Successful!

Justin has been bow hunting up at Lake Georgetown for about 3 weeks.  Long story, but he had to pass a "test" where he had to shoot his bow & hit the target 10 times & total at least 70 points in order for his name to be put in the pot to draw for a license to hunt up there (Lake Georgetown apparently has a deer population problem).  Anyway, he scored a 100% & of course got the go-ahead to hunt for deer.  

(I must add that I'm very proud of him because he just got his bow for Christmas last year & he only started with his target practice a few weeks before he had to go take his test in early August.  Once again, my husband has 100 hobbies & it good at every one of them....but I'm not biased!  ha)

After 3 weeks of coming home with no deer & no spring in his step, he called me Sunday morning from his tree stand to tell me that he had just gotten one!  He had gotten up & left that morning around 5:30 to get a head-start before the sun came up -- and it paid off!  He got a doe from about 45 yards that was about 100 pounds (according to Justin, this is a fairly large doe for this area), but didn't bring any of the meat home; apparently there was something wrong with her & he didn't feel safe in letting his family eat her for dinner (thank goodness...).  The Rangers at the Lake had two theories:  She either had been attacked by a mountain lion (or some other animal) that ate her back end up pretty severely, or she had prolapsed during birthing a baby earlier in the year.  Either way, Justin cringed every time he had to tell the story about how she looked, but from the stories, it wasn't a pretty sight.  The Ranger we talked to last night said that she was probably in pain & it was probably a good thing to get her out of her misery -- no one had ever seen a live animal walking around & torn up the way she was.

Anyway...Justin has a newfound excitement for bow hunting again...just when he was starting to think he was never going to get one!  For his sake, I hope he gets at least one this season...especially after I just bought him a heavy-duty meat grinder for his birthday!!   :)

Justin's doe from Sunday, October 19th