‘Tis the season to hunt

Since things have been slowed just a bit from Christmas and New Year’s, I have a chance at coming around to posting pictures, and getting a new blog post out!

The day after Christmas(2020), I had my first bowhunting experience. On the menu was to be a hog.

I can remember from my childhood years, playing with my siblings and shooting arrows from toy bows, and then upgrading to curved bows and real arrows. With some pretty sad hunting stories, like falling into cactus and having needles stuck in my hand, to my gun jamming during a dove hunt, I switched my focus to fishing. 

Gowing up, I was taught to love and respect the land our Creator has provided for us. And with hunting and our family garden added to the mix, my love affair with nature began. 

I learned from my dad to be thankful for the food that’s provided from each hunt or each fishing trip. Perhaps starting out with a childhood growing up in the country gave me the appropriate start to life and my devout interest in food. It was no surprise when I chose a culinary school for my education. 

I like to say that I’m Italian-which I’m half Italian no lie, versus going through all the mixed cultures that make up who I am, and because my features display such European features the most. But I can’t help but wonder about a comment a friend made years back about my red moles. She mentioned that she has only known those that have red moles to have Native American Indian in them. This now goes full circle of how natural American Indians hunted with bows and arrows and prayed and worshipped over a successful hunt for the hunters and for the animal that gave its life. One can not dispute how uplifting it is to give a short ritual to hunting missions. 

Since becoming a single mom, many times I’ve had to play both parenting roles. I want to go even further and beyond being that perfect single mother. And what better way to showcase this for being a mom to a son was to get back into hunting. I had often played around with the idea of bowhunting and last year I finally did. 

I gifted myself a Diamond Edge bow for the Christmas of 2019. A week before, while washing dishes, a glass vase dropped in the sink, broke, and sliced my fingers pretty good. So needless to say my hunting stories haven’t ended, they just picked up with more “come on” moments. 

It took a while to recover and heal the wounds on my hand, but right when I felt I could be ready to practice with my new bow, my workload for the year picked up. 

Ready or not, I was going hunting. 

The day after Christmas I decided to take the opportunity and go out to the next town over to hunt. The hogs need much control in the area and hunters are welcomed!

I wasn’t nervous as I thought a first-time bow hunter would be. All I could think about was picturing myself in the woods, bow ready, and making my first kill of a wild hog. 

I had cleared out a nice spot by several fallen trees with the river on the other side them.

The only activity I saw was a young buck as I set up, this snail, and then another young buck, later on, I could see through the trees. 

Watching this second buck come through the area where I was set up, I went to bring my binoculars up when it seemed like he looked right at my eyes. I froze. Then he went back to walking until he found something to munch on. 

Something was mighty tasty in his area because he hung around for about15 minutes or so, which gave me time to snap a couple of photos and video, then wandered off. 

As the hunt continued with any sight of wild bacon roaming my area, two owls came into view, calling out to each other. I watched them gracefully fly from tree to tree and under the cover of the darkening woods.

It was starting to get chilly now as the sun was dropping beyond the woods. 

Through it all, I was surprisingly calm for this hunt.

Just before wrapping up my first hunt, I heard movement in the leaves behind me. And man, I had never walked on such loud crunch leaves before! 

With an entire large tree that snapped and now covered the floor of the woods, I couldn’t get a view of what was on the other side. I stood ready with my bow and finger ready to pull the release. I was hoping it was at least one good size hog to kill, but nothing came to view and the noise stopped. 

Leaving the woods and walking back to the truck as the sun set and the temperature dropped, I had a great view of the moon over a clearing along the path. More deer were spotted in this clearing and it seemed like they were playing as they would attempt to get close, then run off, and get close again. 

Though this wasn’t a successful hunt, the time spent in nature for my first bowhunting experience was nonetheless magical. I couldn’t ask for a better setup of nature and great weather.