Every season of the year brings activities we look forward to, as well as challenges to endure. For me, harvest means getting the crop out of the ground and spending time with family and friends, but it also means long days of cooking meals for the field and limited time with my spouse. It’s just one of those seasons that you take the good with the bad.
However, hunting season is a period I have to admit I dread. It’s that time of year when men (and women) become obsessed with scratching a yearly itch to kill, whether it’s white-tailed deer or mallard ducks.
I am not in this group. I have never harvested, or felt compelled to harvest a trophy deer, and the last time I went hunting I was about 8 years old. It was an outing with my dad and siblings; I talked the entire time and was bored out of my wits. My dad somehow shot a buck even with the racket coming from our tree stand, and he said, “This deer must have been suicidal.”
Years later, I married a white-tail hunter. My husband is also a busy farmer, but about this time of year his thoughts turn to the outdoors and watching the photos download from his trail camera.
It’s like Christmas morning when he sees a monster buck showed up at his deer feeder. I always laugh a little when his face lights up if anyone asks about his mounts on our wall. You can audibly hear the giddiness in his voice as he tells the story of each one of them.
Then he makes time to hunt, and this inevitably takes time away from our young family being together in the evenings. I secretly pray nothing comes in the path of his bow or rifle, because that means a late-night tracking his kill and hanging the deer for processing.
But worst of all, if he shoots a deer, it will be worthy of mounting and that means another head in our house. They do not blend well with my décor, but I put up with them under the agreement that he only has one wall for deer mounts. Somehow the wall has become crowded, and I fear more will be joining our wall of death soon. At least at Christmastime I can block some of the mounts with our Christmas tree. I tell him it puts them back in their natural habitat for one month of the year.
My candor and complaints about hunting make me sound a little selfish and unsupportive. This is true. But even though I have no interest in this hobby, I can appreciate the amount of time and energy hunters put into this sport. It takes dedication to sit in a blind and wait patiently for the right moment when a deer steps into your crosshairs.
I know I couldn’t devote that kind of time to the hunt without the promise of success. Furthermore, I am too tenderhearted to shoot an animal—except when it comes to raccoons around my chicken coop. I’d fight a raccoon in hand-to-hand combat if the situation arose.
I’ve come to realize life and marriage, especially on the farm, are about give and take. I don’t look forward to hunting season with anticipation, but my husband does, and after the late hours and early morning he puts in for his profession, this season is a reward to him. Anytime farmers can take a break from the everyday stress of low commodity markets and pressure to get a crop in or out of the ground, it’s a good thing.
So, this hunting season, I vow to be the most supportive hunting wife I can be, and if another head winds up on our wall, so be it. I just might need to upgrade to a fuller Christmas tree this year. At the end of the day, this is a hobby he is passionate about and at least I get to enjoy the summer sausage that comes with every trophy deer. See, I’m already looking for the positives!
Lacey Vilhauer can be reached at 620-227-1871 or [email protected].
