Tis the Season for Deer Hunting

Another successful hunting weekend in the books!

This was my first time to be fully decked out in Prois Women’s Hunting Gear and I felt very legit. (Prois site: Vest, pants, coat.)

It was a beautiful morning–dew covered the grass, light cloud cover hung overhead, and there was just enough chill in the air.

Every time my alarm goes off at 4am before a hunt, I think, Why am I doing this to myself? This is torture.

But, by the time I’m in the blind watching the sun come up and listening to the birds sing, I’m always glad I forced myself out of bed.

Coffee helps a lot.

Brandon was with me this time, and though he’s usually the strong, silent type he was bitten by the conversation bug. Every so often he would interrupt the silence to say, “Did you hear that?” “Is the gun loaded?” “When do the deer come out?” “I have the binoculars in my lap” and so on. Thank you, Brandon, for your insightful contributions.

We waited and waited for the sun to rise and when it did we could see deer milling ahead of us by about 100 yards. I was hoping for two deer. Once a doe turned broadside, I took a shot. She fell about twenty yards away. I reloaded, and we waited a few minutes. A fat spike stepped out of the woods. I took a shot and got him as well.

That’s when the real work began. When I first told my grandfather I wanted to start hunting, he made me gut, skin, and quarter a hog. He wanted to see if I was ready to commit to the whole process.

As I field dressed the two deer that morning, Brandon was in shock. “Wow, baby, you’re a hoss,” he would say.

I got a tiny bit of pleasure out of showing him I could be tough, I must confess. I could tell it perplexed him.

“You can be such a germophobe about things, but here you are with your hands in a deer’s guts. It doesn’t make sense,” he kept saying.

At one point, I reached down and cut off the the deer’s testicles and tossed them on a nearby cactus, to which Brandon remarked, “Well, that really killed the mood.”

By 10am we had shot and cleaned two deer and dropped them off at the meat processor. I was ready for a taco, a hot shower, and a nap.