Deer Hunting

This morning I rolled out of bed and my feet hit the hardwood floor in our house at a dark and early 5:30 a.m. I don't do early...not well anyway. And apart from the fact that it was early...I stepped onto our floor which felt like a sheet of ice. It was 17 degrees. Now, to a southern girl like me, that's not just cold...its ridiculous. Fred came at me with what looked like a pile of laundry to my sleepy eyes. He hands over this pile of laundry to me and says "Here, put this on." 4 shirts, long-johns, jeans, a very large pair of coverals, 2 pair of pantyhose, socks, 2 pairs of gloves, some sort of big and puffy carhart jacket, 2 fleece hats and a fleece apparatus you put over your head to your neck to keep it warm. I could barely walk.

And we were off! I was proud to be doing something with my husband...deer hunting. Yep, i could do this. I figured I would at least enjoy the peace and quite of the forrest. I waddled down to where he had set our chairs up about 100 yards from where we parked. Its hard to bend in all those clothes I learned. So maybe 10 minutes after we both sat down Fred says..."you ok?" "Oh yeah I'm fine" sure? "absoutely! He heads to another deer stand somewhere behind me on our 40 acres. "Call me if you need me" he says. I listened to the stream running down the branch and started to think about building a house one day when the first pains started to hit me. Let me tell you something just in case you didn't know...because I didn't until today. Tennis Shoes....are NOT well insulated. My toes where freezing! But I wasn't going to let it stop me shoot this Buck I was waiting on that Fred had seen the day before. No little toe was going to make me look like a sissy. I started trying to squeeze my toes together back and forth thinking that would help. I tried distracting myself by looking at squirrels through the scope on my rifel; however, 17 degrees in the shade with a good bit a wind and I was done. Stick your foot in a freezer for 2 hours...yeah, that's how it felt! I yelled for fred and started trying to unfold my Frozen Marshmellow behind out of a cheap lawn chair while holding my frozen rifel. You could have shoved kitchen knives into my shoes and I would not have been able to tell the difference between that and the pains I was having from the cold. I had plans to sit there in that chair from now till kingdom come (or the deer came), but my toes ...they were putting up a serious protest. I made it 2 hours.

Fred drove me back home and decided that he was going back. Go ahead! I turned the heat up in the house to 75, thawed out, drank some hot chocolate and put my makeup on. Fred killed a big 7 point buck about 2 hours later where I had been sitting. Oh well...here's to warmth!!