It was a wet first day of opening deer season, and I was soaked by 8:30 a.m. as I stood standing in the rain talking with four conservation officers and three hunters.

One of them was a 17-year-old kid, who an hour and a half earlier had been dodging bullets in a hunting accident that left a four-inch red stripe across his swollen calf from a 9 mm rifle round that scraped past.

Most hunters rise before dawn so they can be in peak position when the light first breaks in the early forest morning. Keeping hunters in line means getting up even earlier for Environmental Conservation Officer Brett Armstrong and myself this past Saturday, on the first day of shotgun and rifle deer season.

Unlike most conservation officers, Brett is fortunate because he doesn’t have to work alone. His partner, Nitro, a 5-year-old black German Shepherd, keeps him company.

I was supposed to meet Brett at 6 a.m. ready to go and my original plan was to get up at 5 a.m. But, in reality, I was hauling at about 5:45. Luckily my employment at The Evening Sun has trained my internal clock to a 6 a.m. regimented wake up. Brett told me he had been out since 4.

The first thing the three of us did was travel around the county on the back roads, noting parked cars and properties. “It’s good to know where people are going to be,” said Brett.