Lessons on Hunting and Living: Volume I

   When I was little, all I wanted to do was play "school".  I, of course, would always pose as the teacher and make my brother do spelling tests, which I would harshly grade with my red pencil.  The whole family believed I would be the teacher of the clan, that is of course until I got into college, saw how ridiculous the Education program was at Niagara University, and switched my major to English.  This decision was borne from my inherent nature of disallowing myself to dumb-down my learning.  Hence, when I was placed in a second grade classroom and found that all the little creepy crawly creatures had no concept of verbs, nouns, or even predicates, I was a little put-off.  I had always envisioned my future consisting of teaching the young minds of America the importance of Shakespeare, the creepiness of Petrarch (he was in obsessed with a woman he only met twice, who was married and had 6 kids.  He wrote poems to her in life and in death.  His extremely uncomfortable writing of undying, unyielding, unrequited love acted as the base for many a Shakespearean "hero") and the beauty of W.B Yeats.  I would assign the drooling mouths, their attached eyes glazing over after a weekend filled with memories best left in the drunk tank at the local police station, assignment after assignment of thought-provoking inquires, earth-jarring enlightenment.  I would be the professor that everyone loved but who created the hardest, most involved assignments during Freshmen year.  Like Chuck Norris, I would be feared because of my roundhouse kicks but respected as well.

   I still yearn to reach the level of professorship, but combine the fact that our nearest college is a joke with the amount of insane debt I would accrue and never pay back, it is a lofty goal as of yet.  However, I cannot ignore the small voice in my head which instructs me to TEACH! TEACH! TEACH! So, without further adieu, I give you lessons on hunting and living from The Writing Huntress.

Lesson One: How to Properly Apply Camo Face Paint. 

This video was a long time coming, as I love the gunky stuff more than I do hunting or breathing. 

My Twitterbuddy, Britney, had some difficulty applying her face paint.  She, of course, thought of me immediately when stating that she needed some pointers on the fine art of face paint adherence.

   Lesson Two: A Nifty Slew of Sayings 

If there is anything I love more than the history of phrases, I'm unaware of it. 

The best part about reading Shakespeare or Marlowe in their pure form is picking out the commonly used phrases of yore.  One can then translate them into modern speak and use the combination of words to insult their friends!

I came across this little gem today when the patriarch of the HLYH clan forwarded an ancient scroll via gmail.

The following text has been re-written by my own ink quill but the research is entirely someone else's.

Hence, if there is anything that is incorrect in the following list, it isn't my fault. 

The superb writing, however, is.  

Where did "Piss Poor" come from?

An Interesting History Of Commonly Used Terms.

   Ancient individuals used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to collectively (not at the same time, mind you) relieve themselves in a pot.  Once said pot had reached its fill, it was taken and sold to the tannery. If it was your job to made the pots or if your professional title read "Collector of Chamber Pots" you were referred to as "Piss Poor".   The extremely poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot were worse off yet.  Since they had no receptacle for their waste, their fellows would taunt that the family "didn't have a pot to piss in" and were the lowest of the low.

    Stories such as the ones above put things in perspective, especially concerning water.  The next time you are washing your hands and your skin begins to turn blue because the hot water refuses to comply, mull over for a smidgen of a second how things used to be.

Fun Facts About the 1500's:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May.

By medieval standards, by June, your stench was not too overpowering but still, a rankness began to seep in, especially for that poor bride in all that burlap.

Fortunately, God invented flowers. 

Flowers smell lovely. So lovely that in order to mask her body odor, she carries a banquet of flowers when advancing towards her groom.

Sound familiar?

Back when Shakespeare ruled supreme, bath time was a family affair.

The whole clan shared a large pot of boiling water.

The man of the house had the privilege of being a man, and the eldest so he bathed first.

Men being men and of a dirty sort, those in the house washed themselves after, eldest to youngest. 

The women, less dirty, by nature, would wash after the boys. 

Last but not least, the babies, those most prone to infection and sickness, would be washed in the dirty water of those who came before him or her.

By then the water was so dirty you could quite easily lose someone in it.

It become commonplace to misplace your child on bath days which assisted in coining the phrase, "Don't throw the baby out with the Bath water!"

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath.

Since hot air rises, the only warm place for animals was the roof, hence all the cats and other small creatures lived in above the clan's collective noggins.

When the rain came tumbling from the sky, the roof would become slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof.

The family then would be privy to the source of the platitude, "It's raining cats and dogs."

The floor, as we already covered, was dirt. 

Only the wealthy Barons of the land plodded their royal little feet upon slate floors, lest a portion of their toe be dirtied by the surrounding earth.

The hierarchy would now be tickled, that then, they were not what we would call, "dirt poor".

Meat was a delicacy that the common man would be hard pressed to enjoy frequently.

However, when meat was in plentiful supply, a family would be eager to show off to visitors.

Neighbors would come to call to visit the house with the newly slaughtered pig.  

The meat acted as a sign of wealth, all the jealous wives would crowd around the man would could "bring home the bacon."

The group would cut off a little of the porcine aftermath to share with guests.  

They then would all sit around and chew the fat.

Drinking whiskey back before Jack or Jim began their practice could have been fatal.

It was common practice to employ a lead cup to keep your beer or whiskey chilled.

The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days, making family and friends  believe the individual dead. 

It only took a couple of Lazarus-eque disrupted funerals for the medieval folks to see a pattern. 

Drunkards, as well as anyone else who passed into God's hands began to be laid out on a table in the family's kitchen.  The family would gather, eat and drink until the person either woke up or remained in a lifeless state.  

 The practice continues today, sans awaiting the individual to "wake" from their slumber.

If the person was truly lifeless and not just sleeping off a good night, the family would take it upon themselves to see the body of the departed buried within mother earth. 

