And a hunter is born...

I am not a hunter. I have never desired to be one, nor do I believe I will ever have the desire to shoot an animal, even if it's for food. I leave that to my husband. I am very happy to have a freezer full of deer meat, because that saves me a lot on my grocery bill. Plus, there's just something about knowing that your man has gone into the wild, hunted the food, brought down the food, processed the food himself, and you're able to cook it up somethin' tasty.

My Sound Man has hunted for several years now. He has shot two doe and two bucks. It has never really mattered to me what he gets, but if you know a hunter you know that for them it would be really, really nice to get that prize buck. The one with 6 or, oh, 12 points. (By the way, for all you non-hunters who don't even know what a "point" is, it's the pointy things on their antlers. Hence the name, "point." The older they are, the more points they have, and the bigger they are. Now, don't you feel all edumakated?) My sweet man has not ever seen a big buck like the one he wants. Not in the woods, anyway.

Let me say here that he does not hunt purely for sport. I don't agree with that. I've seen shows where hunters shoot the animal and leave the carcass minus the head just out there for the coyotes to get. That's not good stewardship of the earth God gave us. Now, if hunters hunt and don't use the meat themselves but donate it to other people, I'm good with that. As long as someone is benefiting from it. My husband hunts to provide food for his family.

Enter my eight year old. He has heard his dad talk incessantly a lot about hunting for the past few years. About July my husband starts talking about it. August brings out the calendar. September issues in lots of camouflage. And October is almost deer hysteria. Listening to all this, my son pretty much didn't have a chance of not wanting to hunt. Once he learned that his dad was considering letting him hunt this year, he started getting as excited as his daddy.

This past weekend was Youth Hunt in Mississippi. It actually lasts all week. Youth Hunt is a week where only kids (boys AND girls...yes, there are girls who hunt) age 15 years old and younger are allowed to hunt (with the exception of muzzle loaders...don't ask me to explain that...suffice it to say it was mainly all kids this weekend). Kiddo was so excited about it he was up and at 'em by 3:45 A.M. Friday morning. He and his daddy left the house at 3:58 A.M. Yes, A.M. As in A.M. They had a long day ahead of them, let me just tell you.

They got in the stand about 6:00 a.m, stayed there until about 9:00, when Kiddo starts complaining about being cold. His daddy told him to stick it out for another 30 minutes and then they'd get down. At 9:27, my husband spots a buck walking from the tall grass to the clearing, perfectly in line with my son's line of vision. He can't tell at this point how big he is or what his rack looks like, but he wants our Kiddo to get a deer, so he tells him to shoot. Kiddo complied.

Okay, well, since this post is getting really long, you'll have to come back in a couple of days to hear how it ended...

I know, I'm terrible, aren't I?