“I wondered if we’d see any deer if we’d sneaked down to the hayfield?” Shirley pondered.

We were straightening things up around the inside of the cabin when the thought occurred to her.  Rains from the day before had greened everything and certainly the whitetails of the area might visit the field just before dark.

“The problem is,” I answered, “that the prevailing winds usually carry our scent to the animals before we can get there.  Only once have I been able to walk there and get a good look at the deer.”

But a check of the direction of air movement showed that this time we might reach a vantage point of the open area without being detected.  We moved quietly out the door and to the east as the sun fell beneath the trees behind us.  The whole walk was only three or four hundred yards, so we agreed to only whisper as we crept up the trail

Fresh prints of at least one fawn crossing our path heightened our excitement as we went.  And when we reached the sparsely growing sumac and the first big oak at the edge of the field, we were moving like shadows.

“There’s at least one,” I whispered, as the long afternoon rays turned the animal’s coat to chestnut.  Shirley noticed another, a big deep chestnut one in shadow, and then we saw another by the edge of the woods.  Their heads were down and they were clearly enjoying the field’s moist grass.

The binoculars; I’d forgotten them.  The look on my wife’s face was one of sheer disappointment.  I’ll go back for them,” I whispered.  “You stay and watch.”

Retracing the distance to the cabin as quickly and as quietly as possible, I expected to see Shirley trudging back before I could return to the field.  But she didn’t come, and when next I saw her she was still staring intently across the open meadows.

“The big one has moved into the woods,” she whispered, adjusting the glasses I handed her.  “The other two are still there.  I’m sure that large one was a buck.”

My turn with the binoculars revealed that one of the remaining animals also had the velvet covered beginnings of antlers between his big nervous ears.  The other one was a healthy doe.

As we took turns looking, I wondered where the area’s fawns could be.  Then as the big doe stopped eating and stared into the bushes, a frisky, spotted youngster galloped into view.  Three more fawns followed that baby, in the next minute or two, and two more does.  We were thrilled by their antics for the next quarter hour.  Two bucks, three does and four fawns had romped on to our hayfield stage in the late afternoon as if we had arranged for it all.

As the sun’s last long rays withdrew, the deer became dark lumps in the field.  We could no longer see them clearly even through the binoculars.  We looked at each other, smiled and moved very slowly backwards, behind the sumac stand.  Then we headed for the cabin.

It was the perfect ending to a weekend into the woods.  A wild and restful scene that would stick in our minds and sustain us through some of the coming week’s little stresses.  We indeed had seen our hayfield whitetails.