However, this was a problem in 1500s England as the space one could be buried in was shrinking by the minute. 

Swarthy undertakers began re-using graves and coffins. This plan would have worked if it hadn't been for the discovery of disconcerting scratch marks on the interior of the lid.  

It had seemed that not only was there no place to bury those who had passed, but there was also no room for those buried alive.

Yarn bracelets began being in vouge for those buried around the time of Shakespeare.  The yarn would be attached to a bell above ground, a perfect "I'm AWAKE!" alarm for those caught six-foot-under unawares.

The first "graveyard" shift occurred around this time as well, when someone was paid to wait through the night for ringing bells, atoning for those either

“saved by the bell” or "considered a dead ringer”.

Outlandish Video Expectations

    Huntography has changed my views on hunting forever but not in a good way.  Yesterday, I killed my second buck of the season and because I didn't have any footage of the actual shot, I attempted to make up for it by shooting a slew of replay footage which I compiled into a video.  I figured that a whole bunch of landscape, grass, and tree shots would prove to make a video that could rival Rudy's gem when he captured the harvest of my first back three weeks past.  A lofty goal, I know but since I am an individual whose expectations are rarely met, being too outlandish for a normal person to reach, I figured I could make an interesting video about hunting without ever actually showing any hunting being done.

   In my dream of dreams, a person wielding a high-definition camera was waiting in the woods as I approached the tree line that separates a larger field from the woods where my ground blind sits.  In this fantasy, the camera would swing over to where the silhouette of a buck shown black against the foggy morning.  A quick shot of my unbelieving face would shortly be followed by the slow, methodical lift of my muzzleloader, seemingly by itself, to my shoulder.  Deftly, with much cunning and accuracy, I would take the fatal shot.  The camera man (or woman, he or she would be shrouded in camouflage, just a bush of a person holding a camera.  Then again, maybe it would be some sort of foliage that has the ability to hold up a camera and inherently know exactly when a hunter is in its midst. Yes, that's what I need, a photosynthatic videoagrapher) would force his image-capturing device past the plume of gun smoke to show that the deer had fallen exactly where I had shot it.  I would rejoice, thank my TC Muzzleloader for doing all the work, and then retreat from view.  The forest-dwelling camera man (or plant, whichever proves less conceivable) would then give me the film file on a flash drive, fall back into his wooded home, and never he heard from again.  Until, of course, I need another perspective for my hunting adventures.

   Unfortunately, none of the above occurred except for the harvest of my second and final buck for this season.  The video that can be viewed below covers everything that happened that morning, from the 23 minutes I spent in the grounds to the struggle it took to get my second buck extracted from the woods.  I do hope you enjoy it, even though I don't blame you if you prove it too excruciating to watch and just fast-forward to the five minute mark where the footage of my buck begins.

  I have a lot more to say about this whole hunt but for some odd reason, my writing flow today has diminished to a tiny trickle and is threatening to dry up.  This may be in large part due to the fact that I still must butcher the majority of the meat we pulled from the buck, clean the mountain of dishes in the sink and scrub my entire house because rain makes our trio of canines into ambulating mud puddles.

   Since I have your attention, I'd like to end this post by wishing you and yours a very safe, happy, blessed and delicious Thanksgiving day.  For the first time in three years, it looks like DU and I are going to be opting out of hunting Thanksgiving morning.  We will be dinning with family and while we have time to hunt, as my extremely lofty (if you think my expectations are outlandish for videos, they are nothing compared to the insanity that surrounds my plans for cooking a large table of food, a feat which I have yet to even think about let alone execute) plans for cooking Thanksgiving dinner were extinguished when we were invited to DU's aunt and uncle's homestead, we have no need (let alone freezer room) for more deer meat.  Hence, we will have the luxury of sleeping in, eating tons and spending the day with loved ones. 

   Happy Thanksgiving to each of you!

I am so thankful for every one of you who visit this blog with any semblance of regularity.

HLYH and The Writing Huntress exist simply because of your support, a fact that humbles me daily. 

May God bless your family, filling your bellies with good food and hearts with the joy of the season!

Venison Prepared Two Ways

   I love Top Chef.  It is the only show that I really watch anymore and truth be told, I'm not entirely sure why.  Top Chef combines two things that don't really sit well with me, food and cooking.  If you read a blog posting I created some months ago, then you will be keenly aware of my predilection towards what nourishes me.  While I have been blaming my lack of ingesting sustenance on our extremely poor situation and the extraordinary stress we've been under (for reasons that shall remain nameless, unfortunately, but just know I may be a little off in the coming weeks), I know that there's a little part of my brain that is frankly happy that eating is something that I do infrequently.   In the same token, cooking is something that I don't really get.  I have never gotten "it", being putting different kinds of food together to make one big type of food or little bunches of food that marries as well as an any Kardashian nuptial.  Granted, I am getting better in the room I used to be scared of and previously used as additional storage (I found this out the hard way as when we moved here, I found a box of my old kitchen wears from my old apartment, almost all had never seen a food particle in their sad lives), I've made a bunch of dinners and even baked goods that DU has raved over (probably simply because he no longer must sustain on Ramen noodles).  However, these meals were made with one eye on a recipe card and the other guiding a shaking hand.  After evaluating all of the evidence at hand, it seems that I enjoy Top Chef because it is an ethnography for a life that I could never fathom.

