While driving home at around 4:30 tonight, my wife called to tell me that there was a fire in "our" woods and that the winds were from the south. She was a little frantic because I always told her that we will be cooked like bacon if we get a forest fire and there is a south wind. 
Coming down Pestletown Road, I could see the flashing lights in the distance, and as I got closer, I saw that they were blocking the road into the woods. I turned the corner and a FFS truck and a local firetruck were breaking their gear down.
My wife and I waited about an hour and everyone seemed to have left and there was no smoke smell. We grabbed the dogs and walked back to see what happened. The last of the FFS guys were leaving the area as we walked back. We found a small, fully-extinguished burned area along the north side of the Pump Branch, a,k.a. Albertson Branch. The burn was limited to a length of not much more than 150 feet or so and a width of maybe 50 or 60 feet. Odd place for a fire. A big thanks to the FFS guys and the local backup for keeping a small fire small!
The only person I ever saw in that exact spot was an old hunter I ran into while he was hiding in the brush on the face of the slope leading down to the water. I was going down to the water look for ducks. He told me he had baited the spot with shelled corn to hunt squirrels who lived in the nearby ancient oak trees. In a nice way, I let him know it wasn't legal to bait squirrels and he seemed surprised. I never saw him in that spot again but I did run into him a few years later duck hunting and he told me he just got his trapping license. After that, I started finding sets for coon and fox that he later confirmed were his. About a year after that, I ran into another trapper and after I described the guy who started trapping the area, he said that the guy was his brother and that he had recently passed away. He said his brother loved this woods. God Bless him.
Coming down Pestletown Road, I could see the flashing lights in the distance, and as I got closer, I saw that they were blocking the road into the woods. I turned the corner and a FFS truck and a local firetruck were breaking their gear down.
My wife and I waited about an hour and everyone seemed to have left and there was no smoke smell. We grabbed the dogs and walked back to see what happened. The last of the FFS guys were leaving the area as we walked back. We found a small, fully-extinguished burned area along the north side of the Pump Branch, a,k.a. Albertson Branch. The burn was limited to a length of not much more than 150 feet or so and a width of maybe 50 or 60 feet. Odd place for a fire. A big thanks to the FFS guys and the local backup for keeping a small fire small!
The only person I ever saw in that exact spot was an old hunter I ran into while he was hiding in the brush on the face of the slope leading down to the water. I was going down to the water look for ducks. He told me he had baited the spot with shelled corn to hunt squirrels who lived in the nearby ancient oak trees. In a nice way, I let him know it wasn't legal to bait squirrels and he seemed surprised. I never saw him in that spot again but I did run into him a few years later duck hunting and he told me he just got his trapping license. After that, I started finding sets for coon and fox that he later confirmed were his. About a year after that, I ran into another trapper and after I described the guy who started trapping the area, he said that the guy was his brother and that he had recently passed away. He said his brother loved this woods. God Bless him.
