Buck pp’s and pneumonia

I realized today that I have been hunting for 22 years. That is nuts. I mean, aren’t I only 25 years old? Haha!

I started hunting when I was 12 years old, but before that my Dad thought it would be a good idea to take me out to shadow and observe to see if I really would want to go out. I mean, who wouldn’t want to get up while its dark, walk through the scary woods, and freeze your buns off waiting for an animal to come visit? Hmmmm…..

My eleven year old self was actually very excited to go out with my dad to see what it was all about, but I got really sick. I ended up with pneumonia. I had a pharmacy of medicine and a rescue inhaler that I took with me out hunting, but by jove I was going hunting. Now cold air + chest congestion = I thought I might die. So my dad decided that we should go and hunt in our heated shanty (a permanent wooden deer blind, basically). So then it was time to wait….. and wait…….. and wait……….. Like any eleven year old after a few hours I got very, very bored. So I may have told a little fib that the kerosene heater was hurting my chest (milk that pneumonia thing) and asked to go outside and get fresh air. He said, ok, so I went right outside the shanty and started to make a snowman. Totally something a mighty hunter would do, right? After making some very nice progress on my new friend, all of a sudden, like every cop show you have ever seen, my father kicks open the door of the shanty, jumps out and shoots onto the hillside. Then I see it, the deer he was shooting at, and hit, by the way. It reared onto its back legs like the black stallion did on the book cover, leapt straight up into the air and fell back down.

I was so excited. Dad got a deer and I was there to see it! We waited the allotted time you’re supposed to, aka, 403 years or so it felt like, and started up the hill to get it. Now remember, I have pneumonia, so after about 10 puffs of my inhaler and sounding like a 90 year old chain smoker, we made it to the deer. A button buck. It was so pretty. I know that sounds weird, but it was so cool.

My dad then proclaims that now the work begins. I think in another life I should have been a surgeon, because I find anatomy and dissection fascinating. So he begins to field dress it and it doesn’t phase me one bit. Hunters have all kinds of traditions. If you miss a deer, they cut your shirt tail. If you have to go #2 you “lose your sleeves”. Some, on their first kill, they get a little bit of blood wiped on their cheek. They say that Sioux warriors took a bite of raw flesh from their first kill. Yeah that ain’t us. BARF! Our family of hunters do things a little differently. No idea why, but as I sit on a log waiting for my dad, I get hit by a flying deer pp that is thrown at me. My dad is laughing and I’m trying to figure out what this thing is and he explains. It’s TRADITION…… TRADITION…. (You have to sing that like Fiddler on the Roof) Regardless of why we do it, the comradery of having these pps flung at you is…. special, I guess. In reality, it’s a funny prank that we all share and it brings us closer. So despite the deer pps, my dad roundhouse kicking the door, the stallion button buck, and wheezing my way up the wooded hillside, I decided that day that I was a hunter.