Adventures in Learning to Hunt

 I GOT A SQUIRREL!! That's the text I sent my wife shortly after crossing this milestone. Here's the story... I drive a school bus, and thanks to COVID I have Wednesdays off. Monday and Tuesday sees half the elementary students go to school, and Thursday and Friday the other half goes. They all do distance learning on Wednesday. So I decided to get up early and hit the woods. I went to the second parking spot on the back road we had scouted on Saturday. It was the end of the road and the beginning of the path leading into many hundred acres of game reserve. The sun was barely up and the weather was delightful!  Before I go into the woods, or on any adventure really, I say a little prayer. Now, a little history... The first hunt I ever went on (as an observer) was a buffalo hunt with my Lakota friends in South Dakota. They offered up tobacco before the hunt and after the kill and basically prayed and thanked throughout the whole thing. So three years ago when I started to learn...

 This year, I decided to get into the woods on the FIRST DAY OF THE SEASON. As a bonus, my kiddos joined me! Nothing better than spending time in the wilderness with my kids. The only drawback to this was that I wanted to get to the woods before the sun broke the horizon and the kids moved slooooow when their alarms went off. We got on the road just before sunrise. Having never been to a season opener, I wasn't sure how crowded it would be. Turns out we weren't the only ones out for opening day.  Cars, trucks, even a camper, at every official parking spot we passed and even along the road from time to time.  As it happens, it was not only small game opening day, but the first day of the archery season for deer. I checked my normal spots... full. Naturally I forgot the map that shows all of the parking spots all over Whitewater, so after seeing all of the vehicles I was a bit concerned that we were going to have to head to another bit of hunting woods somewhere. I vaguely ...