I am HUNTER

I hunt, therefore I kill. Actually, this was my first successful hunting experience. My past hunts I would go out for the morning and hope to get lucky. This time we hunted for four days. Funny thing is that I actually got something and it was still on the first day. This is the first time that I have shot at a deer and the first time that I have missed. Also the first time that anyone in my party shot an animal, the first time that I have actually seen an animanl shot (my own), first time that I have seen an animal cleaned (my own).

I saw the buck later in the day and dropped him with a shot in the neck. It was a downhill shot through trees and limbs about 80 yards away. After I shot, the buck fell immediately and didn't get up. That's how I like to hunt, pain-free for the animals, unlike my brother-in-laws who wound the deer and then never end up finding them.

Getting my first buck was awesome. I was ridiculed because of its size, but I like my meat tender, like veal. Seriously though, it is a small buck, barely a 2 x 2, but you can't be picky when you've never shot anything. By the way, if you read this blog, and have shot a bigger buck with a muzzle loader let me know. One of the hunters up there asked me why I was shooting fawns. A lot of laughs up there at my expense, but then again, I am bringing home food for the family, they just wasted there money.

McCall, Idaho

We went to McCall, Idaho for Labor Day weekend. It was great. We've never visited McCall before. It's a couple hours North of Boise. It was nice weather the first couple of days and then it cooled off quite a bit. We swam, hiked, rode horses, swam in the hot springs, and played some golf.

Probably the most memorable part of the trip was church on Sunday. There are two wards in McCall and they both meet in the same church. There building is being renovated and one ward has been having separate meetings between four houses and the other ward has been meeting in a barn. We thought it would be most exciting to have church in a barn. Well, it had been in the high 70s on Saturday, but on Sunday morning it barely reached 50 degrees. We didn't care because we knew church was going to be in a barn. We expected the barn to have walls and a closed doors, maybe even a big, fancy barn with heaters or something like that. We dressed warmer, but not warm enough for the barn we met in. It had no doors or walls in the front or the back. It was like meeting in a freezing, wind tunnel. It was dirt floors and there were two horses in there with us. We expected around 100 people to attend, but since it was a holiday weekend in McCall, there were a lot of visitors. 650 people attended church in the barn that Sunday. We froze, but heard some good talks from the local missionaries. The church services were suspended several times until the generators could be restarted. It was a memorable experience. I don't always remember what happened in church the week before, but we will all remember church in the cold barn in McCall.