Dudes: It's a Buck Hunt!

Hey, Tribe. It was a cold, wet weekend at the farm in game-rich Andes. Daybreak Saturday morning, the opener of deer season in New York's Southern Tier, I sat on the small fold-down seat of a tree stand about 20 feet off the ground in the biggest cherry tree I've ever seen - not the fruit cherry with which we're so familiar (wild cherry has miniature, bitter fruit but wildlife seems to like it just fine), but the domesticated tree's natural progenitor.

The cherry is a handsome tree with rough, scaly bark the color of an eggplant. When milled into lumber, the wood of cherry is dense, and it has a rich, warm, nearly orange glow, which accounts for the popularity of cherry in custom flooring and fine furniture-making. It also smells great, when it's freshly split; a little like that old Cherry Blend pipe tobacco. I often cook over aged cherry in the barbecue, having largely renounced propane and most charcoal.

Anyway, three feet off the ground, this cherry is as big around as a hot tub, and then it splits into three individual trunks, each one bigger than any single cherry tree-trunk on our farm. It's a magnificent specimen, and because each of the three huge trunks grows out an an angle, each time I visit the great tree I expect it to be down. Smaller, straight-standing trees are commonly uprooted by the occasional wind or ice storms. But my King Cherry  is stout. Perhaps it has the mass to withstand even the most wicked nor'easter; as well, each of the three forks probably acts as a counterweight. Each year, it gets harder and harder to climb up to my stand, which is more a function of my age than that of the tree, although both of us are racing toward oblivion.

It was very quiet and somber at dawn, with large snowflakes falling so gently that it was like having slow-motion consciousness.

Then, at around 8, I heard a hell of a racket; something was tearing through the woods, and coming right at me.

It was a doe and a fawn, followed closely by a mature buck with distinct, honey-colored, forked antlers. His nose was to the ground, on the scent of the doe, and he was grunting like a little pig. If you've never heard a buck grunt, it's a comical sound; a cross between a burp and the bleat of a sheep.

Clearly, the doe was in estrus, but not quite ready to stand for breeding. The buck, knowing she would be ready soon, was not about to let her out of his sight. So he would dog and chase her until the time was right, and then the pair would spend an amorous 24 hours or longer in the brush, creating the future.

Deer get crazed and single-minded during the rut or breeding season (and you thought guys in backwards baseball caps, drinking Jaegermeister shots, were bad!). That's why there's an annual, fall spike in road kills, and not just of deer. Hail, I've nearly been run over - perhaps you have, too - by amorous bucks while poking around the woods during the rut. The deer throw all caution to the wind when the fever is on, as this group perfectly demonstrated. I could have grunted or just whistled to make them stop as they went flying by me at 10 yards, and I would have done it if I had any intention of shooting the buck. But I just watched them, with wonder.

Fully five minutes after they busted up the stillness, a little six-month old "button buck" (instead of horns, a first-year buck has just two little nubs, all but invisible to the naked eye at any distance) came trotting by, nose down and grunting like a big boy. It was comical.

"Fat chance, little fella," I thought. "But you sure have Wilanders."

Well, I'm rambling and I'd better get to the business at hand, only there is no business at hand anymore, at least not in tennis tournament action for 2006. It's all over but the shouting, which is now a deafening chorus of "Federer rules!" I posted my thoughts on Shanghai over at my ESPN blog. The gist, to put it in the context of this post, is that Roger rolled into Shanghai and by the time he left, he had made this declaration to his would-be rivals for 2007 - Dudes, it's a buck hunt.

If you have the right television set-up, you might want to check out MSG (Madison Square Garden) network's special tonight at 9 P.M. It's part of a series on great moments in the Garden. Tonight's segment includes John McEnroe's first win in the ATP Year-End Championships. I was interviewed extensively for this and all other tennis segments for the series, but who knows what - if anything - they'll use. Also, I'll be doing a live chat with the ESPN folks on Wednesday at 11 A.M. . I hope you shoot me a question via the ESPN site; show your Tribal colors!

Steggy did an awesome job while I was away over the weekend, juggling and editing posts and monitoring TW while I was gone on a weekend with a lot of TW traffic. Editing writers like TW's Spiritual Adviser, Miguel Got a Shot that Federer Don't Seabra, is surprisingly labor-intensive, despite the high quality of the material - and Mikey, thanks bundles for your high-octane insights and analysis. Now if we can only get you to distinguish between "on" and "in"! You were a big hit in, or is it on? - hail, you've even got me confused now - TWland.

BTW - get this: Steggy doesn't use spell check (it's included in our Typepad blogging software). When I suggested she give it a try, she deadpanned, "What for? I went to to the National Spelling Bee twice, when I was in fifth and sixth grade. I didn't know it was important and actually I didn't care about it. I just happened to be pretty good at it. For me it was a great chance to go to Washington D.C. and visit my aunt in Baltimore."

I'm sure y'all want to know as badly as I do: so what were the words that tripped you up, Steggs? [presybytery and rijsttafel]

Anyway - YEC week was rough all around; we got our dispatches from Miguel Seabra at crazy hours, BD jumped into the fray (what a welcome edition, I hope we can get more posts on China out of him!), and then there was Ohio State vs. Michigan. . . But it was well worth it, and the Hillbilly Princess outdid herself.

Special thanks to Tari and AmyLu, who did such a wonderful job posting their thoughts on OSU-Michigan  - and to Matt Zemek, our resident, hybrid tennis/football pundit, for taking us deep into Bo lore. I covered one edition of The Game back in the heyday of Archie Griffin, Woody Hayes, Neal Colzie and Bo Schembechler. In fact, I almost punched cranky old Woody -  but that, as they say, is a whole 'other story. I like cross-fertilizing TW with other sports, and hope to do more of it in the future. Lanterne Rouge on next year's Tour de France, anyone? Where is Lanty, anyway? [St. N.: according to scuttlebutt, she's busy working but sends her love]

With Ohio State beating Michigan and Federer waxing everyone, Tari (Mirka's got nothing on her, the way I see it) and AmyLu (sweet America girl from the heartland, swept off her feet by a pirate from across the sea. Let's all hum the Tom Petty song, Free Fallin' shall we?) ended up breaking even, 1-1 on the key weekend sports match-ups. Poetic justice, I suppose.

I did watch some of the tennis, although I kept falling asleep because of the hours, and I saw the second half of the Game. I think the Buckeyes and Wolverines are a cut above the rest of the NCAA pack, but I would hate to see them meet in the BCS national title game. Michigan had its shot at the No. 1 title and it came short, if only by inches. And here's the nightmare scenario: there's a re-match, and Michigan wins. Is it then fair to award the crown to Michigan? Would love to hear our three distinguished football correspondents weigh-in on this one, and D-Wiz too.

As far as I'm concerned, OSU is the national champ this year, whatever happens in the title game. Some years, the title game is meaningful and -heavens! - it even features the right teams. This isn't one of those years. And the lag-time between the end of the season and the championship game (in the Buckeyes case, seven whole weeks) is absurd. Anything can happen, and that's a problem - it's like keeping TMF out of tournament play for almost two months and then forcing him to play one match, against, oh, Marat Safin or Ivan Ljubicic ,for the year-end No. 1.

Maybe tennis isn't so bad after all, eh?

P.S. More posts coming shortly, including some red meat from Steggy.