Deer Hunting

This past weekend and through Monday, we all went up to my parents house. My hubby is a big deer hunter and we use venison almost exclusively in place of hamburger when cooking, and so for 9 years this has been our routine.

My brother lives up by my parents as well, and as you can imagine, is also big into hunting and all things outdoors. He has not had any success this year so far, and is starting to get antsy. Chris has gotten two, so my brother asked that Chris go hunting for him, and if he sees anything to shoot it.

My hubby has asked me multiple times in the last 9 years of marriage to go hunting with him, and I have politely declined. Chris is one of the uber hunters, who stays in the stand the entire day. Doesn't pee, doesn't eat, doesn't drink anything. All.day.long. Plus it is almost always very cold out. Doesn't sound fun if you ask me. However, my sister in law was over with their little girl and got talking about how there were deer right by her house and they probably could have been shot right off their deck (which, by the way, is illegal).

Between the two of us, we developed a brilliant, if naieve, plan to go hunting ourselves, and get the deer for her hubby. Let me be clear on this- I have never hunted in my life. I once shot a bb gun at a squirrel in my mother in laws yard, but I missed. Amanda and I were getting super excited with our plans to go out and bring home the meat, and were talking about where we should go and all that stuff like we knew exactly what to do. My husband and dad are looking at us like we have gone crazy, but they love hunting, so it's not like they discouraged it.

We got a crash course in gun safety: essentially this is where the safety is, you have to turn it off to shoot, look through the scope and line it up at this part of the deer, don't fall out of the deer stand or shoot each other. You know, all the important stuff so you don't die by gunfire that could drop an elk. My dad decided that he would go and sit in a stand close to us, partly to give us any help if we needed it, and partly I think to watch us and see what we would do. And partly because my mom is slightly irrational, and thought for sure that we would both end up dying(Chris decided to go hunting in a different section of the woods.)

We get out to the tree, climbed up and sat down. And then....we waited. That is pretty much what deer hunting is. Sitting in a tree, trying to stay warm, and hoping against hope, that a deer will come walking past you so you can blast him for food. We never saw a single deer, we did however see a tiny little chickadee. We also heard some neighboring cows going crazy for who knows what reason. I checked my watch twice. The first time after we had only been out for 25 minutes because my toes were starting to get cold, and the second time an hour later. Surprisingly, two hourse went by really quickly. Still, it would have made the story of a lifetime, and been grounds for ruthless teasing of my brother if his wife and I had gotten a deer when he couldn't!

Amanda and I both have plans to take gun safety training (which technically you need to hunt) and go next year with everyone. Regardless of our lack of bagging a deer, we both kind of got into it, which I think after 9 years of asking, my hubby is praising God for!

(Plus I have a really cool gun name, they want to get me a gun that is called "Savage", and I said that I wanted it to be black, because black matches everything- which is clearly so important in hunting, and so we came up with 3 good gun names: Black Savage, Black Widow, and because my hubby doesn't want me to be too manly, Black Beauty!)