Published: December 11, 2008 11:50 pm      

Let’s do it again next year

You know how it is when you go to a concert?

Say you are my age or so and you may have attended a Four Seasons concert in Morgantown, W.Va., or a Helen Reddy concert in Logan, Utah.

Or you could be younger and enjoy pop/punk and be headed for a shindig by One Republic or Fall Out Boy.

If concerts are the same now as they were in the days of “I Am Woman,” by Reddy, or “Candy Girl” by the Four Seasons, they work something like this.

The concert starts out with a couple lesser known songs, builds to the more popular ditties sung by the group or person and then ends with a grand finale. The performer leaves the stage. The audience applauds vigorously. The singer comes back and does one more for the road and everybody goes home happy.

Our hunting seasons are a lot like a concert by our favorite performer.

They start out with hunts that generate a little less participation (mourning doves, squirrels, early Canada geese), build through things like bow season and, in Maryland, early muzzleloader season for deer, and culminate with the rifle hunt for the whitetail buck that we so revere.

Then the bucks leave the stage. The audience applauds vigorously, by way of stories told among friends, most of which are true. They e-mail relatives with photos of their hunts. They call friends who hunt in other states to check in on results.

And then the deer return. That’s where we are right now.

The West Virginia antlerless hunt, at least the one devoted solely to taking baldies, has just concluded and that state’s muzzleloader season kicks in through Saturday.

Maryland is actually ready to begin a week during which only bow hunting is legal, at least in Region A, which we call home. Coming up soon is the two-week, three-Saturday Maryland muzzleloader season. Following that, Maryland hunters can continue to use archery equipment for deer through January.

West Virginia closes things at the end of December with a few days of bowhunting.

That’s it. Fort Pitt.

You really have to be my age to remember that jingle for a beer out of Pittsburgh. If you remember that, you remember metal beer cans with a neck and a cap.

So, that’s where we’ve been, where we are and where we are headed during this season’s deer hunting. It takes forever to get here and is done as quickly as a one-flicker firefly.

Let’s do it again next year.

So, you’re too young to have ever heard of the Four Seasons or Helen Reddy? Don’t worry. I never heard of One Republic or Fall Out Boy until fellow reporter Tess Hill told me that’s the kind of concert she would attend.

Contact Outdoor Editor Mike Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.