   As I much on a small snack of sharp cheddar cheese or a toasted sandwich made with said bovine biproduct (if there is anything I have a prodigy-like genius for, it's making grilled cheese, ask DU), I watch the chefs zoom around the Top Chef's version of a kitchen, which could be anything from your typical over-the-top one to a beach with a fire pit to  inside a moving bus to the surface of the moon without anti-gravity cookware.  Their challenges become more ridiculous than the next and while some falter with the requirements, others shine which absolutely blows my culinary mind.  Make something out of this sheep's stomach that tastes like fish covered in Chocolate sauce! See that mastodon over there?  Spear it then make a seven-course meal from him using only sticks and this piece of concrete! Unicorn is a required taste, friend, do shimmy off, find one, butcher it, run 26.2 miles, then make the mythical creature into a doughnut that resembles the scent of a Jackalope.  The ones that really always get me are the episodes that require the contestants to make a dinner out of a memory.  Really? Out of a memory? Can you find anything more abstract than cooking a dish that reminds you of last Tuesday's political rally that ended with eight arrests? If I were to be forced, at gunpoint, because who really would want me to make them anything, to make a dish that reminded me perfectly of my childhood, I would run as quickly as I could to the nearest grocery store (my kidnapper has rules too, apparently, no vehicles!), buy a box of Hamburger Helper and make that square meal exactly like Mom made it.

     Anytime a Chef makes something "prepared two ways" I giggle like a schoolgirl at a Taylor Swift concert (gag, I know, hence the simile) and think to myself How can anyone prepare something in two different ways? My answer is always met with some pairing that looks like it came out of a museum for food I would never eat but looks super pretty; a duo of duck, one pan-seared (whatever that means) and one thrown into dirt then fried: a pair of pear, both emulsified (again, not sure what that refers to) but one dipped into acid and set on fire (that one seems wrong and unsafe): a half quatrain of pig's ears, one still on the pig, one off.  Given that I am a preschooler compared to these behemoths of culinary perfection, if I get one dish right, it is a celebration that will rival the one I will throw when Taylor Swift stops her rein of terrible music upon the good name of Country music. If I even attempted a duo of anything, one would probably turn out edible but discolored while the other would be on fire, taking my house with it.  Imagine my surprise, however, when I woke up this morning and realized that last night, with a little of DU's help, I had "prepared" venison "two ways".

     We, fortunately, thankfully and blessfully (not a word, I know but I just invented it, ahhh the power of blogging), have a whole freezer full of deer meat.  With my buck and DU's doe/buck combination, we are in desperate need of a bigger freezing containment structure.  Hence, I have been eating venison with everything lately.  This has forced a little of the Top Chef knowledge I've osmosised (again, not a word, but it is now!! MUAHAHAH!) to the surface.  I've made everything from venison pitas with onion chip dip, pasta with salsa, and even little fajitas with an absurd amount of sour cream.   Last night was no different when DU suggested we pull out some tenderloin from his buck and grill it, bacon wrapped.  DU has a tendency to wrap a lot of foods in bacon, and while this gives me a small level of anxiety, it always turns out perfectly so I go with it.  Before we could really get our fingers dirty with the wild game, DU had to run "somewhere" to get "something".  If you read Mounted In North Carolina, then you know this is manspeak for "I have a present for you but I don't want you to volunteer to come along and ruin the surprise".  So, while I did laundry, made DU's lunch for the next day (nothing special there, it looked a lot like the lunches I opened as a second-grader) and actually did laundry (gasp!), DU went out to do whatever it is that he does.

   About an hour later, the dogs' barking (Dixie, we have come to find is a really good home-defense dog as her howling seems that of a much larger canine) informed me that DU was home.  I greeted him at the door, and to my surprise (not really, because I knew exactly where he was going), he was holding my first ever buck, European mounted, just as I wanted it.  Our taxidermist did a fantastic job preparing our bone-seared venison head, such a good job in fact, that for the purposes of this post, I'm going to take part of the credit.  Okay, maybe not any of the credit but I'll just say that I had some hand in preparing the head one way (I killed it, didn't I?).  This is my first-ever buck, taken with a bow, on camera, that has been mounted so the fact that I stare at it each time I walk into my bedroom is completely normal.  He is currently hanging between the rungs of our Christmas-light entwined log backboard, watching over all, a testimony to my bowhuntress skills, an afternoon I will remember forever.

    Once Mr. Bone was in his proper place, DU and I focused on our dinner.  The tenderloin was thawed in a pool of warm water then extracted from their bag to lay upon the cutting board.  Thick slabs of bacon were then halved then thirded (word? maybe?), wrapped around and adhered to the venison with toothpicks*.  The meat then was carried with a manly touch to the manly grill to be manly watched for about 10 minutes.  DU had the little nuggets of PETA- disapproved but humanely killed meat on a high heat so while the outside began to crisp, the inside heated slightly.  While DU manned the manly grill, I threw together some homemade (read: from the blue box) macaroni and cheese.  After a whole tenth of an hour of blood, sweat and a couple of tears, our dinner was ready, venison prepared its second way: slightly charred, wrapped in bacon and delicious.

   For the past couple months and for the next, DU and I have to face some tough situations.  Again, I can't go into detail here even though I would positively love to tell y'all everything.   Since I've lost my job and have been unable to find new work, we have been really struggling to get by, hence I have been sulking a lot, not doing much besides looking for work, reading book after book, and crying.  However, this morning, after I realized that I had done something (okay, maybe not me, by myself but me nonetheless ((give me a bone here, this is the first realization of my ability to overcome anything, face any challenge and meet it head-on has not disappeared in the face of all of our recent adversity!))) I never thought myself able to do, I understood that life as I was living it wasn't true to who I am.  So, starting today, as in this morning at 6:42, I am going to start living again and try my best to disallow any of the negativity surrounding us to affect me so greatly anymore.  I have a couple plans go about this (volunteer at the library, since I spend enough time there anyway, write for a new blog (details to come), walk the dogs more, and stop taking everything so seriously all the time) and I feel ready to take on the world.  I needed this push desperately, this realization of the way I've been living my life, and who knew it would come from venison, prepared two ways?














