Throw Another Log On the Fire

By Ben Smith:

So, I finally got a taste of cold weather in the tent this year, and it hurt. I don’t know if it was the fact that we went from eighty degrees to thirty degrees without a little time in between to get acclimated, or if I’m just soft now. Forty is just around the corner for me, but I feel like I’m tougher now than I was at thirty. Maybe my body’s temperature regulation system doesn’t function like it used to. Either way, I don’t mind being honest and telling you guys that I froze my butt off last week. Twenty-nine degrees in the tent sucked.

And it wasn’t just the cold that got to me. I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep that first night. I felt like every time I’d drift off to sleep the coyotes would get cranked up. There were several times through the night that I thought they were in the tent with me. Maybe they were cold too. To top it off, every time the coyotes woke me up I had to pee. Another joy of the aging process I guess.

The only good thing about being cold in the tent, and I think I’ve mentioned this before, is that I have no problem getting up in the morning and getting in the woods. Getting out of that sleeping bag and moving around is about the only way that I can get warm. I mean, I usually have to pee again anyway so I might as well get on up and get rolling. A warm bed is hard to leave on a cold morning. A cold tent, not so much.

On the first morning, I woke up well before daylight and unzipped the tent to find everything in a crystalized form. There was frost covering all of the remaining leaves on the trees and an icy coating on the ground. The sky was perfectly clear and there were so many stars visible that you couldn’t possibly count them all. The cold air filled my lungs, which believe it or not, felt good. It felt like hunting season.

After getting dressed and gathering my gear, I headed on to my stand for the morning. By the time I reached my stand and got settled in the tree, the sun was beginning to crack the sky. I was facing East, so I got a front row seat to the woods waking up for the day. The world became alive with the sounds of birds chirping and squirrels jumping from tree to tree. I snapped a picture of the rising sun, and even with the latest and greatest technology the photo couldn’t do the beauty of the morning justice. For a moment time stood still, and I was as content as I’ve been in a while.

It only took about an hour before the deer began to show up. I was hunting a travel corridor between a bedding area and a feeding area. As long as I stayed still and quiet there was virtually no way that I wasn’t going to see deer. And since I hadn’t put any meat in the freezer yet this year, I decided to take the first mature deer that walked by. An unsuspecting doe on her morning route overstayed her welcome within the range of my rifle and I dispatched her with a clean shot. She never knew what hit her. One moment she was grazing along the trail and the next she became my first victim of the season. It was a quick death and that made me happy and grateful.

I’d quenched my bloodlust for the time being and shifted my focus on warmth for the night. There was plenty of old, dried out firewood laying around close to the camp that was just screaming for me to burn it. With the help of a buddy, we stacked it all up and lit it in hopes that it would burn all night. Unfortunately, the old wood was burning up faster than Lane Kiffin leaving Oxford. I needed something that would burn all night. As luck would have it, I saw a large log laying off to the side, away from all of the other wood we found. I didn’t think much of it and tossed it on the fire. This log was a little under four feet long and as big around as my waist. Come to find out, there was a reason it was all alone.

Almost immediately after throwing it on the fire I started to notice what seemed to be oil bubbling up on top of the wood. I knew right away why this particular piece of wood was by itself. I’d just thrown a lifetime supply of lighter knot, or kindlin if you prefer, on the fire. The flames got so high at one point that I was worried I’d have to get the fire department out there to contain it. The heat from this fire was hot enough to make the devil sweat, or at the very least melt your face off if you stood over it.

When I was confident that I wouldn’t end up on the news for starting a forest fire I went on to bed. My only concern now was that my tent was so close to the heat that it might spontaneously combust into flames. As tired as I was from the restless night before, I had trouble falling asleep for fear of waking up on fire. At some point my body gave up and I slept through any coyote howling that went on. Then again, there may not have been any howling due to the flames at my campsite.

The next morning, the fire was still slowly burning. I’d already returned to my state of freezing in spite of the sleeping at the front door of Hell all night. After a quick morning hunt, I headed home. A successful first trip of the Mississippi rifle season was in the bag with a lesson to boot…if there is a stack of firewood and a big separate piece away from the pile, make sure it’s not lighter knot before burning the entire thing.