In the early 1980s, I was determined to be an inventor. This combined with my interest in deer hunting led me to create and patent a hunting tree stand which I called the “Mitchell Limb Stand”. It was a name not unlike the name of my other inventions, since everything was the “Mitchell something.”
At this point in my life, I was a mycophile, a devotee of mushrooms; one whose hobby was hunting the wild Chanterelle as a forager to sell to the local markets. My hunting areas of choice were deep hemlock forests, a stone’s throw from the Canadian border. It was on one of my hunts in these forests that I found an old homestead whose buildings were long gone but still had the remains of an apple orchard. It was late September, and the apples were dropping from the trees and covering the ground in the tall field grass.
As I scanned the area, I was surprised to see all the partially eaten apples and the large piles of deer droppings under the trees. This, to a deer hunter, meant one thing: I had found the mother lode for deer hunting on opening day, which was only a weekend away. This old homestead was all mine. Most likely, no one else knew of the bounty of venison that visited these trees to eat of the fallen fruit.
I scanned each of the trees for their height, abundance of fruit, and droppings on the ground under their branches and picked a tall, thick branched, multiple limbed tree which still was covered with leaves for camouflage. This was the perfect tree for the “Mitchell Limb Stand.”
Now, if the deer were at the homestead eating at first light and I wanted to be in the tree, sitting in my stand, I would have to climb into the tree the night before to surprise them at first light when hunting season opened. Brilliant idea!
Friday Night Before Opening Day
The evening before opening day, I drove out to the homestead and hid my car in the woods on an old log road. It never occurred to me that since I was in an area no more than 150 yards from the US/Canadian border, that the Border Patrol might have ground listening devices in the woods and might wonder why my car was hidden on the log road.
I walked through the woods to the homestead and found my tree. I carried with me my rifle, the tree stand, a backpack with gloves, snacks, a flashlight, and a thermos of hot coffee inside. I was also wearing insulated coveralls and a winter coat because the night was going to be clear and cold. It was dusk, so I climbed high into the tree, out of sight of the ground, set up my stand and sat down for the night.
7:00 PM
After the sun had set behind the surrounding hills, the dim late-evening light made scanning the orchard difficult, but I began seeing deer leaving the darkness of the forest and crossing the field to the orchard. It was a large herd.
“Perfect! This was my best plan yet. I knew they would come. There would be a smorgasbord of deer to choose from at 6:00 am.”
The homestead, though not easily seen, was about 100 yards off the main road. I could hear cars and trucks and watch their headlights as they passed by. The road wound around the base of a forested hill and the orchard lay in a flat valley. I laid back on my stand staring up into the cloudless starry sky. There were no houselights around, just the brightness of the moon and the stars.
Underneath me on the ground I could hear the herd. They were chewing the fallen apples. I could hear the little hoofs of fawns jumping and playing. Imagining what they might look like, I had to giggle. I also heard what I was hoping for, the bucks rubbing their antlers against the trunk and brushing the limbs to knock down more apples. I was afraid to shine my flashlight down to see them, so I just imagined and listened.
11:30 PM
I heard a car driving slowly along the hillside. It stopped.
Bang!
A rifle shot was fired. The roar bounced around the hills and the homestead. The shot wasn’t in my direction. The deer under me hadn’t moved. I heard a door open, and someone got out. When he shut the passenger door, the car speed off.
“Poachers. Stinking lowlifes!” I thought.
I suppose that the locals hear shots fired at night all the time. No one calls the Sheriff because they will be gone before the law arrives. They are most likely subsidence hunters who have no other source of meat for their families.
Twenty minutes later the car returned. The man who had dressed the deer, threw it into the trunk and they drove off.
It was starting to get cold now, so I poured some coffee to bring up the body temperature.
2:00 am
Though I was dozing a little, I was rudely awakened by the sound of howling coyotes. They were on the hillside above me and on the Canadian side of the border. It was incredibly loud and spooky. I could tell the Canadian coyotes because at the end of their howl I could hear them say, “aye?” Amazing how a few hundred yards and a border can change their howls.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see flashlights coming out of the woods and people running across the field toward the road.
