Red skies don’t promise deer hunting success, but they give hunters something to think about. Photo courtesy of Steve Sorensen

“Red sky at night, sailors’ delight.”

A fiery sunset might appeal to the boating crowd on summer lakes, but what does it say to hunters in the dead of winter?

On my way out of the woods on Monday in the middle of the Pennsylvania firearms season, I enjoyed a beautiful sunset on par with anything summer offers. As the temperature plummeted past 20 degrees, I asked myself, “Does this red-hot sky contrasted with the arctic, earthly cold promise that tomorrow will be a good hunting day?”

A summer sailor might think he has that promise. But I’m not a sailor.

Hardcore hunters learn to handle the cold. I’ve hunted successfully when the temperature was minus-26. In that kind of deep freeze my fingers were brittle, but they still bent where I wanted them to bend. Add gusty 15 to 20 mph winds and hunting is a no-go for me, even if the temperature is plus-26. Tuesday turned out windy.

Give me stillness. Give me silence. Give me a fresh, pillowy blanket of white to muffle my underfoot crunch as I still-hunt the snowscape. Some people use alcohol or pills to reduce stress. For others, a party atmosphere or reading a book by the fireplace erases the tensions of life. Carrying a rifle while inching quietly through snowy, deery woods brings me the greatest calm, and a day well spent even if I don’t pull the trigger.

Archery hunters will tell you the best time to be in the woods is October, but that’s when bugs are buzzing your ears and ticks are targeting you. Some bowhunters even compare treestand time to worship, though the parallels are limited. Worship is more than alone-time, more than serenity, more than peace.

Worship is harder because real worship disrupts my bent toward thinking about me, myself and I. Too often those stubborn three seek to become the objects of my worship. Yours, too. If you’re looking for something to get in the way of worship, it’s easy. Just think about what you want.

Thinking about what we want can get in the way of hunting, too. Is it true that when I want a buck badly, I don’t get one? Then, when I’m fully engaged, I shoot the buck in his bed. I can’t explain that. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems that I’m more likely to get a buck when I’m most enjoying the hunt itself.

The difference between now (the senior me) and then (the junior me) is that getting a buck back then was my paramount purpose. The junior me experienced excruciating disappointment at the end of a season with an unfilled tag. The senior me has lost count of the bucks taken, and an unfilled tag allows me to keep savoring plenty of past successes.

At the end of his last hunting day, no hunter will ever know if he shot the most bucks. Only one hunter can say he shot the biggest buck in a category, but that’s a fleeting claim. It will be surpassed. A hunter can have his name in a deer hunting record book, but few people will see it. What every deer hunter can have is a high degree of satisfaction no matter how many or how few he gets, or how big his deer are.

Could it be that the red sunset of my deer hunting years is near? I hope not, but I don’t know. What I do know is that even though I don’t want it to end, I am satisfied now. And when the sun sets with a red-sky-promise on that last white day, I will be satisfied then.

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When “The Everyday Hunter” isn’t hunting, he’s thinking about hunting, talking about hunting, dreaming about hunting, writing about hunting, or wishing he were hunting. If you want to tell Steve exactly where your favorite hunting spot is, contact him through his website, www.EverydayHunter.com. He writes for top outdoor magazines, and won the 2015, 2018 and 2023 national “Pinnacle Award” for outdoor writing.