A Wild Weekend

Winning the lottery, meeting your favorite celebrity, finding buried treasure… Rare happenings that we hear about but have never actually witnessed ourselves. They’re not impossible events; they’re just extremely improbable. I was able to experience not one, but two similarly uncommon anomalies over the weekend that many outdoorsmen don’t witness in a lifetime. The following are my accounts of these incidents:

 

Saturday

I love being a catch-and-release fly fisherman, but unfortunately this hobby doesn’t fill the freezer. To do that, I go deer hunting in the fall. I made the decision to leave right after work on Friday and hunt all day Saturday for the Pennsylvania rifle.

The weather on Saturday was perfect. Cold, no wind, and sunny. As soon as daylight broke, the woods came alive with the chirping of songbirds, rustling of squirrels, and booming of gunshots. Early on I observed a flock of seven turkeys in front of my treestand. Everything was going great, except for the lack of deer.

That soon changed though. Around 10 AM I noticed some movement in a stand of pine trees to my left. I caught glimpses of what appeared to be four deer making their way down a slope toward a creek bed. As I scoped these deer hoping they’d present me with a shot, I hear some crashing in the leaves over my right shoulder. I slowly turned around and stared in astonishment. About 70 yards away a buck was up on its hind legs mating with a doe. I carefully got into a position where I could take a shot as the deer made their way closer to my stand. The buck finally dismounted the doe about 40 yards away from me and stood broadside. I cocked my single-shot 22-250 rifle and pulled the trigger. After the shot, I listened for a crash as the buck ran out of sight. I got out of my stand and eventually found the buck not far off. I’ve noticed that often times when a gunshot is close by, the deer can’t decipher which direction it came from so they don’t run far. Remembering that Pennsylvania doesn’t have a 1 deer/day law, I reached in my pocket for another shell, reloaded my rifle, and took a shot at the doe which was still nearby. She ran about 40 yards and fell down.

My dad, who was hunting in another stand, came to see what all the commotion was about. I led him to a 115 pound doe, and a 110 pound 5-point buck. Both Pennsylvania deer tags were filled in less than 4 hours, and my hunting season was over.

2 deer, 1 morning

 

Sunday

I traveled back down to Virginia on Saturday night. After church on Sunday I decided go fishing with my dog at one of my favorite streams in the Valley. I hadn’t fished it in a while, so I was curious to see how it’d do.

Although it was a warmer day in December, the trout were not hitting the dry fly that I started the day fishing with. It didn’t take me long before I switched to nymphs, a green weenie over a hare’s ear. I was immediately rewarded with my first fish of the day.

The first of many…

 

I worked my way upstream catching trout after trout on the hare’s ear nymph, most of them being brookies. In the past I’ve managed to catch a few wild rainbow trout from this stream, and today did not disappoint. I ended up landing two plump 9″ wild rainbows.

One of the wild rainbows caught and released

Pretty brookie from the day’s adventure

Biggest brook trout of the day

 

And then it happened… Almost at my turnaround spot, in a hole that I’d caught nice fish in before, I hooked into a spectacular tiger trout. These fish are extremely rare in the wild and can only occur if a brown trout mates with a brook trout. Even then, the chance of survival is scarce due to their differences in chromosomes (brook trout have 84 while browns have 80). I was beyond astonished to see this fish on the end of my line!

 

What an amazing cap to an incredible weekend. I bagged a buck and a doe and caught 34 trout, including 2 wild rainbows and a tiger trout. God richly blessed me in my endeavors this past weekend, that’s for sure. Soli Deo Gloria!