With opening day out of the way, the most popular greeting in Maine now changes from “How’s it going?” to “Git yer deer yet?” Once your reply becomes “yes,” the next question becomes what to do with your deer.

My passion for bicycling across November’s brown and gray landscape grows, and in the Belgrade Lakes region, a huge plus strikes me as obvious, particularly on weekdays. Traffic proves so much lighter compared to summer and leaf-peeping time.

Brandon Zalegowski is a clerk at the Middle Road General Store in Sidney. His duties include weighing the deer that hunters bring to the store’s tagging station.

With the start of the 2011-2012 ski season now less than a month away, my thoughts have turned, as they always do this time of year, to the abundance of wonderful fall hikes on the mountains that once were active ski areas and have reverted to their original wooded state.

As the Northern Hemisphere prepares for winter, the nights are getting colder and longer, even as our terrestrial landscape is getting bleaker since most of our colorful leaves have fallen. There will be several interesting highlights this month, including Jupiter at its best for the year, Venus returning to our evening sky, a comet still getting brighter, and even a little asteroid that will buzz Earth at less than the distance to the moon.

With the passing of Steve Jobs last month, we have all been thinking about the way that computers and the Internet have transformed our lives. The information highway has had profound effects on the ease and speed with which birders can communicate.