My patient hunter

So in my house, this week is one of the most looked forward to weeks of the whole year! Not for me, in particular, but definitely for my Hubby and middle daughter. It's deer hunting time, and for those two, it ranks up there about as high as Christmas. Probably even more important than Christmas, as far as Hubby is concerned.

Well, the big day came last Saturday and off they went to spend the weekend in the hunting cabin in hopes of taggin' the big one! My daughter had told me before they left that since she had homework and practices coming up, she was hoping she would just get to shoot something decent and get to come home early. I told her I thought that was a great idea and wished her good luck! So, there they sat that first day, through freezing morning weather and hours of seeing nothing in the afternoon, sometimes moving from stand to stand, with hopes the big one would saunter out. But as darkness finally set in, I got a disappointed text from my mighty 14-year-old hunter that said she passed up a shot on a nice 4x5 buck, decided not to shoot him and then carried on about how regretful she was and angry with herself. Reading her text just confused me. She said she wanted to shoot something decent and come home. Isn't that the whole idea of hunting? Then why the heck didn't she shoot him?

I guess I just don't understand it. For instance, if I get the opportunity to shop at a nice mall in a big city, which isn't all that often, and my goal is to find the perfect black purse before I go home, and by the end of the day of hunting through stores, I find, not a perfect, but a pretty nice black purse, I'm gonna buy it. I'm not going to pass it up, because I may not find another black purse and I would be going back home empty handed. That's kinda how I was relating this choice of hers to pass up a nice 4x5 buck. Didn't make a lick of sense to me. You're cold, you're tired and you have a limited amount of hours left before you have to return home and you're getting picky? But instead of texting her all that, I decided to respond, "I guess it wasn't meant to be."

As Sunday morning came, she still hadn't seen anything and, after lunch, she texted again in frustration asking if I thought they should just come on home since she had homework and school the next day. I told her it was their decision but I since this was her last day and there were still hours left to go, she may want to consider staying till dusk, just in case. Well, sure shootin', about 5:30ish, out walks one of the biggest bucks on the river and right in her sights. Boom! She did it! She tagged the big one! The one she and Hubby had spent all this time hoping for!

I guess I should say her patience paid off and she found the highly anticipated big buck, or in my case, "the perfect black purse!" A really nice 7x8 buck that impressed even the Game Warden. Well done, my patient hunter! I'm sorry I doubted your decisions and I promise to stop trying to analyze the minds of deer hunters.