*Please note: DU did all of the preparation and cooking.  I figured if I wrote this section in a way that made me look like I knew what I was doing, then everyone would just assume that I did all of the work while DU drank beer in front of the TV.  However, again, since no one ever reads the fine print of really long contracts for credit cards with fictitious low interest rates, no one well ever read this tiny confession and see me as the culinary whiz I just happen not to be! *giggles*

  

Dixie Bluegrass

    No one had a harder time dealing with the passing of Oscar than Avery.  While I moped around our cabin, being reminded moment after moment that there was a key figure missing within the household, Avery slept on our couch or looked out the window, waiting, it seemed for her big brother to come back.  Titus stopped his continual bouts of play with his little sister simply because he took his new status as head-of-house and security system extremely seriously.  My heart was broken but it fractured a little more daily, seeing how badly my canine offspring were handling the trauma.  We were quick to face the realization of what we had to do to rectify the off-balance teeter-toter plaguing our home, one of the hardest things one can do after a pet passes; to find a new member of the family.

    Our search started innocently enough once I realized that a trio is what our dogs were used to, what Avery was brought home to at only fourteen weeks.  Looking at puppies made me happy (honestly, who doesn't smile when faced with something that looks like this?) and looking puppies who could ultimately come to live with us made me even happier.  DU and I talked it out, figuring out what breeds we would like, sex, size, and everything else.  I, in my heart of hearts, wasn't ready for another dog, I couldn't get Oscar out of my head but I knew that Titus and Avery needed something to re-energize their lagging spirits.  We both agreed that we did not need another big dog now, that a medium-sized one would work perfectly, especially because Avery recently fell in love with a dog named "Cheddar" who took great amusement from running under the black lab's legs.  Since we were on the subject of smaller dogs, I told DU that I had always wanted a Welsh Corgi.  With their stubby, abbreviated legs, large heads and overabundant personalities, I've always felt that I connected on some deep, spiritual level with the Queen's dogs.  DU, on the other hand, had his eye on a blue heeler, simply because they are extremely smart, stunning, and will heard anything that moves (we found this to be greatly amusing, especially when we imagine ourselves filling our back pasture with an assortment of grass-fed animals such as sheep, donkeys, cows, piggies, and emus ((I'm not sure if the latter are grass fed but it doesn't matter, I was bit by one in a place called "Birdland" in England and ever since then, I've wanted one.))).

    The search should have gone well but, unfortunately, like anyone with too much time on their hands who searches Welsh Corgi videos online, I got a little sidetracked and began wanting a Welsh Corgi who not only belly flopped but also danced for its food*.  It took my navigational beacon, DU, to put me back on the straight and narrow.  He did this by sending me a link to a petfinder.com page, showing a pooch dubbed "Cinderella".  She was a Blue Heeler/ Corgi mix, her height coming from the latter, her temperament and color from the former.  Her pictures made her look scared, she had the face of a dog who had been abused, and worse yet, she was from Kentucky.

    The little dog danced around in my imagination for a little while until the trio of factors listed above (Kentucky! She's probably married to her cousin!!) made me second guess the whole thing.  I psyched myself out and told DU to handle it if he thought she was the one. He was unconvinced until he noticed the last 3 digits of her adoption number, 634.  This wouldn't mean anything to you unless you were a member of the DU clan but to them, that set is magic.  The numbers 634 pop up everywhere imaginable and bring anyone within the family luck.  The numbers were the clue that we needed that she may be our pup, sent by her big brother upstairs.

     Days went by, with them many a conversation passed between the shelter and DU.  He was told that she was more stunning in person than in the photographs, great with other dogs and a ball of energy.  A leap of faith followed and the next thing we knew, we were on the road to the bluegrass state.  Many hours later, we found ourselves in Middle Of No Where, Kentucky, surrounded by derelict coal mines, seedy towns and an animal shelter in a downtrodden trailer park. We emerged from my Jeep, or as DU calls it, my adult go-cart, bewildered, as the place looked abandoned.  As we were about to turn around, a host of dogs came barreling from their little homes to their outside cages, barking up a storm.  Emboldened by the signs of life with the edifice, we ventured inside.

    The girl at the front desk looked sad when we told her we were there for The Dog Formally Known As "Cinderella".  She took us to the "sick" room to find a blue bespeckled girl whose multi-colored eyes were glazed over in look of nonrecognition.  She trembled slightly as we bent down to formally introduce ourselves to the little dog.  Our guide informed us that she had just awoken from the anesthesia that allowed her peace whilst her spaying occurred.  The girl then gently lifted the fluffy body from her perch, carried her sleepy form to her new awaiting chariot and pet her goodbye.  I sat with our new member of the family as DU signed on the dotted line.  When he came back, he informed me that while the animal shelter attendant was happy to see Cinderella go, she was sad because the corgi hung out with her all day, acting as the welcoming committee to all who ventured a peek inside the shelter.  I figured this a good omen, as when I left with Titus, the entirety of the Niagara Falls SPCA came out to wish him well.  It's good to have the dog that everyone will miss as opposed to the one they're happy to see go.

     Cinderella sat with DU the whole way home, sleeping on his stomach as he attempted to recline in the backseat.  It was decided very early on that her name had to go, its replacement would be one that would suite her personality perfectly, one that came from a website devoted entirely to dog names.  Since she hailed from the extreme backwoods of Kentucky, it only seemed fitting that her middle name would be "Bluegrass", her first name "Dixie", as her forever home is in North Carolina. Content with her name, DU cooed it over and over until he too fell asleep.

     Driving home, a feeling began to grow that we had made a terrible mistake (I felt the same way once both Titus and Avery came home so I should have taken it with a grain of salt, but, stubborn me, I didn't).  She was a little bit too small, but bigger than I expected.  When we eventually got her home, she didn't seem like she was particularly happy to be there and she didn't even want to play with Titus or Avery.  This went on for a day or two, my anxiety grew by the moment, until everything changed.

