The sounds of silence

Sunset on a calm and quiet Lake Michigan can be a very special moment.

A few days ago, as I sat trying to puzzle out where Platte Lake walleyes go after spawning, there came a very strange but wonderful thought.

It's quiet. No noise. The phone isn't ringing, no one is buzzing the door bell, and right now, it is a world without sound.

I sat there thinking about silence and what it means to me. It is a cedar swamp just before dark in mid-September, as I count down the waning minutes to the end of legal shooting time while hoping a bruin will walk past me with that head-swinging gait before day is done.

Silence is truly amazing once a person gets used to it.

It is a tree stand in October, and a hush has fallen over the land as dark clouds gather to the west, the first indication of a coming storm. It seems as if everything is holding its breath, and there I sit, reveling in the sounds of silence.

Silence is that hush we all hear and feel as we step in front of a pointer. We know the thunderous flushing roar of a ruffed grouse is imminent, but there is that split-second when all is still. It's a wonderful moment in time, and it's something to savor.

There is no better evidence of silence that when fishing brown trout during the June Hex hatch. The fish has been timed by the soft hissing sips as the big trout lips a big mayfly off the surface. We know in five or 10 seconds the trout will rise again for another soft hissing sip, and we hope in that momentary slice of silence, that the feeding brown trout will take our imitation rather than a natural drifting along beside it.

It happened last year, when I worked a gobbler, it came slow and cautiously to the call. He often gobbled or double-gobbled, but it's those long seconds or minutes when the bird moves but doesn't gobble, that put us on full alert. The silence is exquisitely wonderful.

We often can see the bird coming, white head glowing in the woods 100 yards away, but an awesome silence has dropped a muffling blanket over the woods. The bird disappears from sight, and you know he is circling and on his way, and yet you could hear a pin drop.

Those very quiet moments just before a storm sweeps through, are magical.

And then, ever so softly but it seems so intense and loud after the silence, comes the "hhmmm-phfft" as the gobbler drums and spits nearby. You know the bird is close because this barely audible sound is often overlooked and unheard, and then more silence. The bird is moving, you are sitting still, and suddenly, there he is over your shotgun barrel. A slight adjustment, a soft click as the safety is taken off, and then the blast of a 3-inch 12 gauge shotgun.

There may be silence again, but the ringing in your ears from the shotgun discharge has caused its own noise. Slowly the hearing returns to normal, and you kneel, in silence, over a gobbler that you just killed and examine the beautiful feathers, the full beard, and those spurs.

Silence is sitting on shore, early in the spring, and watching a buck and hen steelhead spawning on a shallow gravel bar. There is an intricate underwater ballet going on, and the hen and buck roll on their sides as she emits a golden stream of eggs and he a white jet of milt, and then the ballet ends. There isn't a sound made to draw one's attention to this underwater tableau, and there is little thought of hooking that male fish.

Sit back in a pensive mood, and think how delightful a quiet period really is.

This is a ritual as old as the many generations of steelhead before it, and only rarely is there an audible splash. It is like watching an old silent movie, and that makes watching this scene much more interesting. The same scene is played out many time during the fall as salmon spawn and that brings to mind the old saying: Pacific salmon die childless, and are born orphans.

Too many folks surround themselves with noise. Me, I much prefer silence to noise. I want to hear no man-made noise, and if as a buck eases through the woods and crinkles a fallen oak autumn leaf or steps on a brittle twig, I want to hear and experience every moment of it.

It's the silence of nature that captures my soul. The unexpended flush of a woodcock twittering up through a tag alder run is my kind of noise. If I can't or won't shoot, the silence fits me as perfectly as a hand in a warm glove. It is the one thing about fishing and hunting that I've come to seek, to nurture while it is there, and to remember when it is gone.

TITLE: The sounds of silence

TAGS: ((Dave, Richey, Michigan, outdoors, fishing, hunting, bears, deer, grouse, no, sound, salmon, steelhead, silence, woodcock))

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors