The Deer Hunt

Well, I survived my first deer hunt! What a weekend. We arrived at the place where we were camping about 5:00 PM on Friday. It was a beautiful day! We were wearing t-shirts while we set up our tent. Mike built a fire in our wood fireplace...and it was a bit hot in the tent. The way the day was shaping up, I didn't think we would need the fireplace at all, even though it had forecast snow the next day, but when does it ever do what the weatherman says?

This is a picture of our tent and the beautiful weather we set it up in. Wow, it had to be at least 75 degrees! Nice.

Everybody else arrived about 7:30-8 that night. It was just long enough that Mike's mom started to worry about where everybody was. They arrived and it started to get colder. Hmmm...there must be some significance to this. We ate dinner and hung out in the camper while the men leveled the camper out. Have you ever tried to cook a pot of chili while the camper is rocking back and forth in an effort to level it out? It wasn't the easiest thing ever.

At about 9, everybody decided to head to bed as the men wanted to get an early start (come on, really? 4:30 AM?) in the morning. Turns out, it wasn't that early, it was more like 5:30 in the AM. I did learn a valuable lesson. If you are staying in a tent, do not, under any circumstance, get dressed with the light on. You create a silohette show for anybody outside the tent! Remember this. Anyway, as we went to bed, I was a bit worried about being cold, but it was warm in the pile of sleeping bags and blankets that we had on. Actually, the only time that I got cold was when Mike decided he was cold and sat up to start the heater and took all the blankets with him! Brrrrr!

Here is a picture of all the men starting off on the hunt. It was cold and Rosie and I were only too glad to stay in the truck waiting for them to come back and let us know they got a deer. Dad and Mike ended up coming back to let us know they had lost Cameron and Mark and we then went driving looking for them. Unfortunately, there were no deer to be found, they seemed to know it was the hunt. The does knew they were safe and were out in many numbers, the bucks stayed hidden. If I had to state my opinion on the deer hunt, it may be to drive around in the truck, looking for a good place to hunt the deer and commenting on how many hunters there are. Mike says there is more to it than that, but maybe it was the weather...we were in the truck a lot.

While we were out and about, it started snowing, and since the deer aren't moving around in the snow, we all went back to camp to take naps. Well, we woke up to this. It snowed a lot! Tait and Blake made a snowman and Jake got introduced to what snow is. He isn't afraid of snow like he is of the rain. The Skinners and Curtis' left Saturday night, with a little concern about getting out of there in the snow, but it appears they made it home ok, as they are all home.

Sunday, it was a nice and relaxing end to the weekend as we had to get Mike's truck unstuck, twice and loaded up camp. Taking down the tent was amazingly easy and I think that I will definitely join the hunt next year, although it was a little hard to get any homework done. Homework? on the hunt? Yes, unfortunately, it was necessary.