Halftime Heads Up.  As things get colder and the season shifts around the start of firearms deer season, hunters can take stock of accomplishments in the first half and prepare for the second half to come as conditions and hunting opportunities change. Simonson Photo.

By Nick Simonson

Sunday night football just isn’t for me, even if the Vikings are playing.  Here in the throws of middle age, where my bedtime often settles in before that of my two boys, I’m more likely to wake up and shuffle from my recliner through a dark and quiet house at 11:00 pm than to come close to finishing the first half of the game, let alone watch the whole thing.  Using the screen of my phone as a flashlight, I flick through the notifications to find the final score, and pleased that my lack of watching triggered a win, I am able to fall asleep this particular Sunday. I recall my last evening memory being the start of the Vikes’ two-minute drill, just before the sugar of a filched peanut butter cup from my kids’ Halloween haul put me under just before the half ended.

It’s halftime on the hunting scene too, but I’m much more able to stay awake, and better recall all the adventures in the uplands and on the deer stand thus far.  Walking the edges of unharvested sunflower and corn fields, and hiking through the dry grass of the rolling hills, my dog and I rousted grouse and then pheasants from mid-September onward, as the harvest went along and now much of the landscape is bare and the habitat holds way more birds.  A few fun trips on the bow stand brought the adrenaline rush of close encounters with does and fawns and a young spike buck as my hunting area goes through the start of its rebuilding phase after a tough winter two years ago.  Happy just to have access to deer-holding habitat, I enjoyed the games they played in the green of the harvested alfalfa field and never readied my release from my perch in the old boxelder, content to observe and note their activities and travel corridors.

With no firearm tag this year, this weekend and the start of that season will provide some bench time to wrap up my openwater fishing gear, make note of things that need fixing and the tackle to be replaced, and make plans for what’s to come in the weeks ahead, often my favorite time for pheasant hunting as the final month-and-a-half of that season shapes up.  The short gun season that comes with November – whether I’m in the field or not each year – always serves as a nice break, a checkpoint, and a chance to adjust to the colder conditions that are to come and to prepare to savor the lack of traffic in the field that follows the Thanksgiving holiday.

There my sights are set on mixing morning and evening time on stand with my muzzleloader to fill an antlerless tag (and my freezer for the next year) along with mid-day stomps through cattail sloughs for those long-tailed and colorful late season roosters.  Boxes are checked on the calendar with trips and names of destinations within a short drive as the game plan comes into focus to fill the fleeting days of December with as many adventures as possible around family get-togethers and Holiday gatherings, and sometimes with those events combined.

Consider this your halftime reset as well, whether you possess a coveted firearms deer tag or not.  Whether on stand in the silence of opening evening or stomping through the hills and sloughs to raise that massive-racked buck with a hunting party through the final days of desperation weekend, time afield or even on the sidelines can help bring the back half of the hunting season into focus and give you a chance to make the most out of what’s to come with the game we all pursue…in our outdoors.