fire

By the time I started flying up to Wisconsin during Thanksgiving break to go deer hunting with my grandad, he was already getting pretty old. He had been hunting for decades, but by then he wasn't exactly the most committed hunter. He seemed to be the backbone of the group of men who went up to the cabin to hunt, but I would sometimes hear them making jokes about how late grandad would get started, or how long it would be before he would come back in when it was cold. They called him The Judge. They called him that because he was a judge. There was one thing he would do that seemed to provide the most amusement to the other hunters.
"If you're out in the woods and you smell smoke, you know The Judge got cold."
Or bored. Grandad loved to light fires. And he used to tell me that if I was ever lost in the woods, and needed to make a fire, I should look for an old pine stump. The whole area had been logged in the late eighteen hundreds, and the stumps of the huge pine trees were mostly decayed, but there were plenty of parts of stumps left. They were usually just the sides of the stumps, bleached grey by time and weather, and completely dried out, but with just enough pine pitch left in them to burn really well. So when he was out hunting, he would get cold or bored, and walk around to find an old stump, and light a fire. Partially to keep warm, and I'm convinced, partially just to watch it burn. And of course you're not likely to see a deer while you're warming your hands in front of a crackling fire.
So one day, grandad and I went out and drove down the logging road to a spot he thought would be pretty good. We walked into the woods a ways, and he pointed out a fallen log that he thought would be a good spot for me to sit, and told me he was going to go a little further into the woods and up a ways where he thought he might be able to see any deer which came up from the swamp, and if he missed, they'd probably run my way. He had his thirty aught six, and he had given me an old sixteen gauge shotgun. It had three slugs in it, and he had given me a few shells with bird shot in case I saw a grouse and wanted to take a shot at it. I wasn't completely sure that deer season and grouse season overlapped, but I figured if grandad thought it was okay, it probably was.
I sat on the log and watched him walk slowly and noisily towards his chosen spot. The woods were pretty thick there, so he was out of sight within about twenty yards, and a few minutes later, I couldn't hear him either. I sat on the log and waited for something to happen. The wind occasionally made some rustling sounds that made me listen more intently, and there were some chickadees which would occasionally flit by. I could hear some squirrels in the distance, but other than that, it was pretty quiet, at least for the first hour.
Then I started hearing something off in the distance toward where grandad had gone. I thought maybe he had scared a deer up from the swamp and it was coming my way. It gradually got louder, and it was coming my way. I had always thought of deer as being pretty stealthy, but the other hunters told me they can really make a lot of noise, especially if it's a big buck in a hurry. It sounded like it could be a big buck moving through the brush, but it didn't really seem to be in hurry. I started to wonder if it might be a bear. I slowly pushed the safety off, and positioned the shotgun in my lap so it would be easy to raise to my shoulder.
The noise stopped. I thought maybe it had heard the tiny click of the safety, but that didn't seem possible, I had barely heard it myself. After a minute or two, the noise started again, but it was different. It seemed like more of a sporadic rustling and cracking instead of something pushing through the brush, and there was a sort of snorting and coughing sound. Then I smelled smoke.
It made sense now, a slowly progressing noise coming from the direction grandad had gone, was of course, grandad returning. He must have found a nice pine stump and started a fire. I sat for a few minutes more and then figured there wasn't much point because if I smelled smoke, the deer would too, and wouldn't be coming around any time soon. I turned the safety back on, at least I'm pretty sure I did, then started walking in the direction of where I thought grandad was. As I was walking, I realized he might be wondering what the noise approaching him was, so I started whistling.
I came into a little clearing and there was grandad at the edge. His rifle was propped up against a tree, and there was a surprisingly large flame rising from a stump next to him. He explained that he hadn't seen anything so he figured he'd make his way in my direction to see if he could drive any deer towards me. I told him nothing had come my way, and came over to the burning stump to warm my hands. He asked me to gather up some sticks so we could make the fire last longer because the stump was already starting to burn away.
I went over to the tree where his rifle was, and I leaned the shotgun up next to it, then as I turned to go gather some wood, I stepped on a stick under the leaves which pushed against the bottom of the shotgun just enough to make it start to slide from its position on the tree. I turned to grab it, but I think the stick must have hit it again, because it fell onto the ground and when it hit, it went off, blowing a cloud of dirt and leaves into the air. My ears were ringing from the noise, and I just stared at the little trough of raw dirt the slug had left. I couldn't believe what had just happened.
I turned to grandad, and he was staring at the ground too. He said a few choice words and asked me why the hell I didn't have the safety on. I told him I did have the safety on. I think he was a bit sceptical, and then so was I. I thought I had switched the safety back on, but then I began to wonder. Maybe I just hadn't pushed it all the way over. But then, it was on old gun, so maybe falling over was enough to release the safety and pull the trigger. Or maybe it had hit a stick on the ground when it had fallen.
Grandad pointed out that we were lucky, either one of us could have been killed or injured, or maybe both of us. A sixteen gauge slug at point blank range could easily rip through a couple of humans. I agreed with him and resolved to be very sure about the safety from then on.