     Ever since Oscar went to the happy hunting ground, I was terrified that since he went out as he did, he wouldn't get into heaven.  I was well aware of the adage that all dogs go to heaven, but I just couldn't shake that feeling, that ominous feeling that something was array.  All it took was a knock at the door.  I was in my study, looking at another list of jobs that I wasn't hired for when I heard a faint knock on the back door.  Frozen, I turned my music down and strained my ears as the last time I heard a paw upon glass, Oscar was trying to get inside.  When a second knock tattooed, I walked slowly to the yard.  There stood Dixie, paw raised, waiting to escape the insane play-fighting of her siblings.  The small event shook me but I soon allowed it to pass as happenstance, that is, again, until later when I walked past the living room and looked out onto the porch.

    Oscar was known to move shoes.  DU has no idea why he loved footwear so much but Oscar did, so much so that he would take all of his master's right shoes and place them in a circle directly in front of the garage door.  In his advanced age, he stopped his circle endeavors but he still moved shoes, completely unharmed, from one place to another.  So, apparently, does Dixie because where bare wood once was now lay my right moccasin.  I figured that this, again, was just something that happened, that I maybe had forgotten that I threw my right slipper outside, simply for the fun of it.  But then Dixie trotted out of the study with my right flip flop, walked around the couch with it and laid it at my feet.  Officially freaked out, as not many dogs move shoes and choose against eating them whole like donuts, I began watching her habits more closely.  From the moment she stepped into this house, she slept where he slept, continues to dig holes he started, watches TV with DU with the same zealousness of her big brother and even has her own little smile. 

    It seems now that I no longer have to worry if Oscar is happy up in heaven, as his doppelganger is living right here, in our home.  For all intensive purposes, it seems that our little girl was hand-picked and somehow divinely trained to mimic the old guy.  I have no doubt that God knew we had more love to give and that Dixie would be the perfect recipient.

    Right now, all three are sleeping on the futon together.  We all have been up since DU left for work at 5:45.  Since the day was still dark, I was reading by Christmas lights my fourth book in two days while the newly formed trio played furiously in the yard.  Every so often, I gazed out the side window to see a blur of blue being chased by two forms twice her size.  The formerly shy dog stops, pants, shakes her little nub and smiles once she sees my reflection.  It seems that she is happy here.  I know we have a long way to go before she feels at home (she continues to relieve herself on the rugs near the door at 2:30 am and has jumped from our story-high back porch twice) but for now, I'll let them sleep.





















* If you haven't watched any of the videos I've listed and linked here, you have to.  These Welsh Corgis are quite possibly the funniest dogs I have ever seen in my life.

Bambi's Destruction of Venison's Good Name

  and What Hunters are Doing About It.

   I was tricked into tasting my first piece of venison.  My ex-beau was an avid hunter and while it was a tad off-putting that he still cohabited with his parents at the ripe old age at twenty-five, I, my innocent, stupid self, thought myself in the throws of love and didn't care. Within his parent's home was a large edifice known as "The Room of Death".  Along every inch of the wall hung beautiful bucks, flying geese, snarling coyotes and even a lone mountain lion (this kill is due in large part to the overpopulation of deer that was experienced some years ago in upstate New York.  The sheer number of deer in that part of the state was becoming problematic for both humans as well as the animals so the powers that be decided that throwing in a pack of coyotes was the best option for control ((apparently it didn't occur to them to decrease the price of hunting tags to allure more hunters to the area as my first set of in-state tags ran a staggering $150)).  When the yotes became more of a nuisance than the deer, you guessed it, mountain lions were introduced.  To inject brevity into an otherwise lengthy tale, the mountain lions, shockingly enough, also became a problem, which is why one is showcased within the Room of Lead Departure).

   During one chilly summer night (this is New York we're talking about so, aside from a week in August, everyday can be deemed "chilly" in my now-Southern way of processing weather-wise information), while snacking upon cheese, wine (always Yellowtail Shiraz at that house, always, without exception), and some crackers, I was asked if I wanted to try some summer sausage.  Figuring the meat would resemble the polish type adorning my Nana's Easter table, I heartily agreed and requested that it was brought with haste to our awaiting palates. The summer sausage was delicious, heavenly even, which is how I answered when the question of its taste was put forth.  Good, my ex-beau's father, the man who made a bigger impression on me during our relationship than his son did, grinned, because it's venison.

Fig. 1

    I remember not caring much and being frankly surprised that the meat tasted as amazing as it had.  I have recreated this scenario with friends and loved ones who have never had venison, a trickery of sorts simply because if you ask someone who does not hunt, Would you enjoy some venison with that cracker and bovine curd?, nine times out of ten, the person will reply (rudely or ignorantly, I know not) with some version of: "Ew! No! I don't want to eat Bambi!" or "Like, deer, like the ones with the big, pretty eyes that stand in my backyard? Um, like no thanks..." The fact that the inherent problem with people's attitudes towards deer meat is based in a Disney movie where animals speak English is concerning, but not as much as an individual's attitude after they've tasted your offering.

   Last year, before moving to North Carolina, I worked at a school for at risk youth.  I loved the job, the kids were great (even those who threw chairs at me, cursed me out, or called me a leprechaun; lovely little cherubs) and I would have stayed there have opportunity not knocked, beckoning me south.  After I harvested my Thanksgiving doe, I refused to buy any kind of meat until the heft of her weight vanished from my freezer.  Therefore, daily, I would bring leftovers for lunch to school.  The kids, or vultures wrapped in human skin as I frequently saw them, would surround my desk, pleading for a morsel of my lunch.  When I told them that it came from a deer walking around just weeks prior, I would receive the stock answers covered above (see fig. 1).  I was barred from sharing my food, anyways, with the piranhas but I did decide to share with one of the intervention staff.  The staff, consisting of one of my best friends and a trio of the biggest African American men you have ever seen in your life, didn't know my little Tupperware container was filled with big, doe-eyed deer meat.  I gave each a piece, then after it was ingested, told them I killed it just miles away.  What resulted was a show of jumping, gagging and expletive-expelling of the most non-manly sort.  The boys, obviously displeased with my act of treason to the clan, expelled me from their office.

