Thanksgiving...Family and Death

A few weekends ago the Haug clan celebrated the thanksgiving holiday in style. And by style I mean the booming metropolis of San Saba. Most of the fam was gathering, except for a few important people, aka my brother(#1 traitor to Texas) and my sister(#1 traitor of Family gatherings). With the absence of these family members, I decided to class up the reunion with The Roz(who is already loved by my family more than me) and The B(who has been loved by my family more than me since I've known him). We picked up Ben and Zac, loaded up the cars with plenty of ammo and made the trek up north. Upon arrival the boys set up shop in front of the TV, which they would not leave for the duration of the weekend except for carbo loading and and fluid leakage. The weekend was full of stories and laughs, and most importantly, the killing of helpless animals. The B and I set out on Saturday evening to one of the dozen or so properties owned by the Millican family, and set up shop in the blind that B had set up a couple weeks in advance. Because I had been instructed by the B and the owner of the property to take down a young doe, I made quick work of Bambi's sister. And despite what you may think, the deer around San Saba are not nearly as deterred by the sound of a high powered rifle as you might think. The small buck that was accompanying the young lady doe, stuck around to debate whether or not to continue "courting" the recently deceased deer. We were not interested in shooting him because of his youth, so we decided to wait and see what else showed up for us to shoot. Much to our surprise, several other does came out of the woods in the next couple of minutes that really caught our eye. The does also caught the eye of the mourning and still very much "excited" buck. He proceeded to follow the other deer and see if his luck with the ladies might change. B failed to see this because he had already picked up the gun to check out the ladies in his scope. The light was quickly fading and the ability to shoot was wasting away with every waning second. The B decided to shoot at the herd and being the crack shot that he is, dropped the deer on the spot. Upon leaving the blind and approaching the second dead deer, I mentioned to the B that there was a 1 in 8 chance that he had shot the buck that had joined the new arrivals. Needless to say the dead deer was quickly identified as the "rutting" buck that we had been mocking for the past 30 minutes. We rapidly skinned the deer, removed the meat we wanted, threw the deer into the river (as is custom in San Saba), and vowed to keep the baby buck a secret from those that might not have seen the humor in the kill.
The next morning The B and I struck out at before the sun was up to see if we could bag a mountable buck to decorate the Cliffe. We brought with us the reluctant Zac and Jared, and the surprisingly willing Roz. After watching several deer pass by our blind, I decided it was time to introduce Rosalyn to the art of taking helpless life. She seemed ready for it right up until the time I had picked out a victim and told her to take a shot. She decided that the killing was not for her but said she wanted to be witness to me shooting and skinning a deer...weird. After waiting to see my trophy buck, I made up my mind to shoot the next decent sized deer that I saw. Soon after making up my mind, I spotted a very large doe strutting out of the woods only 50 yards away. I located the deer in my sights and asked my partner whether or not I should shoot it. She answered with an emphatic "yes", so I put my finger on the trigger. What she didn't see was the two baby fawns that were following the female only a few steps behind. I began to weigh my options. Do I shoot and pretend I didn't see the youngsters. Do I hope she doesn't care and won't start crying. Or do I ask her again about how she feels about shooting bambi's mommy. I went with the later choice, and it ultimately cost me a kill. When I pointed out the babies, she screamed "no" and hit my arm. This accomplished two things; created a dangerous situation that you can imagine comes with the hitting of someone with a loaded gun, and it scared away all the deer in sight and probably in a 3 mile radius. Despite the blown hunt, I did get one thing out of the morning; I got to listen to the "whispers" of the Roz for several hours (despite being told that talking was strictly forbidden). Oh well.