H is for Husband talking Hunting and Hogs

My husband has a passion.  Every year around the first of September he starts to get this itch he can't scratch for a few weeks.  He is a hunter at heart and a outdoorsman by nature.  I decided to ask him a few questions about his favorite pastime and thus I am killing three H's in one, Husband, Hunting  and hogs.   Before I get to his answers, I want to say a few words. 

I was never fond of guns or hunting before I met the man.  My brother is a hunter and it would drive me crazy, the dead animal photos on Facebook.  Who wants to see that?  Then I started dating Mr. Hunter himself and he took me to his land in East Texas.  I fell in love with the land but not so much hunting.  I thought it was all about killing animals.  

My husband explained something my brother tried to tell me 100 times.   Hunting has very little to do with killing although there is apparently a big rush when you actually do get your buck.   Hunting is about being responsible to yourself, family, friends and the land.  Hunting is about getting back to nature and taking care of the land the way our ancestors have done since we lived in caves.  Hunting is about work.  More importantly he explained that many of the deer would die without the hunters feeding them.   We feed the animals about 9 months of the year even thought hunting is around 2 months.   Feeding a herd for the hope that you get one good shot in the fall.  Sometimes even that doesn't happen but you still take care of the animals.  Finally, hunting is controlled and it controls the population limiting the number of deer that end up bumper decorations.   One place on the east coast disallowed hunting in the area and now the auto accidents with deer have exploded.   The deer can get into neighborhoods and eat whatever you have in your front yard. My husband shared this story.   In Wyoming where he grew up, people would sit baskets of apples out at night to keep the deer from eating their front lawns.

Alright, here is my interview with the man himself.


What is your favorite part of hunting?

-I like observing nature and sitting and watching everything.  Sitting in the stand and watching the animals.  Spending time with my friends and sometimes my wife and daughter, around a campfire with s'mores and laughter.   (The sometimes is because I don't go down with him all the time. I have things that have to be done at home.)  You see cardinals, ducks, squirrels, doves, migrating birds, raccoons, wrens, armadillos, road runners,  fox, bobcats, coyotes, owls, and once even a cougar.


What do you think the biggest misconception of hunting is?

-That it is all about the kill.   It encompasses so much more, discipline, delayed gratification. It teaches a work ethic to children and adults about taking care of your land.  Sometimes you even get the truck stuck working on the land.  (This is a shot at me because I did get the truck stuck).  You find a way to achieve a goal even if it is getting the truck out.   The goal is feeding your family but there are so many steps to get to the goal.  Also, when you do feed your family with animals you hunt, you know exactly where it came from and how it was processed.  There is no mystery meat included.  

What is your off season like outside of fishing?

-There is no off season.  We are still spending time on our land taking care of the animals even if we aren't hunting.  We are feeding them, being a steward of the land.  We are still enjoying nature, watching the birds and bugs.  We still have to cut the grass, taking care of the tractor and 4 wheelers, maintaining the trailers and you still put food out for the deer.  You feed them all year long so that somewhere in the year, you get your one deer to feed your family. hopefully.  (We didn't get any last year.)  When a tree falls across the road, you have to clear the tree but you even get firewood for your home.  Mowing the roads and fields makes the land have higher value but it also promotes growth of tender foliage and benefits the animals in the forest especially the browsers, like deer and rabbits.   Cows are grazers, they sit in one spot and just eat and eat.   Browsers nibble and then move to another spot. 

What do your want people to know about wild hogs?

-They are totally destructive.  They are not native to the land.  They are invasive.    They eat quail eggs and turkey eggs.  Anything that nests on the ground.  Wild hogs take the food from the deer and squirrels and other wild animals who eat acorns and other nuts.  They root up plants (This is a shocking sight.  It looks like a bomb or rototiller went off.)   They are uncontrollable.  Normal hunting practices can't even hope to contain the feral hog population much less control it.  They are invading cities too.  It isn't just the country folks that have to worry about them.   (The city of Dallas actually just hired people to help control the Feral hog populations. That is Dallas, Texas folks!)


I told you the other day that I can't talk baseball with my husband.  There are two things however that he could go on and on about, one is hunting and the other is fishing.   I want to thank my husband for letting me pick his brain.  Okay folks, we are off to the races, literally.  We have tickets to the Duck Commander 500 today where NASCAR meets camo and the beer flows freely. 

