What Was I Thinking
Before I left for vacation I asked a few bloggers if they d like to do a guest post here at The Hunter s Wife. Nancy Jo Adams from Shenanigans From the Field sent me this guest post a couple of weeks ago. I thought today would be the perfect day to share it with my readers.
Saturday morning was a slow morning in the blind as I sat on the edge of a field in hopes of seeing the Grand Poopah; a name I dubbed the trophy bird that we filmed on this land earlier this season. As I sat there listening¦and watching the weeds grow¦my beloved Crackie vibrated in my cargo pant pocket. I thought to myself, I guess now would be the perfect time to catch up with what is waiting in my inbox. It was well after fly-down time and we had not heard a tom in over thirty minutes which was a tell-tale sign that they were henned-up.
As I looked through the messages in my inbox I ran across a Facebook message from Jody aka the Hunter s Wife. Interesting, I am going to have to read this one now; knowing that it was going to bring a chuckle or a pondering thought. The message was asking if I wanted to write a guest post. Guest post? Shoot yeah, I want the opportunity to write a guest post on Jody s blog.
As I sat there thinking how ironic that was¦an avid if I will eat it-I will hunt it hunter writing a guest post in a blog by a camo-loving, crappie fishing, cupcake baking non-hunter. This can t be too hard“not so long ago, I WAS a hunter s wife so I have experience here; I think.
So I sat and pondered for a little bit and it must have been the dew dampened earth permeating my nostrils, or the beam of sunshine that crept through a crack in the blind window that warmed my shoulder, or maybe even the song birds serenading me with a tune they were programmed to sing before their first light“I don t know what it was exactly but the thought that Jody was missing out on all of these things was sad to me. The thrill of seeing an animal in their natural habitat unknowing of your presence, the communication of the animals among each other, the interaction between a caller and a tom as that tom methodically displays all of his grandeur; the colors ricocheting off his feathers of gold, copper, beige and the stark red, white and blue of his head. The sound, which cannot be explained in words, of a gobble as it rattles the stillness of a cool morning and the building anticipation while watching a tom strutting into your decoy setup; gobbling the entire way. The heart pounding moment that you raise your gun in attempt to harvest that tom and the wing flapping, dust flying moment right after the shot as you run out to get a better look at your prize harvest.
Wow! I wondered to myself, What would it take to get Jody into the woods to experience all this?
But like a needle SCREECHING across a record, glass SHATTERING on concrete, or two pots CLANGING together¦.I popped back to reality. WHAT WAS I THINKING??? I could just see it now¦calamity in the field. I could just envision the morning now:
Turkey: {Gobbling from the tree!}
Jody: What was that racket?
Nancy Jo: That was a gobble. Didn t it give you chills and make your hair on your arms stand on end?
Jody: More like raised the hair on the nape of my neck¦what a racket!
Nancy Jo: Look at that beautiful sunrise!
Jody: Great! Now it is going to get hot and muggy. My hair is going to be a wreck!
Nancy Jo: The birds are on the ground now. We should see them any minute.
Jody: What is that smell? Peww..It smells musky!
Nancy Jo: That is the damp ground from the dew. Smells fresh, eh?
Jody: Like fresh mildew. Is this smell going to stay in my clothes and hair?
Nancy Jo: That sun beam coming through the window feels good doesn t it? Warms you clean to the core.
Jody: Look at all that dust and pollen blowing in the air¦ewww¦.is that going to stay in my clothes and hair?
Nancy Jo: Look Jody!! Look, the tom is headed our way.
Jody: Oh my!! What an ugly bird! He looks like a buzzard!!
Nancy Jo: Look! Look at that! He is strutting, putting on a show for the decoys! Isn t that the neatest thing? Simply beautiful!
Jody: Is that a bug on my pant leg?? Oh! Oh! Is that a TICK? Get it off!! Get it off of me!!
Nancy Jo: Shhhh!! You are going to scare off the tom.
Jody: I am bored! Do you have any games on Crackie? How about the Internet? Anything?
