Winter Challenge

The challenge of hunting is having a gazillion variables thrown at you like little knives, and you’ve not only got to dodge them but pick them up from out behind you and use them or throw them back in a more effective manner. You are still alive, aren’t you? Whether that thing thrown at you is the temperature, the wind direction, the time of day, the amount of available food on the ground, the knowledge of the cycle of the mating seasons, the rest of the animals on the field and how they could interrupt or distract you from a successful hunt, the rain from the previous season, the present diseases, and what the future may hold (you know, Dogs run to the top of the hill before an earthquake). And multitude of others including but not limited to animal horniness levels ;). It’s a lot of shit to consider!

We haven’t even gotten to other human interaction with nature.

It’s been a number of years since I began killing animals (Thank God for a magnifying glass – bye bye ants) and a tennis can (where I could shake bees and throw them on the ant hill), then my first fish (In Vancouver, BC – a rockfish while the rest of my family dragged in large Coho Salmon) first with a Bow and Arrow (I had Robin Hood w/ Kevin Costner on repeat as a child) bagging my first Ram and then onward to shotguns and rifles. But with my hometown ~~China~~ Southern California having limited hunting of Deer, I have yet to hunt something from the Cervidae family, yet I know I want to hunt them all! White Tailed Deer, Red Stag in NZ, Reindeer, Elk. Give em to me. I’ll be greedy.

Hunting works in progression, much like times-tables(you didn’t think you’d hear a Kumon joke from a hunter?), alcohol (Smirnoff Ice *blush*, beer, wine, whiskey) You don’t want to just step up to the plate and bag an elephant cause then what the heck now? Kill some crickets? What got me skimming this topic of Deer and Elk were some pictures unposted. Right now it is 80 degrees in Southern California, and the deer season is 7 months away.