2009 Hunting

One doe, one buck, and one doe to go! I've never hunted, neither has Dad, but God saw fit to bless us with two dear in one week. And Levi has until January 31 to shoot another doe!

The story goes something like this: Dad, the Eden family and I had been out all day scaring all the mule deer bucks out of the county, and I was sleepy. 3 AM isn't a wonderful time to wake up. So Dad and I were going up our driveway (yes...THE driveway) and we see Mom pointing and making all these weird signs like she saw something I should shoot. I hadn't filled my doe tag yet, so I woke up from my nap and grabbed my grandpa's rifle from the back of the truck, threw a couple rounds in, and started looking around. Sure enough, there was a big ole doe right behind the chicken coop...looking right at me...35-40 yards away.

The hammer went back, the rifle went up, I knelt down, and she just stood there. Now, you have to understand-I had this idea that I was going to save the hide and tan it-so I lined up the cross-hairs right in between her eyes. Hair triggers (really light trigger pull) are simply awesome, you never think about pulling the trigger, it just happens. And when it happened, she dropped like a rock. A half hour later the sun set and left us with the task of processing our first animal...in the snow, in the dark, on the ground.

At the moment, I can't find any pictures of this doe, but when I do, you'll see them!

That was Wednesday, on Friday I skipped violin and went out into the National Forest hoping and praying that God would walk a legal buck in front of me on the last day of my tag. I was being really noisy, the snow was crunchy, the wind was going the wrong way, it was too late in the morning, and I was in a terrible mood! But three does jumped out in front of me ("Oh, bummer, now I've scared them all away..."), about five minutes later those three, and one more got spooked again. I just sat down to let them cool off a bit and about 10 minutes later I kept moving...you guessed it...spooking 5 deer, the fifth looked like it might be wearing a rack! Slowly, I kept going, with my scent blowing all over them and my boots doing their best to impersonate an elephant herd. I came up to a rise in the terrain only to find the deer already running. I watched carefully, counting four does. "You must have been seeing things, dummy, there's no fifth deer...". My foul mood got fouler. But the Lord provides! 80-ish yards, one shot, and he was down. I was looking at him thinking "Man! That's a huge forkhorn! Or maybe it's a three point!" but either way, he was legal.



If God has one for you, He'll bring it to you! Our freezer is now full, and you just can't beat the price on this meat! We even have some to spare, and like I said before...Levi still has a doe to bag!!!