During this season, it’s exciting to visit the mail box to see who sent Christmas cards. Since childhood, I’ve loved receiving friends and loved ones’ annual greetings. The clever or sentimental sayings are nice, but the best part after the letter is the scene on the front of the card.

Peaceful outdoor scenes top all others. Every year I struggle to find a card that expresses how I feel about the out-of-doors and rarely succeed. In fact, I often resort to clever or sentimental verse simply because I can’t find the perfect image. Of course, it’d help if the picture was 3-D and had a sound chip. If it did, I know exactly how it would look and sound.

A deer hunt once led me into a Christmas card setting. That afternoon we hunted hills overlooking the Saline. The previous night, windless snow had fallen for hours, blanketing hills in pristine white. Nothing had traveled before us, so we were the first to disrupt the beauty. Everything before us was unspoiled.

Just enough snow frosted cedars dotting hillsides, weighing down branches. Whenever small birds would light and then flit away, their movement created mini-blizzards like one might see in snow globes.

We struggled through heavy snow to our now enchanted deer stand. White crystals disguised ordinary, prickly yucca as amazing snow sculptures. Because flakes had drifted gently, they formed outlandish shapes when they landed on spiny leaves and center spikes. Disney horticulturists couldn’t have created better fantasy creatures.

Arriving at our destination, my feet ached and icicles dangled from a hunter orange face mask. Disregarding tingles creeping into my toes, nose, and fingers, I savored the clear view of the river valley.

Grey sky silhouetted old cottonwood and hackberry branches. Trees hugged the river bank while a cut milo field stretched beyond, rust and burnished yellow. Whitetails grazed unconcernedly. If I’d been seriously after game, I’d have been agitated because the deer were out of range. Instead, I enjoyed watching them browse stubble rows.

We sat midway downhill next to a large cedar, which sheltered us from a breeze that made falling snowflakes dance lackadaisically about our heads. Low-hanging clouds and butt numbing snow muffled sound. I could’ve easily traded pressing chores for this Christmas card world.

Despite muted noise, I heard something north of us. My husband, not wanting to signal our whereabouts or break the spell, pointed the direction from which the strange squawks and calls came. As I focused, I realized it was an army of turkeys marching single file to feed on fallen milo. I tried counting but found it impossible to keep track of that descending horde.

After watching the flock feed, we saw them resume single file and count cadence toward their roost. By this time, another sound edged into my awareness from somewhere over my shoulder. My husband noticed me looking toward the soft whistling, and he mouthed in a frosty vapor, “Bobwhite Come Here call.” I’d heard those notes many times, but this was the first time I associated it with this perky, top-notched creature. The cry signaled these small gamebirds that dusk descended, and they needed to gather. I agreed. It was time to head back to the truck and finally home to daughters and toasty kitchen.

For an instant, I spent an afternoon in my own Christmas card. That enchanted memory still warms me.

Native Kansan Karen Madorin is a local writer and retired teacher who loves sharing stories about places, people, critters, plants, food, and history of the High Plains.

The nice 6 point buck “magically” appeared as deer often do in the CRP field to my left. Our hunting blind sits just above a drainage creek and overlooks that CRP patch on neighboring property to the left. Straight in front of the blind on the property we hunt is an overgrown waterway about 300 yards long in which our corn feeder sits, and to the right of it is a rolling, terraced soybean stubble field.

Farther to the left and beside the blind is a 40 some acre wooded pasture that contains several good bedding areas. Deer often follow the drainage creek west to that wooded pasture, or follow it east to another woodlot several hundred yards away, making this spot a natural crossing, although most of the deer travel through there seems to be at night.

Although we don’t have direct permission to hunt the neighboring property where the young buck stood, the owner would not care if we shot a deer there. But the property is hunted by a local guy and his son and daughter who I knew were there somewhere this first Saturday of the Kansas firearms deer season, so I opted to wait until the deer crossed onto where we hunted. As my luck would have it, when the buck was about to step into the waterway, putting himself into my freezer so-to-speak, he turned and walked directly away from me for another hundred yards, and then stopped and looked long and hard behind him. I craned my neck to see what had his attention, and coming diagonally across the CRP behind him was a beautiful 10 point buck we had pictures of on our trail camera. The bigger buck joined the smaller one and they crossed onto our side a good 200 yards away.

