back years ago when deer hunting with dogs was still legal in Marion County. The dog hunters would race dangerously up and down our road, backing over mailboxes and shooting across people's yards. I thought that hunting would be better when dogs were outlawed.

Little did I realize that the deer I was shooting from time to time in our backwoods were very often bumped into movement by those very dogs running every which a way.

Now that there are no dogs, the deer have no incentive to move in daylight hours. Deer no longer wander around a patch of woods. They just have no curiosity about their surroundings in daylight, choosing instead to bed down in a thick, inaccessible briar patch.

I can't believe I would say this, but with the season just one week away I'm kind of nostalgic for the days when there would be some deer movement throughout the woods on both sides of our road.