Success!

Last Wednesday was too perfect of a day to not go hunting. I put The kid on the bus and headed out. I parked in the first pasture, sat behind a clump of trees with a coffee, did a doe-in-heat call, snapped this picture....

...and out walked a buck! I was completely alone, and wanted to be sure of a clean shot so I rested my elbow on a stump. It was not quite the right height and I knew I didn't have a real good hold on the gun but the aim was perfect so I took a chance and squeezed the trigger. Intense pain attacked my face, blood exploded out, and my vision went black. I staggered around in a daze for who knows how long, my vision slowly coming back and the blood pouring down my face and shirt front. I checked my gun about three times, I had no idea what happened. Did my gun back fire? Did someone hit me? I pulled out my phone to call for help and thought to take a picture to see what the hell was going on with my face.

As I tried to pull my eyes into focus to look at the picture I realized I had scoped myself. My brain was still kind of fuzzy so I went down to the house and cleaned myself up and called the neighbour to come up and come with me to the recover the deer that I wasn't even sure I had hit.  We drove through the field to the spot I was sure I had shot him and there he was dropped right in his tracks. 

I took him home, hung him up and gutted, skinned and washed him down with vinegar water and got ready for work. I think I was still in shock, my nose was bleeding from the cut and the nostrils the entire time and it wasn't till I got to work and sat down that I realized, hey this is bad - maybe my nose is broken? I did my hour shift ( I'm a noon hour supervisor at my daughters school) and headed to emergency. Yes my nose was broken and I was given a choice of stitches or crazy glue for the inch-long slice down my nose. I chose the glue, they straightened my nose and off I was sent home with instructions of "don't touch your nose at all". Kind of hard when it's still bleeding and you need to wipe it every ten seconds! That night my face and nose got so swollen, the pressure in my face was almost unbearable. 

But I'm still smiling because there's a buck hanging in the shop! 

 

Deer!!

This fall I pulled a little trick I learned from my dad. I ask the kid if she wants to go hunting, I grab the gun, we sneak the power saw into the back of the truck and head out. After driving around for an hour or so, we break it to her that we actually were just coming for firewood. She has a little fit but helps with the wood anyways. We were on our way home when Toby interrupts herself mid-sentence to scream DEER!!! I jumped out loaded a bullet and shot as fast as you could blink, the deer does a wobble, takes a half leap over a log and drops dead. I'm suddenly forgiven for the firewood trick. Toby and I take off across the field to check it out, my husband backs the truck up to the deer. This is is one of the few times in 9 years my husband has been hunting with me and it was the first time I've gotten anything more than a grouse in front of his city-boy eyes.
"Grab a leg" I say "let's gut this and get it home"
"I have to touch it?!" He says "no way, that's sick"
I throw a leg at Toby and tell her to show daddy up and hold it, she reluctantly does it with two fingers. I give up! I hooked the back legs behind my legs and start to work. Toby just stares with a look on her face that just screams she thinks I'm insane and Big Daddy goes behind the truck to gag. I get it gutted and in the back if the truck and we head for home. A great end to getting firewood!

All I really need to know...

Today, I was standing in the hallway waiting for Toby to be dismissed from class. I was doing the blank stare at the back of the door across from me, as I always do, when suddenly the poster came into focus. After reading, a lot of things were in focus.

All I Really need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten ~ Robert Fulghum

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.

These are the things I learned:

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don't hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don't take things that aren't yours.
• Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

Happy Hallowe'en

Whats better than carving pumpkins and lighting them up?

Blowing them up!

Toby and Pappy

Ellie May

Moi

Still No Deer...

The only shooting going on lately is with my camera, here's a few  from yesterday...

The Willow River

The road was washed out, but "only if your a pansy" I'm told.

The Bowron River

Grocery Day

This was the actual and only contents of my purse when I went to pay for my purchases at the grocery store the   other day. I did all my shopping, unloaded my groceries, the teller rang them all up and I opened my purse to pay and all I had was a pink skinning knife and a tray of 270 bullets. Some days I seriously wonder about myself. 

In my opinion.....