hooking
n.— «Rubs (in Vermont, they are frequently referred to as “hookings”) and scrapes are signposts for other deer that a buck has passed through or is holding up, nearby, in the area.» —“Examining the three Ps of deer hunting” by Dennis Jensen Rutland Herald (Vermont) Nov. 11, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
John in Tucson, Arizona, remembers his grandfather from Sharon, Vermont, saying possessives such as hisn, hern, yourn, and ourn, as in Those cattle are hisn or That house is hern. These archaic forms go back to Middle English, shaped by analogy with...
A member of the ski patrol at Vermont’s Sugarbush Resort shares some workplace slang. Boilerplate denotes hard-packed snow with a ruffled pattern that makes skis chatter, death cookies are random chunks that could cause an accident, and escargot...
Interesting phrase, that: “holding up”. Is this in common use? I had the (possibly mistaken) impression that an animal or person that was hiding in a given area was said to be “holing up”, i.e. finding and lurking in any available holes.