The night before deer season opening day is a special time for hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania hunters. As we all lie sleepless in the wee hours before dawn, we feel exactly like children do, wide awake with great expectations, on the night before Christmas. Deer season and Christmas bring out the kid in a lot of us, I guess, and, in both cases, I hope you get what you want this year.

For those of us up at Camp F-Troop, the whole weekend preceding opening day consists of traditions and rituals that bind outdoor friends and relatives in a unique outdoors camaraderie. For 23 years now, we’ve acted out our pre-season customs in nearly identical fashion, with one exception, our newest tradition, the Weekend Visitors.

Weekend Visitors are friends who come to camp the Friday after Thanksgiving and then go home on Sunday, before deer season begins on Monday. We’ve averaged five such visitors the past five years. Some are friends from out of state who don’t hold a Pa. license, while others are local friends who come back to Mercer County Sunday and hunt here on Monday, claiming that there are more deer and bigger deer in the county’s small woods than there are up in the “big woods” game lands. They come to camp just for the friendship and customs of pre-deer season weekend.

And the customs begin Friday evening. Only a handful of camp members get away from work or home on Friday, and they’re usually led by Todd. He takes charge of grocery shopping and opening up camp, getting the heaters going and putting the food away. Then the group heads down to the Tippycanoe Inn for Cajun fish dinners, the only time we eat at a restaurant the whole weekend. After dinner the Friday night rituals are deer-spotting the fields on the mountaintop plateau and relaxing back at camp afterwards at the evening campfire.

Most camp attendees — and there are 15 this year, an all-time record — drive up Saturday morning, stow gear, eat lunch and launch into the Saturday afternoon customs, which are small-game hunting, target shooting and food preparation. Several guys wander the forest with shotguns for grouse or .22 rimfires for squirrels, and their ulterior motive is to scout for deer. Our shooting range is active both Saturday and Sunday afternoons for plinking and sighting in deer rifles.

Saturday night always includes mass consumption of great food, so some of us — usually Todd, Billy, Gary or I — get busy during the day creating venison stew, spaghetti with venison meatballs or hot venison chili. Saturday night also features the Big Card Game, which often becomes multiple games of poker and euchre, and the annual “Toast to Camp F-Troop” with Rocky’s special camp brandy.

Sunday morning features a leisurely breakfast and story-telling over coffee. Eventually each of us drifts away to begin the ongoing ritual of tinkering and re-tinkering with gear and supplies (guns, ammo, back-packs, snacks, layers of clothing, etc.) that starts in the morning and continues until bedtime.

A few camp members head out to the rifle range for some final target-practice, but all of us conduct our annual Sunday Afternoon Walk in the Woods. We hike in to our selected opening day spots to look for deer sign and linger for an hour up on the huge boulders we hunt from to imagine the possibilities. We get to stretch our mountain-climbing legs, breathe some mountain air and maybe spot some whitetails. Sunday evening features a cook-out and a campfire but no late-night card games. By 10 p.m. we’re going over our lists and tinkering with gear one last time. We set our alarms for 4 a.m. and call “lights out” at 11 p.m. We all go to bed and lie there dreaming of what tomorrow might bring.

Trail Notes: Thanks for the great response so far to my new book The F-Troop Camp Chronicles. Paperback copies remain on sale at the Book Rack in Sharon, Copyland in Hermitage, Greenville News, Courthouse Square Dry Goods Co in Mercer, Allied News in Grove City and Neshannock Creek Fly Shop in Volant. Or just send $16.75 each for paperback copies, post-paid, or $36.75 each for limited edition signed and numbered hardcovers, post-paid, to Don Feigert, P.O. Box 1381, Hermitage, PA, 16148.

Thanks. Good luck out there. And have a great week outdoors.

Don Feigert is the outdoors writer for THE HERALD and the ALLIED NEWS. He can be contacted at 724-931-1699 or dfeigert@verizon.net. Visit his Website at www.donfeigert.com.