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Marc Howes Don’t Shoot! The day was November 3, 2007, the first day of deer hunting season in Vermont. You might think this would be a poor time to go gallivanting in the woods of Vermont, and you’d be right. I was with my friends Kyle and Melissa. Our goal was to summit two 3,000-foot peaks along the primary ridge in Vermont, a ridge that starts in Massachusetts and extends into Quebec. (The names of these peaks will not be revealed to protect the identities of the people we encountered.) We left one car on a dirt road at the north end of the ridge, to make the hike into a traverse, choosing our destination based on an estimate of where an old trail, which once traversed the ridge, used to come out. This road was a real Vermont backcountry road, in stark contrast to what you might expect to see along Route 100 or in Stowe. It was poor, and podunk. Not a Prius or New Jersey plate to be seen. The temperatures were cold—winter comes early in the hills of Vermont. We began our journey on the south side of the ridge. The first 3,000-foot peak provided nice views to the south. The old trail used to continue north from here, skirting around the northern summit then heading down to the backcountry road. Sadly, the trail remnants were not to be found, so our bushwhack commenced immediately. The woods were moderately open and our progress was good at first. We were in a spruce and fir forest, which was not unexpected; we were above the “spruce line,” a not-so-imaginary line of elevation where spruce and fir tend to grow. The vegetation thickened as we approached the col between the two peaks. At this point our trek had become more like a New Hampshire bushwhack, which by and large are more difficult than Vermont’s. We could hear distant gunshots from time to time, like popcorn popping , a common occurrence at this time of year. None of us were alarmed— it’s all part of being in Vermont in the fall. The distant gunshots probably came from different sources, and were more likely to be kids shooting cans with a .22 in a gravel pit than hunters. Hiking in Vermont during deer season always carries some level of risk, but bushwhacking multiplies that risk factor by several orders of magnitude. It is necessary to wear blaze orange to alert hunters that you are not a target, and I was wearing plenty 299 l o s t , u n p r ep a r e d , a n d b us h w h a c k e d of newly purchased blaze orange that day. But since hunters tend to stay near roads, you feel a sense of relative safety by hiking along the tops of ridges. After all, it’s much easier to haul out a kill when you’re 0.25 mile from the road rather than 3 miles. There is, however, a “gotcha” to the general sense of safety on roadless ridges, and that’s the dreaded ATV trail. An ATV trail extends a hunter ’s range, opening up otherwise inaccessible land. Unluckily for us, the dreaded ATV path was exactly what we found in the col between the two peaks. But luck appeared to be on our side: this particular path seemed to have fallen into disuse, and I didn’t think much of it. We had heard no gunshots nearby, only distant fire from the valley. From here the woods became more like the typical Vermont hardwood forest that bushwhackers love. Forward progress was easy and views were aplenty due to the shed foliage. The woods gave an almost eerie feeling, as all the high-elevation hardwoods were stunted and gnarled. The cold temperatures and gray skies added to the curious, almost spooky effect. We reached the steep summit cone, a mix of spruce and fir, surrounded by open hardwoods; only the top 30 feet of the peak had conifers. We signed into the jar quickly, took a bearing to the car, and didn’t linger, anxious to get moving again because of the frigid temperatures. We proceeded into a small bowl-shaped area, stopped to change our layers, then heard the first of what would become several very loud gunshots. This first gunshot was not like the other, distant ones. This one was tremendously...

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