becoming a hunter

As most everyone knows... there are only girls in our family. No boys. Mike said "NO MORE!" to my dismay years ago. Truth be known... I'd always known if we had ONE more baby, it would be a girl. I don't know how I know... I just do.

So, Mike decided to get a feel if the girls would like to go hunting. Now that we have a little slice of land six hours away, Mike's able to go hunting now! Seriously, you have to pay an arm and a leg, or know people who own bunches of land here in Texas if you want to hunt.

Mike simply asked Katie one day "hey... wanna go hunting with me this fall?"
Katie said "yup." He's a man of few words, and sometimes, so is she.

Away they went for a daddy/daughter date (of Mike's dreams, I'm sure) of looking at rifles for Katie to hold. Finally after searching all day, and talking to a bazillion people about their opinions, they settled on a size. I was so shocked it wasn't pink! Of course, Katie's not really into pink, but if Maddie was there, you can bet your britches it would've been pink!

Mike also bought his girls a special treat. Camo clothes: brown shirts with pink on it. And a hat... definitely camo hats... with pink on it. Very cute, I must say. Actually, we needed long sleeve shirts for the girls b/c there's NO way in H-E-double hockey sticks are we going to have a replay of "three out of four people in our family get something poisonous on their skin" like we had a month ago from our last trip .... that was NOT fun. It was expensive too.

A few years ago Mike got a feel for how Katie could shoot. Maddie is still too young at this point to even care (or even handle a gun, in my opinion). She shot with a .22 (I'm sure I'm butchering up the gun talk....), and did a fantastic job! She even managed to create an upside down K with her shots! Amazing!



This time? She did pretty amazing as well. Here she is shooting with a 243. I only have like 50 pictures of her shooting in all angles. I think I went a little extreme. Adjusting my exposure, adjusting my meters, etc. Then again, one can never have too many pictures.



She's gonna be a great hunter. She'll be able to hunt alongside Mike for the next 4 years, then she'll take the Hunter's Safety class.

How did I do? I did awesome. I'm sure I'll make my dad proud when he sees this target:



He's probably thinking "dang... should've taken her hunting when she was a kid too... we might've come home with a deer!" ::giggling:: OK, for the record, my dad came home w/ a deer a lot. I held the head while he butchered it. Finest moment in my life. Holding a deer's head.

I only shot 4 shots, and couldn't find the 4th shot, until Mike saw it. It was right next to one of them... so I shot twice in the same area! Ka-POW!