It seemed like a perfectly good plan, and a fairly pleasant way to spend a Sunday. My boss and one of the other guys I work with proposed running over to the Natchez/Bethel Ridge area and spending some time poking around in the hills looking for shed antlers. Being a good husband, I bounced the idea off my wife real fast, and called my buddies back with a hearty ‘Heck Yah!’
Looking about a 1.5 hour drive, my boss wanted to hit the road at about 6am…get the driving done, then have breakfast at a little greasy-spoon place called the Wood Shed before heading up into the hills to do some looking. I was WAY crazy to agree to 6am…especially since I totally forgot about the whole Daylight Savings Time thing. In fact, it wasn’t until about 9pm that night, when my wife asked me to please set the clock forward when I went to sleep that I realized what I had agreed too.
I’m tough though, and at 6am, I was where I was supposed to be…and by 6:20 I was fighting hard to stay awake in the back seat of my buddies Dodge 3500. Things were going exactly according to plan as we pulled into the restaurant for breakfast…we even had to wait 5 minutes for the place to open at 8.
The Wood Shed is a combination gas station, convenience store, restaurant and bar located at the base of Bethel Ridge…very much the last outpost prior to getting in the woods. I have frequented the convenience store and gas station during hunting season, but never worked up a suitable excuse to visit the restaurant/bar…we had plenty of food and beer at hunting camp. Thus said, my imagination has had plenty of time to come up with what kind of a stereotypical greasy-spoon backwoods restaurant The Wood Shed must be.
I was very pleasantly surprised to find out I was wrong. The Wood Shed was very clean and tidy inside, and shortly after we arrived, a few groups of very reputable regulars showed up. The special was biscuits and gravy, eggs and hash-browns, which left very little for my table-mates and I to discuss, other than what meat to order with our breakfasts. Breakfast was very tasty…with the biscuits being split and toasted prior to the gravy being ladled on…this was a nice touch. About half-way through breakfast it started snowing outside…it was a very picturesque scene, and I was WAY wishing it would have been my wife at the table with me instead of the two chuckleheads I was with.
Following breakfast, it was back in the truck to head up the hills, and we hadn’t been driving more than 5 minutes before we saw a herd of about 30 elk on a hill side. The only problem was, the bulls were still running around with their antlers. It’s kind of difficult to look for shed antlers then they ain’t been shed yet.
Hoping we just dealing with an isolated Super Bull that might not have dropped his antlers yet, we took a quick detour to the Oak Creek Wilderness Area feeding station. We pulled into the parking lot to find the hillside literally littered with elk:
What a strange set-up. Everyday at about 1:30, they spread bales of hay for the elk, to keep them going during the winter…but this was 9 in the morning, and the elk were already there, just waiting. And yeah…it looked like all the bulls still had their antlers.
Crestfallen, we drove on, and drove, and drove some more. It wasn’t a bad day…drove through some beautiful county: north out of Natchez on the back roads to Ellensburg, and then east Vantage, then we cut south-east across the northern part of the Hanford Reach National Monument. There, we got out and did some walking. Found a few bone piles, but no shed antlers.
Then it was home again, for an enjoyable evening, snuggling on the couch with my wife and kids.
Who’s have thought a day that began with me engaging in manly pursuits and eating biscuits and gravy would end with me sniffling away watching a great movie with three of the world’s most Amazing Females.
It’s why we live our lives.
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