    My mother, the woman who was initially confounded by my adopted hunting persona and who, after hearing about my first buck, screamed in joy, needed a little convincing as far as wild game went when she visited our humble (read: gross and temporary) home last Christmas.  DU and I had recently gone duck hunting so we had decided the best course of action was to offer the delight to my mom as a welcome to North Carolina.  My mom, upon hearing this, turned a pale shade of green, then went on to explain that she really didn't like duck, the duck she had had in her youth was fatty, unappetizing.  She implored that we make something else, when we rejected her proposal, she grumbled something about what an "ungrateful, wicked, disappointing" daughter I was, then began to heat up some leftover macaroni and cheese. She was content, until, of course, the perfume of recently-flying duck filled the small kitchen.  After a small bite, my mother loaded up her plate with the wild game and inhaled it all.  This year, she has requested that we save a duck or two for her when she visits for New Year's.

    I mulled all of this over nights ago as I feasted upon my own concoction consisting of ground venison, egg noodles, mozzarella, cheddar, salsa and a ton of pepper.  The meal was stunning, filling and most of all, humbling, as I had helped DU field dress the animal.  Hunters always say that food always tastes better when he or she has killed it by his or her lonesome and I can't rightly disagree.  I have written a lot about the reasons I hunt, going as far as dedicating an entire post to the topic last year, so we don't really have to revisit the catalysts that propel me from my warm bed to the frosty woods.  However, in recalling the near hits and misses of my past concerning the layperson's attitude towards wild game, I was brought to the quandary, why do other hunters hunt?

   The first person to face this question was DU, who was forced to answer during our 11/11/11 adventure which will be covered at a later date.  I told him what I was thinking about, which snowballed into a discussion about "professional" hunters seeing killing an animal as a "profession" more than an ancient, beautiful ritual.  We discussed at length about this side of commercialized hunting, how these hunters and huntresses disassociate the actual kill from the paycheck once the DVD is released, how they are able to pass on perfectly good dear, and what personal morals come into play.  DU stated, and I agree with this, sadly, that the majority of deer hunters watching these shows want to see the gigantic, steroid-filled bucks fall, not a doe or spike and that beliefs such as ours, that any deer is a "shooter" because it will all become dinner anyway, are in the minority. The conversation went in many different directions, including separating waterfowl hunters into a separate category, as "trophy" hunting is nearly impossible for that crazy group, but we ended up exactly where we began, talking about the reasons we hunt.  He went on to explain, that he hunts in order to "watch the beauty of nature in its purest form come to life in the morning and to rest at night..to provide fresh, chemical-free food to my self and family.. and to get the (expletive) away from the 'real' world".  DU sees hunting as not only a way to free himself from the rigors of everyday life but also to really enjoy nature in the most ancient way possible, in a tree or upon water.

    Never allowing a good idea to go to waste, I put this question to the followers of HLYH on Facebook and friends of The Writing Huntress on Twitter.  I got some pretty nifty responses in return.  I was surprised, honestly, that so many were willing to tell their stories, as personal as they are.  As the tales below begin to weave separate worlds into a quilt of outdoorsmanship, feel free to reflect and share your reasons why you hunt.  In a world that is full of negative connotations surrounding hunters, it is important to show your pride, your passion and your respect for all that lie within the wooden confines of where we call home.

Finish this statement: 

The reasons I hunt are as follows: 

Tim S. 

I was introduced to hunting and the great outdoors at a very young age.
I grew up in small towns in rural Manitoba,my father a local Baptist preacher my mother working administrative jobs i am the youngest out of 5 children and the only boy,my parents did not make a lot of money so are diet was mainly wild meat such as deer and waterfowl and what my mother grew in her huge garden :) I learned a lot growing up that way and hunting and great outdoors became my true passion in life as a adult.
I love teaching people to hunt and about the great outdoors and watching them use their new skills and seeing the excitement on their faces weather they are hunting or just hiking through the great outdoors it brings me such joy :)

Jason S.

To get to see the sunrise. ;)and to hear the wings of the ducks and geese but the best of all is to hear the turkey gobble on them spring morning there is nothing better.

Nathan R.

There's nothing more peaceful and calming to be in the woods at sunrise to be alone with oneself and God. To witness the majesty of a turkey in full strut and hear him drum 10 feet from you or to have a mature white tail buck that you have worked so hard for come walking in with frost on his back and so close you can see the smoke from his nose every time he breathes. That is why I hunt.

Duane F. 

Because its my calling, it's what I was born to do.

Andy D. 

 I was not raised hunting and fishing. In fact most of my friends and family are not all that supportive, but I like knowing exactly where my free range grass fed organic meat comes from and that it was killed humanly. I like knowing that I struggled in acquiring it and truly appreciate my bounty especially when I get skunked and have to dig into the freezer. I know this is going to sound but I also like knowing my free time was used productively. I feel guilty watching TV or doing something nonproductive like playing softball etc. Yes I know that's weird.

Allen "The Owner" B. 

"All I want to do is manipulate and kill waterfowl"

Jason S.

To spend time with God, To reflect on who I am and where I am going, To enjoy God's Creation to its fullest, Food in the freezer, Fellowship with other hunters, a break from life, and lastly, never just for a trophy.

Britney S. 

the feeling of inner piece that I absolutely can not get anywhere else. Calming and cleansing for my mind and soul.