A tale of a garden hose

Pexels

In the beginning, I wanted to plant flowers. It seemed a simple enough desire.  Add some pops of color to my already well stocked yard and make my own statement.   I mean, let's face it, I have over an acre to work with so there is a lot of room for floral fabulousness.    My two biggest obstacles were chickens who like to eat pretty much anything and everything, and a short, kinky garden hose that wouldn't reach all the way to my beds without getting messed up and driving me absolutely bat you-know-what crazy.

Enter a kink resistant garden hose to save my sanity, or so I thought.  You see, the thing about a new garden hose is that it must be attached to the faucet and then wrapped around the thingy that is attached to the house, you know, the hose holder whosie-whats-it.    Anyway, little did I realize when putting the hose away that there is, in fact, a wrong way to do it.   I mean, seriously WRONG!

And then my sweet husband came to my rescue and educated me on the proper way to wrap up a hose.  For. Thirty. Minutes.   Just because I want to share what I learned in the 2 minutes I was actually listening, the key is, you twist the hose back around as you come up in your loop so that the same part of the hose is always facing out.  There are probably You-tube videos for this crap.  Heck my husband probably made them.  Apparently, for a man, this is a REALLY big deal.  

The story has a happy ending you see, my hose has not been run over yet by the lawn mower and my flowers get water.  Okay, honestly, I assume they will.  It rained for a week straight and I haven't had to use the hose since my dear, sweetie wrapped it up and hung it on the holder.

I know we all have our own, unique, special, extraordinary way of doing things, and this is just one of my husband's many, many, many special skills.  (Luckily, he doesn't have a blog where he can share mine.)  So, what kind of "big deal" things does your husband do that make your head spin with wander and excitement over how truly amazing he is?

Things I can not live without.

Confession time:

I started writing this blog on the 17th.  I had all these great ideas for things I couldn't live without.  Alas, I woke up that morning to a sick chicken.   I thought she actually died in my arms, she seemed so sick.  Now, for those of you who do not have experience with chickens, and I am assuming this is  most of you, I have to admit, chickens are what you might consider a little bit of the drama queens of the bird world.   They are easy prey because whenever anything goes wrong with them, they flop down and seem dead.   Problem is, it makes it really hard sometimes to figure out if they are okay, in shock, or dying of some incurable chicken illness.   SIGH!

Patches suffering with Scrambled Egg beak!

Okay, so that is Patches and she has Fowl Pox.  No, not the scrambled eggs on her beak.  That is her poor table manners.  They are, in her case, little black spots all over her comb and waddle (That is the red stuff) and basically it is Chicken Pox for...well, chickens.   After her very dramatic attempted death, I brought her in the house and she acted just about dead for 30 hours.  So much so that Hubs was about to put her out of her misery, so to speak.  I convinced him to go hunting and because I was suffering from some hideous bug that was most likely really a terrible migraine headache that had me pretty much thinking wishing I were dying.  Anyway, I stayed home and by Saturday morning, after I had begun hand feeding and watering the chicken, she made a great turn around.  Now here is the bad news, Fowl Pox is highly contagious and I don't know if I isolated her soon enough.  I have 33 other chickens to worry about.  She has to stay isolated for at least 10 days which means, she is going to be celebrating Christmas with us.  So obviously from the scrambled eggs all over her beak, she has managed to feed and water herself again, thank goodness!  I mean it was like I had a baby with wings to spoon feed.  Seriously. I am too old for this.  So yep, in the middle of baking Christmas cookies I have to stop to burp the chicken.


Okay, without further chicken stories, here are the things I can't don't want to live without.

Kindle Paper White 

Kindle:

I was dead set against this.  I liked books.  I liked the smell of books.  I like the feel of paper.  But, something happened.   I got married and couldn't really read in bed without waking up the snore master husband.   Hubs is funny and sweet but he does not like to be awakened.  In fact, he becomes down right grumpy when forced awake.   If he wakes up normally, on his own, he is pretty much Susie Sunshine but if you wake him it is Oscar the Grouch.  I love my reader.  I have previously done most of my reading on my iPad mini and the thing I prefer about the Kindle is the size.  It is just so much easier to hold in one hand.   

