Sarah, get your gun!

I would say I was about 14 when I started shotgun hunting with my dad.  The Quackdaddy loves to hunt anything that is legal, deer, quail, pheasant, dove, goose, ducks, rabbits, and I was ready to hunt with him.  I remember when I took the Hunter's Safety Course I had to leave a sleepover at a girlfriend's house to go and that I went with two boys.  I can tell you that the muzzleloading portion was the most boring thing I had ever had to sit through.  It was awful.  I can't tell you anything I learned that day...except that I had NO interest in muzzleloading.  I passed the test and I earned my patch.  I was now legal to hunt.  Sarah, get your gun!

Back in the day, it was a really big deal (and still is) to go deer hunting during shotgun season.  Our school, until recently, had a "Deer Day" literally...we were out of school for deer hunting because so many kids took the day off anyway.  Now, I believe you can have an excused absence if your parents request it and you verify proof of deer hunting.

It was so exciting getting ready for opening day of the shotgun season, which is always the Friday before Thanksgiving week.  We would set out all our stuff the night before so it would be ready in the morning and we'd wake up super early, like 4:00 a.m., and head out into the woods...where I would almost immediately lay down and fall asleep.  So early on in my hunting career, that is exactly what I did, even though I was with dad, he just let me.  I figure he knew good and well I was going to regardless of what he said and I knew that he would keep an eye out for the big one. 

We would often start out solo and then by mid-morning or early afternoon, we would assemble the troops and drive the woods.  Driving the woods means you sit shooters at certain points at the edge of a woods and then the walkers traipse through the woods "driving" the deer to the shooters.  I know it sounds ridiculously dangerous, and now that my kids are getting to be that age, I think there is NO WAY I want them driving deer until they're 30 years old, but that is what we did and it was so FUN.

I forgot to mention that I was the only girl in our group...always...It was me and the guys and their dads.  Once Jay and I started dating, and I converted him from a city boy (ha, I always say that), he went along with us and became obsessed with hunting too.  I enjoyed hunting and the excitement it stirred and it was great exercise if I was a walker.  I looked forward to it every year.  I often found myself stuck with the photography portion of the hunt, you know, capturing everyone else and their great bucks. 

After a couple years of hunting with no success on my part, they would place me in the perfect, no-fail position to shoot a deer.  I didn't even care if it was a doe or a buck, I just wanted a shot.  Ha, a shot.  I got shots, no doubt.  I can remember a few instances when I would get a shot, shoot my three shells, I would reload and keep shooting.  Someone would eventually find me, assuming I had hit something, and I would have to tell them I missed.  "How did you have enough time to reload?"  "I don't know, I just did."  I suppose one could say I was a little trigger-happy.  I saw a deer and I blasted at them...I never hit them, but boy, did I shoot.

There was this one time that they had me in the perfect, no-fail position for the perfect shot at a deer, and the deer came running and I started firing and they all just kept running past, heading south.  (Sometimes I could swear that someone was rigging my gun.)  The guys had gotten wise, so they put someone just a few yards away to snag at my leftovers...which means everything that passed by.  And one of the fellas shot a deer that I had missed...I never heard the end of that one.  I'm sure my dad got tired of buying deer slugs as I kept shooting away at whatever came within a reasonable distance.  It wasn't long before I was the joke of our group, which I could handle, but someone was always razzing me about missing so many shots, how did I always have time to reload, how could I possibly miss THAT shot, etc. 

After Jay and I were married, we lived in a trailer a few miles from where I grew up.  One evening there was a real nice buck standing in our yard when I got home.  I remember thinking there is NO way I could miss this shot and that is an awesome buck...but safety first, as the Quack has always drilled in my head, I had to run into the trailer to get my orange safety vest and orange hat.  Well, you can guess that by the time I was covered in blaze orange and had my shotgun loaded and ready to fire, ten minutes had passed and the buck had fled the scene.  Man, was I bummed.  My second mistake...telling my husband about this...who then told all of our friends...I have never lived that one down.

One Thanksgiving, my uncle, the Quackdaddy, my cousin, Jay and I went out rabbit hunting.  I was determined to kill something.  And I did...a warm, fuzzy, soft, sweet rabbit...which the Quack made me carry in my hunting vest...I was sick.  I had helped gut several deer, but this was too much.  I never went rabbit hunting again.  After I had my kiddos, I gave up hunting.  I figure when they start going, I'll get my license and join the family.  It would be nice if at some point in this lifetime I could actually shoot and kill a deer so I could redeem myself, the rabbit just didn't cut it.  Perhaps I should target practice first, huh?