“Border jumpers! What a flipping night. What if the Border Patrol surrounds the homestead? How am I going to explain why I’m up in an apple tree?”
They made it to the road, and they were gone. The herd was unmoved, but now something else happened that I was unprepared for, I had to pee.
Now here is an interesting fact for you wildlife enthusiasts. Deer are not spooked by human scent when being peed on. I’m sure that they were curious as to where the whistling was coming from.
3:00 AM
My body temperature was dropping. I had three hours to go. Luckily, I brought hand warmers; the little packets of iron that you shake up and they chemically react to produce heat. I shook two and place them in the chest area of my insulated coveralls. I placed a third one on top of my head under my stocking hat. I laid back shivering and tried to sleep.
“Cripes! Hot, hot, hot!”
Obviously, these are not meant to sit directly against the flesh as evidenced by the red square burn marks on my chest and top of head.
5:00 AM
Now in full hypothermia, the worst possible thing happened. As the morning light started to appear, the herd of deer arose and one at a time left the orchard for the forest.
“No, no, please don’t leave. It’s not six yet.”
I scanned the empty orchard, but they were gone.
6:00 AM
Still sitting in the tree stand, I heard a pickup driving the road around the hill. Of all things, it pulled over and stopped at the homestead. Two hunters got out and slowly moved towards the orchard, one coming from a clockwise direction, the other from counterclockwise. Well, now what was I going to do? They might shoot me out of the tree.
The hunter closest to the orchard walked under my tree looking at the deer sign on the ground. Not wanting to spook him, I whistled. He immediately took an attack stance, gun at the ready. I whistled again. This time he was looking around 365 degrees wondering, “Where in the heck is that whistling coming from?”
“Up here. Up in the tree,” I say.
He looked up at a frost covered man sitting in an apple tree, stocking hat still smoldering.
“They’re all gone. They left at five,” I tried to say through my chattering teeth.
He said nothing. He just waved a little and walked back toward his truck, motioning his partner to follow. When they got back together, I could see him explaining. They both looked over at me and shook their heads. I gave them a little wave back, careful not to knock the icicle off the end of my nose.
Getting all the gear out of the tree and back to my car was no easy feat since my knees and elbows would not bend due to hypothermia. I kept the car heater turned on high on the drive back and once at home, I spent two hours in the bathtub and the rest of the day in bed.
I don’t know. It just seemed so right. It should have worked. I have spent nights sleeping in snow caves, lying on rocky riverbanks on a freezing night, even sleeping with 12 snoring men in a small cabin and nearly being attacked by bullfrogs that were in heat. All of that was doable, but I never, ever, want to spend another night in the branches of an apple tree.
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2 replies on “MY TEN HOURS IN AN APPLE TREE”
This was again a hilarious story. I felt so sorry for you. On the other hand, I hope you never went dear hunting again. They are so beautiful.
I wondered how long it would be until we arrived at the days of chanterelle mushroom gathering and the Mitchell tree seat (not having quite remembered the name properly). Some good days I would say. And I wondered if we would in particular get to hear the tale of the night in the apple orchard. Every time I think of dear hunting, I think of that story. Glad to see it hot off the press, which is more than you can say about how you felt coming off that tree seat in the frosty morning twilight. On the night when you put the tree seat to the test, I half expected you to fall asleep and spike the ground with your head, so I’m glad it turned out well. I didn’t recall the part about the possible border busters, but I can see where a tree seat hidden in the remaining autumn leaves of an apple tree on the border might put one in the center of some interesting unintended adventures.
In recent years, I learned how this whole deer timing things works. When we first moved out to our mountain farm in that general area, I thought, “This place would be great for deer hunting. I could just stand here on my porch and shoot one in the field any day of the season.” Deer were around all the time. In fact, I often chased them away from the house on the tractor or in my explorer or would sic our miniature pincer on them (and sometime have to go out and save him when they didn’t want to run) because I didn’t want them busting down my little fruit trees or eating the landscape or the vegetable garden. So, I thought about getting a rifle; but after two years of not getting around to that, I realized they have a calendar or an official website that lets them know when hunting season begins because the very day hunting season begins, they are completely gone, and you don’t see them again until the season ends. It worked that way every year.