The big season is over for another year. Deer hunters who only tote modern firearms will have to wait until Nov. 30, 2002 to hit the woods again.
For 10-year-old Casey Kennedy it will be a fall to remember for a long time.
The Talbot County boy was hunting with his big brother, Kelly, 19, after school on Nov. 27, when Casey shot a 12-point, 166-pound buck.
"We were in the stand and we heard something," says Casey, who stands 4 feet 2 and weighs 65 pounds. "We saw two big bucks and then a third one. They were in the brush and turning away when my brother grunted and turned them around.
"There were does running under us, and I let them run. He came toward my corn pile and stopped. I shot, and he kind of jogged off. I thought I missed."
Casey and Kelly got their dad, "Bo" Kennedy, owner of Fly-By Island Guide Service in Trappe, and found the deer 40 yards away.
Kelly captured it all on videotape, but you'll have to excuse him if the picture jiggles.
"I was really shaking bad. Kelly was, too," Casey confides. "It was a lifetime event."
Just across the Choptank River in Dorchester County, Jim Goodyear proved that patience has its rewards: a 17-point, 200-pound deer.
Goodyear, a retired Baltimore resident, has a farm at the mouth of the Choptank in an area known as The Neck. A waterfowl hunter most of his life, he took up deer hunting about five years ago.
The opening day of firearms season yielded nothing, so Goodyear went out to his stand two days later.
"I'd been watching this deer for three or four months, and I was ready for him. He came out with a row of does. He was No. 5," he recalls.
Goodyear dropped the buck with two shots. His freezer got the meat and the taxidermist got the head.
"It got there pretty quickly, too," Goodyear says, laughing.
Tree stand safety
The steady drop in shooting accidents indicates the state's hunter safety program is doing its job. But what's to be done about folks falling out of tree stands?
State figures show that from Nov. 26 to Dec. 5, 10 Maryland hunters were involved in accidents. Two hunters died the first week of the season, one in Frederick County and the other in Dorchester County. Last Tuesday evening in Washington County, another hunter died in a fall.
Department of Natural Resources officials say tree stand accidents account for 44 percent of all hunting accidents, and about 90 percent of tree stand accidents are preventable.
Are tree stands inherently dangerous? "I don't think so. It's the people using them," says Vic Maccallum, the state's hunter education coordinator. "It's just common sense."
He continues: "I can't tell you how many accidents I've seen where the wood was rotten and the nails were rusted. Obviously, those stands weren't checked before the season started."
Many hunters, Maccallum says, put their stands 30 feet off the ground - much higher than necessary.
"Eight to 10 feet, that's all you need. If you're going to fall out of a tree at 10 feet, plan on getting hurt. If you fall from 30 feet, plan on dying," he says.
The DNR Web site has a section on tree stand safety (www.dnr.state.md.us/nrp/education). With a few weeks of muzzleloader and bow season left, it's a refresher course worth taking.
Hunting 101, anyone?
There have been a number of interesting "tales from the woods" this season. Here are some passed along by outdoors writers in other states.
My favorite is the story of Randolph Scott Stidham of Kentucky, who obviously didn't dress in "Garanimals" when he was a child. If he did, he didn't look down.
Stidham was so proud of shooting an enormous critter that he hauled it around town in the back of his pickup like some rustic Macy's parade float.
Then, his friends broke the bad news: His trophy was one of 1,300 protected elk that wildlife officials have been trying to restore to the Appalachian Mountains.
"Anyone who mistakenly shoots an elk is an idiot," said Roy Grimes, deputy state fish and wildlife commissioner. "If a person cannot tell the difference between an elk and a deer, they should get rid of their firearms."
Elk can weigh as much as 800 pounds; the antlers alone can weigh 50 pounds and the racks are enormous. Deer are about a quarter of the size.
"It's like comparing a tractor trailer to a pickup truck," said conservation officer Jamon Halvaksz.
For his stupidity, Stidham, 38, faces more than $8,000 in fines and up to a year in jail. He has pleaded innocent to charges of possessing an elk.
Stidham isn't the only one who should spend the winter working with the animal flash cards.
Hunters in Beloit, Wis., thought they bagged the biggest doe they had ever seen in southern Rock County, but it turned out to be a 225-pound elk calf, an escapee from a game farm.
"Hunters should still be careful about what they shoot," said game warden Barb Wolf in an understatement.
And, one might caution, be careful where they shoot.
