I was about to push myself up and walk back to the truck, damning luck, especially bad luck, all the way. The family needed me. But with another hour I could slip into the woods, maybe stalk up some meat, get that deer. But no, dammit, I ve got to go. Last day of the season and time is gone.
Time is gone.
Gone, gone, gone. A big fox squirrel chose that moment to hop into a small tree to my right and a little behind. I had been watching him scurry around the hillock most of the morning, up this tree and down that, around this bush and under that. I thought about him often as I waited for that last-chance deer that never came. Several times he was less than 20 feet in front of me, eating an acorn one minute, plucking another the next.