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Flocks of youngsters waiting for school buses, and the first of many high school and college football games, are not the only signs of fall these days. There are plenty of others, too; taken together, they make it clear that we're well into the next seasonal transition.

If you're a person who hunts, or who just loves the "theater of seasons" that Minnesota is known for, this is a delightful time. There is something primal, a signal inside us, when September nights dip down into the 40 degree range, and leaves begin collecting in the yard, and float like miniature ships on the surface of the trout stream where I fish regularly.

Nature has begun transforming the world around us. As part of that transformation, I and many others will be indulging our seasonal hunting passions. Though other interests have come and gone during my lifetime, this one has held me for more than four decades.

Some discount the idea that humans have a cultural or evolutionary memory, with tendencies, like the urge to hunt, inborn. I happen to think otherwise, and am of the opinion that after millions of years as hunters, the instinct to hunt is "hard-wired" in many of us. In my case, I was not exposed to hunting by my own family. But when given the chance as a teen by friends whose families hunted, I took to it like a Chesapeake puppy takes to water, and have been "in the swim" ever since.

September is the final month of Minnesota's stream trout season, and this weekend included an outing that was as much ritual as it was serious fishing. Loading my car shortly before sunrise, the quiet of the morning was punctured by the sound of a shotgun in the distance, coming from upriver on the Mississippi. It's early goose hunting season, and though I was off to fish, my thoughts were temporarily with those hunters who were out to harvest the "first fruits" of the new season.

Though I've grown to appreciate the rolling farm and prairie landscapes of Iowa, Illinois and Indiana on many trips with our college-bound students, it's our forests that make Minnesota special to many of us "Gophers." Like people who we describe as "ahead of the curve," only a few of the trees lining the roadway I traveled showed crimson and flame-orange. I maintain that the first trees to turn are the most gorgeous, and the most appreciated, in their dramatic contrast to the forest's palette of green hues.

Sumac in the ditches has added its deep red at ground level. There, too, are the fall asters, with their starburst-like lavender, and less common white, flowers. Goldenrod, also, a plant that most would categorize as a weed, but which might be more appreciated for its showy, early fall brightness if it was not so closely associated with fall allergy attacks!

At the old logging era landing where I park when I come here to fish, I found several freshly fired shotgun shell hulls. Perhaps a "local" had been getting in a little pre-season target practice. Putting my nose to the open end, I inhaled the sharp, acrid scent, that is as pleasant and as memory-stirring to a hunter as it might be noxious to someone else. It always amazes me how long a spent shell can retain the pungent aroma of burned gunpowder for so long.

A forest smells different in the fall, too. Perhaps it's the start of the annual cycle of decay, as microorganisms break down fallen leaves, and the withered remains of flowering plants. Or, is it the release of spores or pollens? I'm afraid I'm at a loss to say. There is also a spicy aroma; particularly, it seems, in dry woods. Some attribute this to ferns; but I'm not horticulturist enough to know. To me the cause is less important than the effect; it's a bouquet as pleasantly aromatic as turning the first garden soil in spring.

The water in this stream is extremely low now, due to a shortage of recent rains. This is in stark contrast to June and early July, when several times it was in flood, and unfishable. It's much more difficult now, too. These wild trout are well aware that they're more vulnerable to herons and kingfishers than when the water is deep. The slightest ripple caused by too-rapid wading, or the splash of a line over their head, will send them into hiding under the bank; or, to the bottom, to immediately get a case of lock-jaw.

As I stood in midstream contemplating how to approach a rising fish, I looked up at a soundless motion, just in time to see a buck whitetail crossing in the shallows, probably alerted by my scent wafting downstream. Though imprecise at that distance, I judged it to be at least a four-point, or perhaps as much as six. In less than two months, his senses will likely be even more finely honed with the start of the firearms deer season. Perhaps he will be a young hunter's first buck, and welcomed venison in the family freezer.

Another aroma of fall (are you ready?) is that of skunk. They're abundant in North Central Minnesota where I live, and fall is when the young of the year leave mom and disperse to establish their own territories. It's a dangerous process, and not uncommonly ends in a road kill, the usual source of the distinctive skunk aroma when we smell it. It may seem bizarre, but, because I so closely associate it with the fall of the year, I actually don't find it offensive.

Just like the aroma of burned gunpowder![[In-content Ad]]

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