Thanksgiving and Hunting

Robert and I went to Montana on Wednesday. Alan drove us up to Bozemen where my mother then picked us up. We traveled to Kalispell where we had Thanksgiving dinner with my aunt Phyllis. At about 2:00 Thursday morning on our way to my aunt's we were passed by a pick up truck that could not seem to stay on the road. There was a lot of fog and the roads were a little wet, but not icy yet. When he came back over into the lane in front of us he went over the white line by several feet. All three of us in the car knew for sure that he was drunk. All of us were thinking, we wouldn't be suprise to see him off the road in a ditch after awhile. Sure enough, we saw that same truck rolled over on the opposite of the road in the ditch.

His headlights and engine were still on when we came upon him and so we think that it had only happened maybe 2-3 minutes earlier. This happened about 10 minutes after he passed us. We called 911 and Robert got out of the car to go and check on him. He was fine and said that he was not hurt or bleeding. The car was laying on the passenger side and he was suspended by his seat belt. He was only about 3-5 feet from hitting a telephone pole. Man was this guy REALLY lucky!! All he cried about after he knew that we were there was that he wanted us to get him out, however, 911 advised us to wait until someone got there. A cop came fairly quickly and then we waited around until everyone else came so that we could see how he really was. Yeah, pretty much he was just drunk. There were SO many cars that came out to the accident. We wrote a statement and then left. We got to Phyllis's house at about 4:30ish that morning and then were in bed at about 5:00 or a little after. Robert and I slept most of the day until dinner. We ate dinner and that is as exciting as Thanksgiving got for us.

Today, when Robert and I got up we decided to go hunting with my mom and dad. Tomorrow was the last day of hunting season and so mom really wanted to use the tag that she had bought. So, we drove down their road about a mile until it dead ended and then turned around. On the way back everyone was looking for deer out to the sides of the road and then I looked up in front of us and there was a young buck just starting to cross the dirt road. I said stop and that buck just stood there and looked at us. My mom got out of the car and started to get ready, and then he started to walk across the road. Robert then whistled and the deer stopped and just stared again. My mom then aimed and shot the buck down. One Shot!!

We drove the 50-100 yards to the deer that was down in the road and then my dad shot him in the head just to make sure. We weren't quite sure where my mom hit the buck until we skinned it. My mom gutted it right there on the spot and then we put it on the hood of the car and drove it back to the house. It was like a 2-3 minute drive. When we got it here at the house Robert and I then had to finish getting the vital organs out. We had to take out the heart, lungs, liver and a kidney. I think that my mom got one of the kidneys because we only took one out. I got kind of grossed out the first time that I stuck my hand in to pull out the organs because it was still warm. Every other time that I have done anything like cutting up an animal it has been really cold and so, it was a shock to me. I soon got over it and helped to take out the insides. We then went to lunch. Before lunch we hung it in the rafters of my parents garage for it to finish bleeding.

After lunch we skinned it; while skinning it we found where my mom hit it. It was just above the shoulder, but a little high for the heart and lungs. Most likely when she hit it she paralized it. My mom found the bullet just inside the skin on the other side from where she shot it. It was a pretty clean shot. Nice work, mom! I got a small amout of meat that was on the ribs in between the layers of fat and cooked that up. The meat still had quite a bit of connective tissue/fat on it and so it is really chewy, but it tastes good to me. That was our fun day today. Hunting didn't last long, but we now have some yummy young buck meat and it was a new experience.