Hunting is not my thing

Do you see a path through these thistles and other tall weeds? Kenny thought he did.

Ever since we have been married, I have made the trip with Kenny to sight his guns before hunting season starts. I have fired a gun on occasion, but generally I am there just to spend some time with my husband doing what he likes to do.

The first year we were married, I decided I would go out with him on the first day of hunting season. I even bought camo clothes. That was the most fun part of the experience. We were in the deer blind before the sun came up on a day so cold that if I were allowed to speak the words would have frozen in mid-air and crashed to the ground.

I could not talk. I could not move. I couldn't read a book because it was dark. All I could do was internally document the level of cold as its freezing fingers scratched beneath my layers and wrapped around my spine. 

In a normal situation, I would jump up, stomp around, flap my arms and rub my hands together to fight the cold. I don't think Kenny would have shot me if I did that, but he might have been tempted.

Well, I stayed until about 8 a.m. and then I headed to the house for breakfast and to snuggle under the afghan on my mother-in-law's couch. This is my only time "hunting."

But I do make this other trip before rifle season comes in. He checks on his favorite spots and takes a little hatchet to cut back the invading branches and weeds. The last few years he has been going to a place in Rappahannock County that has not been hunted in many years. And it has paid off. He got a trophy worthy deer there last year which, I am sorry to say, is staring glassy-eyed over my shoulder as I type these words.

Last Sunday, we marched through the falling and fallen leaves along the Thornton River. It was a beautiful day. Warm and sunny, but not too warm. No pestering gnats or mosquitoes that we noticed. 

We walked quite a distance and ended up on top of a hill. Kenny decided rather than walking back the way we came, we would cut through some underbrush that didn't look too bad. The picture above shows what it looked like as we broke into the brushy area. I wish I had a picture of what it looked after we were 15 yards in. I could not take a picture, though, because I had both hands gripping the back of Kenny's shirt because he was breaking through brush as tall as he is.

It was miserable, awful. He would push through the tall weeds and thistles and they would slap me and shed little seed pods all over me. Then we hit a section that had thorny vines. Not good. Thankfully, we were both wearing jeans and my shirt had three-quarter length sleeves, so there were minimal scratches.

We had to ford a tiny creek or climb some rocks - I can't remember which came first. Anyway, we made it out alive and immediately stripped our shirts off because we looked like we had been plastered with tiny sunflower seeds. All over our backs, in my hair (not a problem for him), stuck to any exposed skin. 

He looked a little sheepish as he admitted that it would have been better to take the extra time and walk around rather than using the old formula "the shortest distance between two points is a straight line."

I pointed out that the shortest distance to an angry wife is to stick her in a field of weeds, covered with seeds and fending off briars and thorns.

Next weekend, he will be up before sunrise and on his way to Rappahannock and I will be firing up the Canon on the byways of Shenandoah County. As it turns out, we both like to shoot.