By my own fuzzy math, I’ve been opening up the Minnesota firearms deer season west of Lowry in Pope County for 25 years.

In that quarter century, depending on the vagaries of the weather, even the most unambitious area farmers usually have things buttoned up or nearly so by this second week of November.

But not this year. Not after October.

Not that anyone really needs a reminder, but it rained. And rained. And rained some more.

And while south-central Minnesota might yet be characterized as damp after such a miserable month, in the Mankato area, farmers have mostly completed the soybean harvest and are well into the corn.

Up here, host Ken Weisel and his neighbors are just now getting into the soybean fields and even at that, the heavy, sticky soil threatens to mire down the combines.

Translated into deer hunting terms, it means that the vast stands of corn remain virtually untouched, an endless sea of cover for whitetails to disappear into.

The challenge might best be illustrated by the 160-acre (that’s a quarter-section) cornfield across the road from the Weisel farm that has nary a combine track in it.

Chasing deer out into the open from such a vast acreage is impossible.

But it is a similar story on even a 60- or 80-acre corn stand. Driving deer from such secure and endless cover is futile.

Thus, our plan of attack this year is simply to set up in the morning and evenings in strategic locations and hope to intercept a whitetail.

Saturday morning found me in my usual location on the South 80 on the edge of a deserted farmstead.

It has been a very productive spot for me over the years, yielding several deer.

This year, the field adjacent to my posting site is unharvested soybeans.

Several hundred yards to the south, an adjoining property is covered by an unharvested cornfield.