Straight from the Bowstring By P.J. Reilly On Lucky Trees I 'M GOING to hunt from my lucky tree today. If you're even a little bit more than just a casual deer hunter, odds are you've uttered these words at some point during your hunting career. We hunters are a superstitious lot. We wouldn't think of leaving home for the deer woods without our lucky knife/drag rope/tree hook/(insert your own talisman here). And if we don't have that special object, we can get downright upset. I have a Schrade fixed-blade knife that has been used to dress every single deer I've shot since I bought it 20 some years ago. On the eve of a previous firearms season opener, I couldn't find that knife and I ran around the house NOVEMBER 2013 tearing through everything trying to find it. Eventually I did and I felt as though a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Now that knife had nothing to do with my physical ability to hunt the following day. But I had to have it anyway. And I still do. We deer hunters often have the same attachment to special hunting spots. A lucky tree is a tree that, year in and year out, seems to have the magical ability to produce close encounters with deer. Lucky trees are rare commodities. Not every hunter has one. Those who do, don't have them all the time and they typically have only one at a time. 57