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Monster Sheds and Angry Beavers

So today was yet another installment of winter scouting. Same old, same old. Slogging my ass through miles of mountains, hoping to find that one single nugget that translates into another buck down. Separating the wheat from the chaff, if you will. . .

Things started outinnocuously. Standard stuff - gridding out a yarding area, tacking in a stand site, hanging a trail camera. There wasn't supposed to be any snow . . . but there was. It was supposed to be warmer this weekend. It wasn't. I dealt with it. Mother nature doesn't care about me and my shed hunting. It was patently obvious.

Snow can be a curse as much as itcan be a blessing. The woods read like an open book, but the sheds are buried and any crowns poking out are usually lost in the ground clutter, and passed-over. Whatev.

My powerade was frozen. That sucked.

Things took a turn for the better when I found a ground mole in the snow, frozen solid. It was random. I picked him up and dusted the snow off, and gave him a glamour shot as a tribute to his dying legacy. He will forever be immortalized in the photograph below.

PY-caliber Ground Mole

A few hundred yards later, my luck took a turn for the better when I stumbled upon a monster 2-pointer shed. Great mass, great tine length. Probably a world record.

Definite Booner.

Am I the last guy that is still too broke to buy a GPS?

This is where things get hairy.

It's getting late, and I need to be getting home... So I cross another ridge and slide down a creek bottom, angling toward the car. The woods were thick and I was just plain sick of getting stabbed with briars, so I opted to take the easy route, and walk an old stream bed out.

The creek was frozen solid, so I was able to make time on the ice. Snaking back and forth, I rounded a bend and there he was... A mighty beaver.

Happy Beaver

Now I'm not one to just find a friendly beaver and leave it alone. This beaver needed glamour shots.

So, I kept taking his temperature, and he seemed to not care so much about me and my damn glamour shots. He was busy walking in circles in the ice.

After a few minutes of cat and mouse, and several failed photo-ops, I had him cornered up under a creek bank. He was maybe 5-7 feet away. I was on the ice with him. Not sure why.

So, as fate would have it, I got the camera ready, and he walked right out toward me.

I snapped the photo below, which will forever live in infamy.

Angry Beaver.

Apparently, that set him off.

In an instant, he turned from docile and cuddly, to an angel of death.He totally snapped, and was hell-bent on soakingme down with 5000 gallons of steaming whipass.

His muscles were bulging and his coat was sleek. This was the Chuck Norris of beavers. He was pissed-off and wasn't gonna take it anymore.

It was fight or flight for the quikkiemeister. As I turned to run away, I fell on my assand flung my camera phone down across the ice. I was helpless and vulnerable, like a turtle on its back. At this point, he held a decided advantage...My life was flashing before my eyes. The coronerwas warming up the minivan... Thiswassurelythe end of the line... I saw the white light.

Being the hero that I am, I wasn't going down without a fight.

During the heat of battle,neither one of us could get any damn traction. I was floppinglike a fish out of water, and he was giving it all he had -lusting totearme in halfand drink my blood.Like a Lamborghini in an ice rink -he wasmoving ahundred miles-an-hour, but going absolutelynowhere. I was just hoping to getaway from this monsterwith ten fingers, ten toes. I dreamtof maybe lucking-out andcatchingthat filthy furball inhis mean little puffball facewith a fleeting heel-kick and making a pair of mittens out of him.

We each lived to fight another day. I salute the beaver. A worthy adversary indeed.

I may have strained my groin. I'll know more tomorrow.

EDIT: Definitely strained my groin. No doubt about it.