A few things here, as we get ready to give thanks, if only for being vertical instead of horizontal, on the right side of the sod:

Turkeys are everywhere. Many of us will be eating turkey in four days and then snacking on the leftovers forever. The neat thing for many hunters is that it will be not the store-bought turkey, but the wild kind.

Few people seem to know that wild turkeys, abundant in New Hampshire in pre-Colonial times, were extirpated but were brought back (with hunters' dollars and full support) in the 1970s to the point where they can be sustainably hunted today. It is the non-Elmer-Fudd success story that goes untold.

Many people have contacted me about the bald eagle wounded by birdshot and found by two hunters who cared for it and alerted caregivers who are confident that it will be able to return to the skies. Whoever shot it was no hunter. Instead, insert the word "vandal," or "moron."

Two hunting accidents made headlines during the first week of muzzle-loader season. Both involved (as is most often the case) hunters accidentally shooting themselves.

Many hunters who use tree-stands put a rope on the gun to haul it up, but who would do so with a rifle ready and set to go? With a muzzle-loader, the answer is simple: no cap. What happened here?

Hunting accidents are rare, and almost all involve hunters, not the non-hunting public. But because they involve something that most people and the media simply cannot understand, they get an undue share of media attention. Hunting is among the safest of outdoor pursuits, but as is the case with airplane crashes, you hear about the rare accident but nothing about the tens of thousands of perfectly safe flights each day.

Last week I had a letter from a reader worried about riding her horse during hunting season. "You're safer riding on country roads and trails than you are on the street by your house," I told her, and I meant it.

Ditto for hikers. Most hunters know where hiking trails are and avoid them. They don't want confrontations, and besides, hikers spook the deer.

Finally, Thanksgiving.

Turkey Day has always more or less fallen at the time of sticking snow, meaning that it's snowed for several weeks (and it has), but just about now the ground is cold enough to make it stick. Many a year I've come home late for Thanksgiving supper because I was trying to catch up with deer tracks in diminishing light.

This year the rut is late and the deer are just now beginning to act stupid (the males, not the females, I'm chagrined to say), and thus far no snow has stuck.

There was a time when we could blame the Rooskies and their clandestine weather-tampering conspiracies, but no more, and the whole global warming (sorry -- climate change) theory is a lot less fun.

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John Harrigan's address: Box 39, Colebrook, N.H. 03576. E-mail: hooligan@ncia.net.