The Hunter's Wife - Stuck With Us

How I became the hunter’s wife…

I was seventeen years old and headed to a girls choice high school dance. I was doubling with a friend and we went to pick up her date first. I pulled into the driveway and my friend hopped out of the car to go pick up her date.

So there I am just sitting in my car waiting, when out of no where some guy dressed in full camo drags a dead deer across the driveway! I was completely traumatized and the guy dragging the deer knew it too. He made sure that he held the antlers just right, so the deer was facing me and I could see the blood dripping out of it’s mouth, he dragged it slowly and made sure to be as close as possible to the front of my car so I could see all the gory details. When I finally looked up at the guy holding the deer he was just smiling, thoroughly enjoying my terror. In my mind I was screaming, “Who are these people?!” My friend came out with her date and he told us the stories from that morning of how both him and his brother had shot deer. Poor Bambi!

Little did I know that one day my friends date would steal my whole heart and become my husband. That the crazy guy in the camo would someday be my brother-in-law. And that “those people” would become some of the most important people in my life.

Here I am 19 years later…the hunter’s wife!

You may be a hunter’s wife if you can relate to any of the following:

My ten year old son is actually named “Hunter”. My husband wanted to name him “Beau Hunter” (as in, bow hunter). We settled on just Hunter!
The first thing my husband said to me after we learned that our second son was going to be born without a left hand was, “Now we can get a cross bow!”
When I was over 9 months pregnant, with our second baby, my husband left early in the morning to go hunt the opener of the deer hunt. After he left I was sure that I would have the baby that day and that I wouldn’t be able to get a hold of my husband. A little bit?later he walked back in the house carrying breakfast. He ended up getting to the mouth of the canyon and turned around to stay with us. (Not all hunter’s would do this, I have a keeper, so if you are pregnant during hunting season and reading this don’t get your hopes up!)
After our 2nd baby we had to make sure that our future babies would not be born during hunting season.
I have a freezer full of deer meat.
I have had a deer head shaped birthday cake and many other birthday cakes that were “hunting” themed. (I probably deserve this one, but I will save my husbands Barbie birthday cake details for another post.
When my son was a toddler?my husband talked me into buying?him a real bow and arrows.
The first animal noise my daughter learned was “What does the elk say?”
There are antlers on the wall in my son’s room. (I never thought I would let this happen!)
And finally…Today I found something very disturbing in my washing machine. My husband had gone pheasant hunting and put all his stuff in the washing machine before he left for work. I went to switch the clothes to the dryer and as I pulled the last thing out of the washer I heard something drop onto the bottom of the metal washer. Thank goodness I had enough sense to not just reach my hand in and grab whatever had dropped! Instead, I grabbed my phone, turned on the flashlight and shined it into the washing machine only to find…a pheasant foot!!! Insert lots of screaming and jumping up and down in disgust here. I have a fear of birds and finding a birds foot sent me into a frenzy! I knew I would not last all day knowing ugly pheasant body parts were inside my washing machine so I did the only thing I could do. ?I put on some gloves, covered some tongs in plastic bags, grabbed the pheasant foot and put it in a garbage bag, that went straight out to the trash…screaming the whole time! I will spare you the picture of the ugly pheasant foot that I sent to my husband…#guesswhatifound?