Hunting 101: Boonies Style

I know I keep mentioning it..on Twitter and Facebook..but I am so sad when I found out that The Bloggess grew up just 10 minutes from where I live and that we didn't know each other growing up. But at the same time it makes me proud that she is from around here and made me look back on my own upbringing here in West Texas.

I have never considered myself to be a country girl. Ask my husband, I am NOT a country girl. Even so, there are things you just can't avoid when you grow up IN the country. Like hunting...and everything that goes along with it. My dad lived on a 100-acre spread about 45 minutes from town. There was nothing on all of this land except for a tiny house, a large shed, and animal pens. That's it. I hated going out there for weekends. I was a teenager! I had a social life and my dad had a party line...oh the inhumanity! There was a lot of hunting that when on out there. Sometimes from my dad's front porch, just grab a shotgun!

But out there in the sticks they didn't need guns to hunt. Oh no. One time, two of the kids that belonged to two of my dad's friends (it was a party every day out there) decided to hunt for Dove. No guns? No problem. Mark, who was 18 and...husky, tossed a rock into the middle of a grove of trees. This was just to startle the dove he'd seen fly into the trees. I can't say why that stupid bird flew DOWN instead of flying UP, but it flew down out of the trees and Mark reached out and caught the dove. Just reached out and grabbed it. WITH HIS BARE HANDS. And then, calm as you please, he handed that dove to a little 8 year old girl named Tatum. That's right, the girls name was Tatum Rainwater. NO, I'm not making it up. Anyway, he handed the dove to little 8 year old Tatum who snapped the birds neck. Like, no big deal.

I swear I heard dueling banjos off in the distance.