I grew up in the great state of Texas. This means that every fall, my dad would head out with his buddies for a weekend of hunting. All I ever saw of this was the tasty venison that he brought back. As he got older, he would go on bigger expeditions looking for something more than a Texas white-tail. Well, my father has recently retired, and as a result has a plethora of free time to spend hanging around the house doing who knows what and playing tennis. As far as I can tell, all he ever does is play tennis. I walked up to my father last winter and told him “you are out of excuses Vati (german word for father). It is time that you took me hunting. I don’t have tennis and you don’t have work.” To my great astonishment, he agreed. Well I was so excited. I also made sure to bring it up every few months to make sure that he knew I expected him to keep his word and that he was excited about it.
This November, we took a trip down to a family friend’s ranch, and yep, you guessed it! I went hunting! I was very excited and nervous to go hunting. I had never killed anything more than a squirrel with a pellet gun before. My dad and I loaded up Frank (see my previous post if you don’t know who Frank is), and drove down to go hunting. We got there Friday night, and I started doing target practice with the gun I was going to use (.243 Winchester, if you were curious). I was a little worried, because my target practice got consistently worse. My dad shrugged it off, and then we went to bed.
4:30 am the next morning we woke up and went out. I knew that we were going to have to wake up very early. I am NOT a morning person. This is a problem when you are hunting, because coffee is very pungent. Deer have an excellent sense of smell. Well, when it cam time to wake up, I had no problem because I was so excited. I actually was awake before my dad came over to wake me up. We silently crept out to the blind to await our prey. Once we got to the blind, we waited, and waited, and waited. While waiting for the sun to come up, the flies started encroaching into my area. I was a good hunter and did not move much to get them off of me, and instead just let them walk on me. Well one particularly annoying fly was creeping all over my arm. I flex my muscle to try to make it move. It doesn’t work. I do it again. It doesn’t work. I finally look down and try not to scream and ruin everything. There is a giant ugly hairy spider crawling up my arm. Well I flick it off and my dad smashed it with the binoculars. He told me that he was just proud I didn’t knock everything over and make a scene.
A little while later, the does start wandering in front of us. We see a small three point, and then finally an 8 point wanders into my sights. I stead my self, take a deep breath, exhale half way, and BAM! I took down that buck with one shot. He didn’t even take a step. I have never seen my dad more proud of me. I got another buck that weekend, but nothing compared to hearing that first shot ring out and seeing my animal We skinned it, and took it home. Now, thanks to my efforts, I have some delicious venison chili in my fridge. This was a great experience, and one that I am very proud of. I cannot wait until next fall when I can go back and do it again.
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