NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/440846
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2015 • NEBRASKAland 53 Deerstand shivers can become a big problem for hunters of any age, especially if near poison ivy. Whittling Away at the Cold By Jeff Kurrus N othing good can come from the cold. Well, almost nothing. I get cold when I hunt. Not a tad bit uncomfortable cold, but real, I-think-they-may-find- me-dead-here cold. Especially in the mornings in the period right before the sun rises. I pray for clear days, with no concern if I'm going to kill anything or not. I just want to survive. I eat before I go, wear moisture-wicking materials, have Hot Hands and Toasty Toes covering my body like electrodes, and put my top layer of clothes on at the deer stand, and still I freeze. But it's not the cold that actually bothers me the most. It's the thought of what happened to me in the cold one day as a boy that truly gives me the shivers. I was deer hunting in Yazoo, Mississippi, one afternoon and quickly became bored. At 10 years old, this doesn't take long, so I pulled out my hunting knife and began to carve on a branch hugging the side of the tree. Come to find out, this was no ordinary branch. You could call it more of a vine, but it took the place of actually trying to kill a deer as I wiled away the afternoon concentrated on my woodshop project. Well, my little fingers got cold, as one's will in the woods, and there is still no pair of gloves in the world (sorry Cabela's) that takes the place of pulling a double Al Bundy right in the stand and fighting through three layers of non-moisture wicking cotton to the spot between my legs. Ah, warmth. Ten minutes later, and I was back to whittling. I alternated these hand positions for the rest of the afternoon, carving on this now sappy vine and keeping my hands warm between my legs. Not one deer showed up, but I survived the cold. Which was, as a kid, all I was supposed to do in the first place. The discomfort started around bedtime, the feeling that something just wasn't right down low. I thought about the whittling, I did, but poison ivy didn't grow in the fall (everyone knew that, right?), so I was fine. By the next morning, I was still 10 years old from the waist up, but a battle-weary man from the waist down. The itching, and accompanying pain, was awful. But at four hours away from home and on a Sunday morning, Dad decided that we should hunt instead. "Just keep your hands out of your pants," he said, taking me back into the field once again. On a even colder day. You can guess what happened next – with both cold finger tips and an insatiable itching to blame. On Monday morning, it was straight to Dr. Pender's office. Oh, yes, Dr. Pender. The one person who knew my childhood body more than my own mother. From the emergency visit after I slid down a handrail with my hands behind my head to know what it felt like to rack myself (it really hurts) to the countless "turn and cough" moments (what actually is a hernia?), Pender knew the real me more than anyone. By the time I got back home, after one more day of hunting, the poison ivy – yes, it can get you in the colder months – had spread across my body and was beginning to close both of my eyes. So much for hand washing. A shot to the rump, and a week of Calamine, and I was up and running – looking, sort of regrettably, like a 10-year-old again. Nowadays, there is no whittling on branches, or pulling vines off of trees. All my deer stands are on the edges of fields in short grass, and turning off the alarm clock at 5 a.m. sounds a lot better than freezing by 6 a.m. on those too-cold mornings. Regardless of how quickly the time would pass with just a little whittling. ■ Poison ivy grows in woods, fields and along roadsides and riverbeds in the form of ground cover, a small shrub or a climbing woody vine.