Thoughts on Thanksgiving and hunting season

Yep, we did it again. More than 100 folks gathered at Sondresson Community Hall to celebrate Thanksgiving. Steve and Christine Berg and Mark and Margaret Heaphy did their usual great job of starting early morning fires in the stoves and decorating so the hall was warm and the ambiance was perfect.

The Bergs and Heaphys also each cooked a turkey, as did Bonny Ogle, and Ray Brown cooked a monster ham. Joe Novak provided a gallon or more of tasty gravy. In addition, there was plentiful dressing, yams, beans and an assortment of salads and a ton of desserts. So much food that, despite a count of 104 people, there were still leftovers and plates were sent home to folks who could not attend.

The food was fantastic, but the best part is always seeing and talking to friends and neighbors that we do not see every day, especially in the winter when we scatter across the country or are kept close to home by the weather.

I admitted last week that I did not hunt a lot this year, but I thought the harvest was near normal. Several friends and neighbors said I was wrong, that, in fact, the hunting harvest was well below normal. The reasons varied with the people involved.

Some said wolves and mountain lions had moved in and either killed or spooked the game, especially the deer. Others blamed a lack of snow and one commented that there were just too many hunters. Maybe it was all of the above. At any rate, I am looking forward to the final report from Fish, Wildlife and Parks to shed some light on the subject.

Thanksgiving brought some good news, too. Earlier this fall, Patti Hart announced that she would no longer serve the Landowners Association as webmaster and would close her North Fork News site at the end of November. Reason was that since she and husband Morgan would now be spending most of the year in Portland, Oregon, folks would consider it inappropriate for her to work on North Fork News from there.

Year round resident Vernon Petty has already taken over the North Fork Landowners site. They argued that Patti was the editor and not the reporter and could continue to provide this service to the community with no conflict of interest or loss of accuracy.

Happily, Patti agreed and will continue to edit and keep NorthForkNews.com online for the foreseeable future. Yay!

The next big North Fork event will be Christmas dinner hosted by Jan and Alice Caldwell and Mark and Margaret Heaphy.

Same general format as Thanksgiving – doors open at 3 p.m., eat at 4 p.m. Only difference is the decorations and usually the attendance is lower due to Christmas being more of a family celebration that Thanksgiving. See you there, everyone is invited!

Larry Wilson’s North Fork Views appears weekly in the Hungry Horse News.