LOCALadk Magazine

59 Fall 2016 LOCALadk Magazine LOCALadk Trail trail head, they park and layer on rain gear. The trail is slick and covered with leaf litter. Single file, they head south towards Fiddler Lake and Whitehouse. At an old logging trail, they pause and pull out GPS units. Todd Jewell will lead two others around Buckhorn lake to push deer over the mountain to Loucks and the other watchers. Radio calls are made when everyone is in place and the pushers "hoot" to one another as they make there way over Buckhorn mountain. The sitters spread out and wait pa- tiently. The beech shrub is thick and no deer come by. Loucks and Jewell review their strategy and shrug it off. "You never know what will happen on the next hunt," Loucks adds with a small grin. Like generations of hunters and angular before them, it's not all about the kill and antlers mounted on the wall. It's about the woods — the allure of the wilderness places, the contours of the map and remembering where the mountains rise and rivers swell. It's about knowledge transferred from a father to a son. To be a hunter is to know the woods. Back in Cherry Valley, Robert Loucks sits at the kitchen table and looks over hunting albums. From his back porch, the Mohawk Valley dips and rises to meet the foothills of the Adirondacks. During his time as a hunter he has been a part of many successful hunts — four bucks taken on the same drive over Fox Hill, bring- ing in a bear and a 10-point buck on the same day, and walking back roads with flashlights only to get a few hours of sleep and go back in to find the buck you've been tracking. Loucks has wit- nessed the introduction of new technology (GPS and radio) and found a second home in the back country of the Adirondacks. He pulls out a black and white photograph of his father, a lean man with defined check bones and reads, "Dad's first buck, 1930, Hope Falls." The 1930s were a time of plaid shirts, suspenders, caps, and cigarettes. Loucks started hunting in the Adirondacks in 1954, the year with the largest annual take. In 1971, he began visiting Camp Wesley and was shown the ropes by Turk Smith, an insurance agent and gifted hunter. He keeps a running year- to-year list of where bucks were shot, by whom, and how many points each had. Flipping through the photo album, a note card falls to the floor. On the cover, a sketch of a buck and doe stand- ing in a beech stand with a light dusting of snow on their backs. The card is addressed to "Grandpa," and signed by Chad Thomp- son. Inscribed, "You have been a great teacher in the woods. I'm very blessed to have a grandfather like you."

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