Two years ago I would have totally dismissed a shot that long. Even though very reasonable for the .270 rifle I shoot, I had never shot that long and had no confidence at that distance. However, before my western KS antelope hunt a year ago, I got some instruction shooting at 200 yards, and in fact harvested my antelope at that distance with a well-placed shot. So as the pair eased up out of the waterway and onto the stubble field, I grunted loudly at them to get their attention. They stopped and looked around, but 2 seconds later were on the move again. This scene repeated itself several times until both bucks were beyond what I considered a comfortable range for me. They weren’t really spooked but they weren’t really comfortable either, so their pace was rather brisk. If the distance had been one hundred yards or less, I could have been steady enough to shoot in the short time they were stopped, but at 200 yards there’s much less room for error. Add to that a mild case of “buck fever” which made me shake a little more than I already did, and a rushed shot could have been the recipe for a wounded buck that I couldn’t find.

Hunting the first weekend of deer firearms season is a mixed bag of pros and cons. There are many more hunters out meaning many more deer will be harvested, leaving fewer opportunities for unsuccessful hunters; that’s a downside. All those hunters however will also mean deer will be moving during the day more than usual, offering opportunities to harvest deer we otherwise might not see; that’s an upside. But those deer that are moving will quite possibly be a little spooky, having been pushed from their lairs; that’s another downside. Even though my argument here doesn’t show it, I’ve always felt opening Saturday was a good day to hunt.

I helped a friend load and haul a dandy older 12 point buck he and his son harvested Friday night at dusk, so my exuberance has jumped a few points on my excite-o-meter. I’m sorry I wasn’t given an acceptable shot at that buck Saturday morning, but I’m not sorry I didn’t take what I had. Saturday Dec 11 and Sunday the 12th are the final 2 days of Kansas deer firearms season for 2017 and both days look busy with family stuff for me, so the next five weekdays may be my last chance to harvest a deer this year with a rifle. Even though we are meat hunters, and are quite happy to harvest a nice plump doe, I kinda’ hope the big fella’ is still there and God sees fit to give me another chance to put him into my freezer. Continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors!

Steve Gilliland, Inman, can be contacted by email at [email protected].

The fourth in a 4-part series regarding the importance of reading to and with young children in support of a new literacy initiative the Dane G. Hansen Foundation in northwest Kansas.

Throughout my career in education, I have most often been asked one question, “When should I start reading to my child?” My answer is always the same, “Before birth!” I often get a funny look, or even a laugh, as if I am joking with them. But research shows a 30-week old unborn baby can hear and become stimulated by its environment and can recognize the sound of its mother’s voice in the womb. Mom and Dad talking, singing, and playing music to their unborn child, may well contribute to the later success of these children becoming successful readers and lifelong learners.

A 2103 study by Pacific Lutheran University shared, “Babies only hours old are able to differentiate between sounds from their native language and a foreign language, scientists have discovered. The study indicates that babies begin absorbing language while still in the womb, earlier than previously thought. Sensory and brain mechanisms for hearing are developed at 30 weeks of gestational age, and the new study shows that unborn babies are listening to their mothers talk during the last 10 weeks of pregnancy and at birth can demonstrate what they’ve heard.”

What does this mean for parents and children? It means that once your child is born, you should continue to share language with him in every form available. Hearing language through song, speech, and play is essential.  Here is a list of the most positive forms of sharing language and print with your child.

• Alphabet knowledge
• Book-handling skills and concepts about print
• Phonological awareness of the different sounds associated with spoken words
• Vocabulary development, including hearing, engaging, and acting out verbs
• Social-emotional factors – modeling patience, fostering attention, learning to interact and take turns

By reading to young children, parents or educators are teaching responsiveness and creating routines. These routines help children feel safe and in turn engages their brains for the highest degree of learning.

What we know about a child’s brain can help to stress the importance of these skills and their impact not only on later success as a reader, but your child’s potential as an overall learner.

At birth, the human brain has almost all the neurons it will ever have, it doubles in size in the first year, and by age three, it has reached 80 percent of its adult volume. Even more importantly, synapses or pathways of the brain are formed at a faster rate during these years than at any other period in our lifetimes.

If you have every heard the phrase, “children are little sponges,” you can now understand why this is all too true. It doesn’t mean your 3-year-old is ready for college, but it does mean that all the connections and processes of the brain are ready for learning. Every opportunity or experience you can create for your child will influence their lifelong potential for learning, and there is no better or easier way to get started than by reading together!

Mary Boller is an educator and a youth consultant for the Northwest Kansas Library System. Learn more about the importance of reading to your children at NWKansasReads.org.