A Hunting We Will Go...Or Not!

When I first married my husband, Bob, he wanted me to go wherever he went. That meant I must accompany him on his hunting trip to Reno. I was not required to carry a gun (whew!) or expected to shoot anything. I do not think I could have done that anyhow because of my love of animals. I was not too happy knowing he loved to hunt, but knowing he came from a family who lived on a farm, and his father taught his boys to hunt, I knew it would be hard at this point to get him to not love the sport. Anyway, off we went to Reno. My first challenge in this adventure, was to get up a very steep hill, because that was where the deer would probably be.I started climbing behind him, but was not doing too good or making too much headway. "Grab a hold of me" was my instructions from Bob. "Grab a hold how?" was my thought. I needed my hands to grab a hold of this huge mound I was trying to get up. I decided on linking my fingers into the backside of his jeans. Great idea. He scrambled up that hill like he was born to it, and I was pulled along like I was flying. No sooner did we land on top than I hear "bang, bang, zing, zing!" "Hit the ground," Bob says. "Get down and stay down!" I see a pretty doe leaping fast across the hills. She was scared to death and running for her life. I knew then, I did not like this. When everything was finally quiet, Bob tells me some hunters are crazy and shoot at anything that is moving. They do not wait to see if it has horns or not, or if it is human. How sad! We scoured the hills, or at least Bob did. I hunkered down by a tree and waited for him to do his thing and come back to get me. He returned empty handed. (Thank you Lord).
We went back down the hill, I slid most of the way, and were about to cross this field where Bob thought there might be something. The green growth was quite high and Bob went ahead of me and told me to be careful and just step where he stepped. So I did. At least I thought I was doing that. I watched his footsteps fall and stepped where I thought his foot had been. He was doing just fine and must have had eyes of an eagle because nothing happened to him, while I stepped and oops! My foot went deep into the ground and up to my knee in water. I was cold, tired, nearly shot at, and wet! I wanted to go home, and so we did. I never wanted to go hunting again. However, I did. It was a scary adventure as well and it ended my hunting days forever. Bob took the boys on an outing only once and Brent fell into a creek carrying the rifle over his head, and Cary was more interested in finding fossils and old skeletons of animals. Bob went back to hunting with his buddies and let us happily stay at home, warm and cozy!