Turkey: {Gobbles.} {Struts.} {Gobbles.} {Struts.} {Gobbles.} {Strut.}
Jody: What a racket! Can you get him to shut up? Shoo him away or something. Make him stop all that non-sense. What does he think he is doing anyways with all that poofing up and charades he is doing?
Nancy Jo: He is strutting for the decoys. I am fixing to make him quiet, dead quiet.
Nancy Jo: Raises her gun. Clicks the safety off and prepares to make a cluck to make the tom alert for the shot.
Jody: WAIT! ARE YOU GOING TO SHOOT HIM?
Nancy Jo: Yep! Look at that beautiful beard on him. I sure hope he has nice long spurs too!
Jody: NO!! You can t shoot that BEAUTIFUL bird. Look how cute he is all puffed out. Look at the wonderful colors reflecting off of him. Look how pretty his pony tail is. He is so patriotic looking with that red, white, and blue head¦.NO!! You can t shoot him!! No! No!
Nancy Jo: He is a trophy bird Jody”I can t shoo him off!! He will also make an awesome honey bourbon grilled turkey breast.
Jody: No!! As she rises to stick her head out of the blind¦shoo bird, shoo¦ get out of here“waving her arms frantically in the air.
Turkey: {Putt!} {Putt!}
Nancy Jo: As I watch tail feathers waggling, beard flopping from side to side and the bird disappear over the terrace in a dead run, I click the safety on and lower my gun, shaking my head as I slump my shoulders.
Jody: With a big smile on her face. See, that wasn t hard at all. I m hungry. Let s go see if we can find a cupcake some place. Does my hair look okay?
Yeah, what was I thinking?? Like the song birds, programmed for a predetermined sound before hatching¦some women are born NOT to be in the woods with a gun sitting in their lap, sun on their shoulder, damp earth permeating their nostrils, and anticipation keeping them glued to their seat for hours on end as they ponder many things¦ crazy things at times.
Nancy Jo Adams “ Shenanigans From the Field
Thank you Nancy Jo.
To my readers: Nancy Jo is a great follow on Facebook. That showoff outdoor chick does nothing but hunt.
See the original article at TheHuntersWife.net
February s Woman of the Wild- Jennifer L. Metzker!
When I was a small girl, I remember going to my uncle s property to hunt deer, turkey, dove, quail, etc with my family. I loved being out in the woods, running free, watching the wildlife. My dad would take me to hunting camp, despite the comments from the older members; dad would put me in the woods with my grandfather s Smith & Wesson model 1000 shotgun and say, sit still and good luck! I only ever shot one doe, and we never found her¦I was heart broken.
As the years went by, the family grew apart. I found myself driving my very old Grandfather to hunting camp, just so I could get another chance at another deer. No Luck, I grew older as did the relatives, and there was no one to take me hunting, but you could always find me outdoors either at the horse shows or at the mud hole, which is where I met my husband of 19 years.
Bryan has been a hunter all his life and we kicked it off immediately. We married, had a son and moved to North Carolina and had our second son. Bryan joined a Hunting club in Georgia, that we are still apart of to this day. It was at this club with my husband, that I really learned how to hunt. I was taught how to watch and let the deer get closer and where to put a stand, etc. I harvested my first doe on that club, weighing in at 120 lbs, while my husband sat in the truck with the boys watching a clear cut. That was it, I was really hooked! No, I wasn t the first woman in camp to hunt, but I was the first to hunt as hard as the men do. Sure, I have heard the same questions over the years; How do you do it? My only answer to that was How can you not? The woods are my sanctuary. Things always seem clear when I m in the woods. And I have seen some wonderful things in the woods!
Over the years, I have harvested some nice deer and I m always proud of whatever I do harvest. I hunt Alligator, Turkey, Deer, Ducks, Coyotes, Fox and Bobcat. I am open to try anything once. I fly fish in the spring and summer months but hunting is always on my mind.
