My First Time

By Patrick Thompson | @someimaginationtx

You’re choosing NOW to take a photo of me?”

So… just a little heads up.  I’m going to talk about hunting.  I’m not going to try to convince you whether it’s good or bad.. right or wrong… I’m just going to talk about my own experience.  Cool?

But before we get to all that, a little background. 

I grew up where hunting wasn’t really a ‘thing’.   My limited knowledge of hunting\hunters came from Disney’s “Bambi” in which the hunter was obviously a very bad person… a faceless villain.  Whether or not it’s fair to take life lessons from an animated film featuring talking rabbits and skunks is debatable…

For many years, hunting continued to be a non-thing in my life.  Fishing, sure!  Camping, sure!  Hunting?  It’s a non-thing.

Until Justin.

The sexy, sexy man I married. 

He grew up hunting.  For him, it’s a thing.

He never pushed me to get into it.  After hearing his background and (in my opinion) an ethical and responsible mentality toward hunting, I decided to start the process of exploring the idea of hunting.

I took Texas’ required hunter safety course.

That’s it.  Things stalled for a while.

One surprise Fall-ish day, Justin decided we were going squirrel hunting.  We got our hunter orange vests and hats and hunting licenses and went out to a plot of public hunting land about an hour away from our place.

Right away, I spotted a squirrel, took aim with Justin’s 20g shotgun, fire, and missed.   Squirrels are surprisingly nimble when all you want is for them to stand still so you can shoot them.   We quickly found another, and I was able to get him.

That night, we had a fried squirrel for dinner.  Turns out, they’re as tasty as they are nimble.

Jump ahead a few years, skipping over the parts where we had two awesome but unsuccessful turkey hunts in Missouri.

A dear friend of ours manages wildlife on some land in Central Texas and had a special deer tag available for us.

We jumped at the opportunity. 

Decked out in our finest camo, we went out to the fields.  We waited.  And waited some more.

“You’re choosing NOW to take a photo of me?”

That’s the thing that those hunting shows on tv or YouTube never really show you.  The waiting part.

We spotted a doe (a deer, a female deer) lazily making her way out of the brush.  Over the course of some time, she zig-zagged side to side while making her way ooooooh so slowly closer to us. 

Our first meal of backstrap, heart, and liver.

My heart rate and explosive power of each beat grew as the distance between us withered.

I raised the scope to my eye, found my target, and let loose a round.

Swing – and a miss!  The bullet created an explosion of dust about ten feet in front of her.

Game over.

My sexy sexy hunter husband gently but insistently told me to reload.

Completely baffled, I obliged, but was questioning his sanity – surely she had bolted off to the safety of the woods.

And yet, there she stood.  Same place.  Equally baffled.

While my heart was probably going to pop right out of my camo jacket, I pulled off another round and dropped her.

Hunting is, I think, an incredibly heavy emotional experience.   I didn’t feel guilt or remorse.  Instead, it was something…. Sacred.   Taking the life of an animal was not a simple, average act for me.   I approached the animal with reverence.

Venison roast

The next part is the best.  The food.  The delicious, natural, organic meat which has blessed our table roughly thirty times over the last ten months.  To make responsible use of a hunted animal is the only way or reason I will ever hunt.

Venison roast.

I’m going to go ahead and say that again.

To make responsible use of a hunted animal is the only way or reason I will ever hunt. 

The meat is the prize.  The dinners with family are my trophy.  Full stop.

Our first meal of backstrap, heart, and liver.

And so, as the venison is nearly depleted from our freezer, I do fantasize about hunting again with my sexy sexy husband… but only by means which are legal, ethical, humane, and move toward the responsible goal of filling up our freezer once more with natural game meat.

Hunting isn’t for everyone.   It’s somehow morally easier to buy meat at the store than it is pulling a trigger.   But as I look forward to my next hunts, I pray that I continue to approach it with the same awe and reverence.