gene Smith counted 42 shots during the same time period on Kennedy's farm. But Monday, about all anybody heard from Onion Mountain, from Headforemost Mountain, from the edges of Flat Top Mountain, and down in the valley orchards that finger into the hardwoods, were doors slaming and vehicles starting up as hunters headed for home.
Brandon Painter was one of the few who didn't abandon his tree stand, even though it was swaying like the crow's-nest of a storm-tossed schooner.
"It was a little bit scary up there this morning," he said.
His perseverance paid off with a four-point buck.
"The first day, it is hard to go home early," said Eric Martin of Bedford, who killed a seven-point buck.
One of the best bucks of the day was an eight-pointer with an 19-inch spread taken in Bedford County by Christin Roberts. Hunting by herself, she spotted the buck in a field and dropped it with her 6-mm rifle at 172 steps.
When Roberts' dad, Mike, called from his elk camp in Montana a few hours later, the news "had him pretty excited," she said
For the most part, opening day was Scrooge-like with its excitement, and that often was a topic of discussion when hunters gathered to dry out at country stores and deer camps.
Ray Karnes, one of the owners of Northside Supply, recalled the year when 125 deer where checked at the store the first day of the season. "Normally, an average day is 75," he said.
By noon Monday, only about a dozen had been checked.
Then the sun came out, and so did the hunters. Business picked up at big-game checking stations. Dave Steffen, a state game biologist, had registered more than 50 deer by 2 p.m. at Old Mill Grocery in Fincastle.
One of them was an eight-point buck killed by Richard Wright of Fincastle. Wright had killed a doe in the morning rain, then he had paused to dry out.
"I got my grandma to throw my coat into the dryer and dry it out, and I put it back on and went back."
He killed the buck in the afternoon sun.
by CNB