I have been married for 19 years to my hunting mentor lol, Bryan. We have two sons, Bryan Jr. and Boone. Bryan Jr. is currently in the Navy and fishes and duck hunts with us when he takes leave. Boone is in the woods and water with us all the time and has become quite the hunter. I know a lot of other ladies that hunt hard like me and I love meeting other lady hunters.
Jennifer L. Metzker
See the original article at CampWildGirls.com
December Woman of the Wild
Holly Heyser
Holly A. Heyser, hunting blogger and college lecturer
I am pretty much the last person anyone “ including myself “ would have expected to take up hunting. I was born in Southern California and have spent all of my adult life in urban areas. After college, I spent 19 years as a newspaper reporter and editor (Orange County Register, San Jose Mercury News, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Virginian-Pilot, Sacramento Bee) before leaving the business in 2006 to teach journalism at my alma mater, California State University, Sacramento. Reporter. Professor.
Urbanite. Not someone you think of as a gunner.
But I have always craved unusual experiences, and hunting started worming its way into my realm of possibility back when I was in my late 30s. I was living in St. Paul, Minnesota, with my boyfriend Hank Shaw, and we were both working for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. We had befriended the hunting and fishing writer there “ Chris Niskanen “ and what he did was really piquing Hank s interest. One day Hank announced that he wanted to take up hunting. That s fine, I said. He s a cook, so I knew he d eat what he d kill, which was my threshold of acceptance for hunting.
He was really getting into it, spending a lot of time out in the woods, and pretty soon he started asking if I d like to join him. I didn t, because I was busy training for marathons at that point, and I rightfully concluded that I couldn t fit two activities that intense into my weekends. But a couple years later we moved to Sacramento, and I stopped running, and I finally said I was ready to join him. My first hunt was a pheasant hunt, but what really grabbed me was duck hunting. Half of the ducks in the Pacific Flyway spend their winter in the Sacramento Valley about an hour north of us, and the duck hunting can be amazing. I will hunt anything that I m willing to eat “ pheasants, turkeys, wild boar, deer “ but there s just something about ducks. They re fast, the marshy terrain is challenging and the worse the weather, the better the hunting. I love a challenge. And ducks taste divine. Duck is by far my favorite meat, followed closely by wild boar.
I very quickly dedicated myself to my new pursuit. I had just started my teaching job and was overjoyed when I realized my winter break covered the last six weeks of duck season, so when Hank was working, I d drive up to one of my favorite wildlife refuges and head out into the marsh myself, determined to teach myself how to actually hit these birds. (Three years later, I m sorta kinda getting the hang of it.)
A year to the day after I fired my shotgun for the first time ever, I started a blog about hunting, NorCal Cazadora (www.norcalcazadora.com). NorCal stands for Northern California, and cazadora is Spanish for huntress. I figured no one would care what a novice hunter had to say, but boy was I wrong. I quickly found that even the most veteran hunters enjoyed the frustration-filled tales of trying to learn how to do this hunting stuff right. Since, then, I ve expanded a bit and have begun writing for magazines including California Waterfowl, Delta Waterfowl and Turkey Country, and I ve done quite a few hunting stories for the Sacramento Bee, which has shown amazing openness to hunting.
I ve also taken up photography, and do a lot of food photos for my boyfriend, who started a blog shortly after I did “ Hunter Angler Gardener Cook (www.honest-food.net) “ and writes for a variety of food magazines. I ll be doing photography for his upcoming book as well.
Writing and photography has opened many doors. I ve begun doing a lot of volunteer work for California Waterfowl, which graciously honored me with its Artemis Award this year. And I ve made friends all over the country and world, which means if I can afford a plane ticket someplace, I could probably find someone to hunt with there. I feel incredibly blessed.
Probably the biggest blessing, though, is having been able to enter the hunting world in the first place. I was not naïve about where food came from before I started hunting “ I spent some time in the country as a kid, and my family raised a lot of animals for meat. But participating in food, nature and the cycle of life at this level has been a revelation, and it has improved both what I eat and how much I appreciate it exponentially. So many things had to fall into place to get me here: meeting Hank, moving to Minnesota, befriending Chris. There are any number of different choices I could have made that would have put me on a different path. But I got lucky, and I m incredibly grateful for that.