Tyler S. 

I enjoy the being part of nature and the overall beauty of it and the look of the creatures.

Crystal F. 

the feeling of peace and closeness to God,the beauty of His hands' work,the thrill & excitement of seeing such a majestic animal. The rush of the kill.

Doug F. 

to carry on the traditions my family has passed down to me, the thrill, and the peaceful/ relaxing nature of it all

Tammy S. 

To relax, enjoy nature, spend time with my husband & maybe provide for the table.

Shannon D. 

 to pass on ethical hunting to my children & spend time making memories that will last a lifetime.

* Thanks to all who shared their perspective! I had so many responses that I had to trim some down but they're on my Twitter and Facebook so feel free to check either out, you'll be glad you did. 

Paintail for Sale!

   I don't understand people who don't duck hunt.

   Okay, maybe that is not entirely true.

   I don't understand, at all, what I did before I started to hunt waterfowl.

   That's more like it. Yes, I cannot fathom a life without duck hunting, nor can I fathom a life without those who enjoy shooting the feathered beings from the blue vastness.

   In New York, I lived for the 28 day-season that was allotted to my gun-happy self. Doing the Two Gentlemen of Verona proud, I disguised myself alike Julia, playing the part of a self I knew not existed, a huntress.  I did not shoot bow nor did I even know what black powder entailed, hence I clung to my 20 gauge shotgun like a fly to the sticky, yellow paper hanging from the wooden beams in your horse-stoked barn and dove in as Alice in my new Wonderland.  I trooped out to the private land I was fortunate enough to hunt, that is fortunate enough to be dating someone who knew a guy who thought girls who hunted were the niftiest things since flannel shirts were invented.  I sat, waited, and saw nothing for 27 of those days, only to shoot my first deer after a minuscule push.  The season started, I killed something, and then it ended, without me even being aware of it, the season ended.  I felt cheated, robbed of something that I could not quite put my finger on.  The season was too easy, and I, being a great supporter of strenuous, Sisyphus-esque hard work and pain resulting from that exertion, felt that I had not done enough, worked enough for season to be over.

    I moved to North Carolina and I was swiftly introduced to the hard work that goes hand-in-hand with hunting one's own land.  The land we hunt is our buddy's, granted, but we do the work and he doesn't mind. For the first time in a long time, I felt that I was doing enough.  I helped put corn out, stands up, and blinds in.  I watched traveling lanes, the deer highways crisscrossed through the knee-high growth,  for signs of activity while attempting to formulate a plan to trap these commuters unawares.  But just as I felt that I had done enough, I fell back into the lugubriosity of season's past.  Scrooge, the old coot, sat beside me in his own way, working diligently, never feeling he had done enough, only to see the ghost of Christmas past advancing slowly towards our tree from the adjoining field.  We looked at one another, looked down at our work-happy bodies and came to a Robert Frostian road, diverged in a [green] wood.  Either we would continue to toil in our respective ways, I working to sit in a tree for months on end, he working his life away, ignorant of the plight of little Tiny tim and his sad leg, or we would jump into something new.  Scrooge, in his way, leered at me through slits in his craggy face, yelled BAHUMBUG!, stomped around for a bit and then was taken, much against his will might I add, by the ghost of Christmas past, who, presumably taught him a lesson about how change is needed for life to be appreciated, or something of that nature. I, looking down from my Tim Burton approved tree, which surely was the home of some cookie-baking elves, realized there must be something more to this hunting thing than this.  Clicking my ruby-camo-red slippers together three times, I was transported to a pond, filled with quacking dinner, waiting to be slain.

   Okay, maybe it didn't happen like that.  Maybe there were no literary characters perched atop my shoulder, whispering sweet academic nothings into my awaiting ears.  Maybe there were no ghosts, goblins, Jack Skellingtons, or Greek mythological figures doomed for all eternity surrounding our protagonist, forcing me to action like the perfect cast should, eagerly awaiting the arrival at the denouement so they could all just go home to their respective place of figurative habitation. Maybe it was just DU asking me if I would like to try out duck hunting.  Maybe it was as simple as my answer of yes, my mastery of a 12 gauge shotgun, and my ultimate love affair with waterfowl hunting. If you'd ask, I may tell it differently each time, with a cast spanning The Lord of the Rings (the books, not the movies) to Gargoyle (By Andrew Davidson, my favorite book by far, read it, you really should), Dante (read the original, translated to English, not that new-age, "this is what it really means to say" version) to Fight Club (again, the book, not the movie which is a great adaptation, by the way), but the message will always be the same; I fell in love with the beauty of duck hunting and haven't looked back since.

    Please don't confuse, dear reader, my love of waterfowl as a rebuke of my deer hunting passion.  Hunting deer is how I feed myself and my family during the majority of the year, each morsel more delicious than the next. Deer hunting is peaceful, as I find myself ever awed by the majestic tranquility that envelopes each and every one of my hunts.  The trees dance, the leaves paint themselves the color of the times, the squirrels hoard their crack nuts in trees, and I have the birds eye view, a sight that would compel any layperson to shimmy twenty foot atop a tree. I love many things about deer hunting, but my adoration for duck hunting lies outside of the big game arena, miles away on a small pond, surrounded by nothingness.  Waterfowl hunting drew me in because of its inherent dichotomy between unbearable and beautiful, discouraging and exhilarating but its camaraderie has held me fast.  No where is this more apparent than at a Duck's Unlimited banquet, namely the first one I had ever attended.

