Fall is always a time of excitement for me. This fervor revolves around the opening of hunting seasons.

I remember as a boy going to bed the night before opening day of squirrel season, lying awake for hours listening to the wind in the trees near my window. Wind is bad for squirrel hunting, because it covers the sound of squirrels champing on nuts and rustling through the branches.

Those were the days when a youngster could slip off to the woods at daybreak, bag a couple of squirrels and still catch the bus for school. School was detrimental to squirrel hunting, too, but I always found a way to suspend my education for opening day.

My sixth-grade teacher once asked why I was always absent the first day of squirrel season. I told him I thought it was a national holiday. Fortunately, my teacher was from West Virginia, where the entire squirrel season was considered a holiday.

But that was another place and time, and I haven’t shot a squirrel in 30 years. I have moved on to larger game. If it isn’t big enough to cut into quarters or drag from the woods on a hay rope, I’m just not interested anymore.

I think most hunters progress through a series of stages as they mature (or grow older, as the case may be). We learn to value the outdoor experience as far more than a quest for meat. It’s a good thing too, because some of us haven’t killed anything in a long time.

The mature hunter often takes to the field with only a camera. Not out of a love for photography, but because he forgot everything else.

The veteran hunter is less concerned with bagging his limit than with finding someone to eat it. He knows his heart beats less from excitement than from exhaustion.

While younger hunters are practicing their steely gaze and effecting the appearance of ice water in their veins, the veteran is more concerned with the ice water on his back. Through the years an experienced hunter learns to manage the elements and adhere to the essential rules for survival. He strives to pack light, but makes sure his car has plenty of gasoline.

The experienced hunter understands firewood is always wet; and that dead trees will grow several feet in length if this will help them fall on your tent. He knows there’s no such thing as a waterproof tent, and that air mattresses make good life preservers.

The old hunter remembers the two ironclad rules of the outdoorsman: “Don’t brag on your dog before the hunt,” and “Never trust a skinny cook.” He understands the value of good equipment and buys two of everything.

A man’s last hunting trips are a sad thing – by the time a fellow gets all of the stuff he really needs, he’s always too old to carry it around.

Readers with questions or comments for Roger Pond may write to him in care of this publication.