See the original article at CampWildGirls.com
See the original article at GotHunts.com
December s Woman of the Wild-Holly Heyser
Holly A. Heyser, hunting blogger and college lecturer
I am pretty much the last person anyone “ including myself “ would have expected to take up hunting. I was born in Southern California and have spent all of my adult life in urban areas. After college, I spent 19 years as a newspaper reporter and editor (Orange County Register, San Jose Mercury News, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Virginian-Pilot, Sacramento Bee) before leaving the business in 2006 to teach journalism at my alma mater, California State University, Sacramento. Reporter. Professor.
Urbanite. Not someone you think of as a gunner.
But I have always craved unusual experiences, and hunting started worming its way into my realm of possibility back when I was in my late 30s. I was living in St. Paul, Minnesota, with my boyfriend Hank Shaw, and we were both working for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. We had befriended the hunting and fishing writer there “ Chris Niskanen “ and what he did was really piquing Hank s interest. One day Hank announced that he wanted to take up hunting. That s fine, I said. He s a cook, so I knew he d eat what he d kill, which was my threshold of acceptance for hunting.
He was really getting into it, spending a lot of time out in the woods, and pretty soon he started asking if I d like to join him. I didn t, because I was busy training for marathons at that point, and I rightfully concluded that I couldn t fit two activities that intense into my weekends. But a couple years later we moved to Sacramento, and I stopped running, and I finally said I was ready to join him. My first hunt was a pheasant hunt, but what really grabbed me was duck hunting. Half of the ducks in the Pacific Flyway spend their winter in the Sacramento Valley about an hour north of us, and the duck hunting can be amazing. I will hunt anything that I m willing to eat “ pheasants, turkeys, wild boar, deer “ but there s just something about ducks. They re fast, the marshy terrain is challenging and the worse the weather, the better the hunting. I love a challenge. And ducks taste divine. Duck is by far my favorite meat, followed closely by wild boar.
I very quickly dedicated myself to my new pursuit. I had just started my teaching job and was overjoyed when I realized my winter break covered the last six weeks of duck season, so when Hank was working, I d drive up to one of my favorite wildlife refuges and head out into the marsh myself, determined to teach myself how to actually hit these birds. (Three years later, I m sorta kinda getting the hang of it.)
A year to the day after I fired my shotgun for the first time ever, I started a blog about hunting, NorCal Cazadora (www.norcalcazadora.com). NorCal stands for Northern California, and cazadora is Spanish for huntress. I figured no one would care what a novice hunter had to say, but boy was I wrong. I quickly found that even the most veteran hunters enjoyed the frustration-filled tales of trying to learn how to do this hunting stuff right. Since, then, I ve expanded a bit and have begun writing for magazines including California Waterfowl, Delta Waterfowl and Turkey Country, and I ve done quite a few hunting stories for the Sacramento Bee, which has shown amazing openness to hunting.
I ve also taken up photography, and do a lot of food photos for my boyfriend, who started a blog shortly after I did “ Hunter Angler Gardener Cook (www.honest-food.net) “ and writes for a variety of food magazines. I ll be doing photography for his upcoming book as well.
Writing and photography has opened many doors. I ve begun doing a lot of volunteer work for California Waterfowl, which graciously honored me with its Artemis Award this year. And I ve made friends all over the country and world, which means if I can afford a plane ticket someplace, I could probably find someone to hunt with there. I feel incredibly blessed.
Probably the biggest blessing, though, is having been able to enter the hunting world in the first place. I was not naïve about where food came from before I started hunting “ I spent some time in the country as a kid, and my family raised a lot of animals for meat. But participating in food, nature and the cycle of life at this level has been a revelation, and it has improved both what I eat and how much I appreciate it exponentially. So many things had to fall into place to get me here: meeting Hank, moving to Minnesota, befriending Chris. There are any number of different choices I could have made that would have put me on a different path. But I got lucky, and I m incredibly grateful for that.
See the original article at CampWildGirls.com