    DU is a big deal now, not just because he's on Twitter but because he recently became a chairperson of our local Duck's Unlimited chapter.  He attends meetings, talks to like-minded (read: crazy) duck hunters, works out ways to raise money, educates about conservation and adds another perspective to the duck hunting plight.  Being the important man he is nowadays, I must play adoring counterpart, one of the more challenging roles forced upon me.  Hence, when the Pee-Dee River Basin chapter announced their annual dinner and auction was to be conducted on October 29th, we were disheartened as Huntography's arrival coincided with the same date.  However, since Rudy was not scheduled to make his grand appearance until later that evening, I was able to join DU and E4 for a night out on the waterfowl town.

   Dressing like any good girlfriend should, I arrived at the banquet in Max-4 Real tree, the only girl in the entire place who decided mullet, cattails and cornstalks were more fashionable than let's say, pink or black. We arrived early, as DU was put to work selling chapter t-shirts.  E4 and I sat, enjoying a complimentary cocktail or two, and surveyed all of what was offered.  Directly in front of the amphitheatre-inspired seating area was a stage, filled to the brim of all of the things that make waterfowl hunters drool.  Hand-carved decoys, Duck's Unlimited monogrammed knife set, duck prints, dog lamps, Duck's Unlimited cooler, full-body decoys, decoy boats and tables upon tables of waterfowl goodies arranged neatly into piles; each just waiting to be taken home by those who get the Mallard draw.  Tickets were sold to support the chapter's efforts, both for conservation as well as education.  These tickets were put into jars for the general raffle (ie: the absolute plethora of duck hunting amenities situated on tables along the walls of the theater) while the real action played in front of the stage.

  I have never been a part of a live auction and I now know why; they are simply one of the most adrenaline-filled events I have ever been privy to without a gun or hockey stick in my hand. Both the live and silent ones were being taken place at the banquet, both equally enticing to my novice ear.  Being the pragmatic couple we tend to be, DU and I decided what we really wanted (the Duck's Unlimited ((Ps. I am starting to get sick of typing out the group's name and would shorten it but unfortunately, like an idiot who did not foresee this being a problem, I dubbed my domestic partner after his DU shirt. So, for the  sake of being repetitious and not meaning to be so, I will continue to type the entire thing out, even though I really don't want to)) 2011 decoy of the year, one of the duck prints, the Duck's Unlimited cooler and ottoman and maybe, just maybe the over-and under shotgun at the end of the table.), then decided on a price limit.

   Before we were allowed to spend money on things that we really didn't need anyway, the president of the club motioned for all to be still for a moment of silence.  We all paused in respect for two youths who had passed into God's hands after a car accident shortened their already brief lives.  Once moment passed, we then removed our caps to thank Him to allow us to gather and to bless the food we were seconds away from ingesting.  As all stood, necks slightly reclined, I briefly remembered a sign that I had seen recently which read like a letter. It went something like, "Dear God, why are you letting all these terrible things to happen in our schools?" to which He replied, "Dear Child, I'm not allowed in schools." God, even more so a reverence for He who creates nature and allows us to hunt, was present there.  Humbled, I again realized why I love this community, it felt holier, more respectful than the innards of a Catholic Church.

   Our food was put out, delicious might I add, and the show began.  We had put in for a cork decoy on the silent auction which we had believed we won during the live portion, a misstep which put our wallets a little deeper into our pockets.  The live auction began, the auctioneer rattling off numbers that far exceeded what we had wanted to pay. DU, for some odd reason, allowed me to hold our bidding card while he retreated to sell more shirts. Upon his retreat, the knife set that DU had wanted from the beginning went up for bid.  We held steady at $80, our maximum, until someone bid $90, interpreting DU's hand signals for CONTINUE TO SPEND MY HARD EARNED MONEY as STOP, PLEASE STOP, SPENDING OUR MONEY, I ceased bidding.  Once the victor was named, DU looked at me with the look so I decided it was best to join him atop the stadium seats.  After many more waterfowl-inspired items found their homes, one gigantic misstep where we mistook a $30 for a $130 bid for a print we really didn't want, and one big sigh of relief when someone bid $140, my treasured prize came up for sale.  The Duck's Unlimited 2011 decoy is by far one of the coolest decoys I had ever seen.  A paintail, with all of the adornment of a Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center, painted to perfection, had my eye since I first walked in.  Knowing full well that the decoy I purchased for DU's last "Jesus is born! Here's a gift!" day, cost a hefty sum, I was nervous for how high the bidding would go.  Fortunately for us, the biding stopped well under what we expected to pay.  DU, happy as a clam that his significant other extracted so much joy out of a generally male-only, dead-duck focused function, was all too happy to hand over the sum as an early December 25th gift.

   The bidding continued to go north from there, the over-and-under we had wanted so badly went for more than $1100 and the Browning Maxxis from God's Country slipped out from under us, a ten of diamonds when all we needed was an eight.  Once all that was to be had was possessed, the banquet slowly disassembled. I walked around, thanking those who I had spoken to about becoming the first female chapter member, and looked around in amazement that such a small, tasty bird could bring so many people together.

   I, again, was struck that I would have missed out on all this had it not been for DU's (or the Keebler Elves, you choose) divine intervention.  The waterfowl community is an obsessive, tightly-knit group who depends on one another for not only support outside the blind, but within it as well.  I found that deer hunting lacked something essential; the walk to my stand wasn't labored and the time sitting in it spent in breathless wait, a luck of the draw.  What I thought missing in deer hunting, I found in duck hunting.  The laborious months to prepare, the oftentimes disastrous wader walks to the blind, the fervent calls and the absolute still that precedes shooting as the ducks cup filled my adventurous, hardworking soul.  It has been months since I have last been able to shoot some fast food from the air but I still feel it each time I move my gun or look out onto our pond, each time a distant quack reaches my ears.  It is the sound of waterfowl hunting, an orchestra to my now finely-tuned ears that now plays lightly.  Saturday, the tunes will begin to rock this cabin, but until then we will wait, together, as a community, for that first light when the ducks will fall.