To go right along with my Kindle is my Amazon Prime account.  First they ship for free.  Next they give me access to movies and music.  Finally, they give me books.  I mean, what isn't great about that.  The kiddo likes to read too, so much so in fact we got her a Kindle Fire for Christmas but that's a secret.   Anyway, it became clear to me early on (read when she stole my full sized iPad and started begging me for books) that I needed to get Kindle Unlimited for the books alone.  So, yes, I am an Amazon junkie.  

Source CDN.BGR.Com

iPhone/iPad:

Much like the Kindle, I resisted having a cell phone until 2000.  Can you believe that?  I felt like nobody needed to reach me so much that they couldn't reach me at either work or home.  Like anyone gives out their work phone numbers anymore.  Like anyone has home phone numbers anymore.  Anyway, my first iPhone was a refurbished bust.  What that experience taught me was never buy refurbished stuff but I digress.   I moved on to an Android phone and I was happy enough until I got my iPhone 5.   I loved that phone.  It was so good to me.  Then I upgraded to an iPhone 6 and now I am awaiting anxiously the iPhone 7 and all the rumored Apple goodness.   Somewhere in there I got my first iPad then my iPad mini and I officially became an Apple person.  

So yes, I love my modern toys.  I don't need them to survive but I don't really want to survive as much without them, now that they have spoiled me.   

Sleep time

Okay, seriously, I can't live without my dogs but I am only including them because my chicken got top billing and the dogs get so jealous when they aren't included.  I mean, don't they look jealous?  They are actually alive, I promise, even though in this photo they look like they have been smothered by pillows and blankets.  They like to burrow and prefer sleeping under something, pillows, blankets, my legs, hub's back, our bed, our pillows on our bed.  You name it and they will sleep under it.

Also on the list of things I can't live without but not pictured:

Super hubs.  I can actually live without him for a few days and sometimes I want to live without him for a few days.   Still, when he is gone a few days hunting, I am super glad he is home and I usually do something stupid to spoil him like, make him enchiladas or what he calls Norwegian Tacos. (It's a long story and no they didn't create tacos in Norway, to my knowledge.)  What can I say, I have grown accustom to him constantly talking my ear off. 

Some form of transportation, currently my Ram pickup.   Why?  Because I don't own a horse and buggy.  

Emergency Wine.   Really, the emergency could be forcing me to watch the nightly news and listen to Donald Trump and his latest hate quest of the moment.  Seriously, who doesn't he hate and who doesn't need wine after listening to him?  

Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips.  Okay, I really need to learn to live without these things but I just can't.   Nestle is just not good enough for me anymore.   These things are the bomb.   

Things I am living without that I wish I wasn't:

Ah, you speak to me you beautiful mixer you!

I am dying for a Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer.   I have been price comparing them and debating on the sky blue (left), cherry red, or the silver (not pictured).  I even found the best price imaginable on them at Sam's.   I still walked away without one.  I want it.  I need it.  I mean, my little, crappy, one blade falls out whenever I try to use it now, 20 year old hand mixer has done it's time and it's time is now up.   Still, I can't force myself to pick one up and put it in my buggy to checkout.

Okay, honestly this need didn't become apparent to me until I started Christmas baking.  I mean, mashed potatoes not withstanding, cookie dough is incredibly stiff at times, especially if you are like me, and forget to get the butter out early to soften.   Anyway, the other day making Chocolate Chip Cookies (I capitalize this because I am so annoyed that I can't come up with a really amazing recipe and yes, I have tried a ton of the "the best chocolate chip cookie ever" pins and none of them really rock my world or my Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips) I realized that the hand mixer was about to just clunk out and therefore I ended up finishing the cookies by hand.   I felt like at any moment my husband was going to come in from milking the cows with two pails of fresh milk, I was going to have to go collect the laundry from the line after hand washing it in a tub, and there was going to be a pig to slaughter for dinner as soon as we got the wood burning fire going in the stove and/or the fire pit.   However, reality struck and I knew it wasn't 1845 so I could just go buy a new mixer...someday.  

So long story short, if anyone wants to donate a cherry red Kitchen Aid stand mixer to me, shoot who am I kidding, if you want to donate one, I don't care what color it is, I will make you the perfect chocolate chip cookies, as soon as I find the right recipe.   (How hard can it be?  We know there needs to be butter, eggs, flour, brown and white sugar, vanilla, baking soda, salt and Ghirardelli chocolate chips. It has to be easier than I am making it!)