Thanksgiving week finally rewarded with some hunting at the end

The week leading up to opening day of duck season held plenty of chaos. First we would be travelling with our 3 month old twins starting Wednesday morning and not stopping until Saturday evening. Wednesday we left Memphis for Jackson, MS to take family pics with my in-laws. Our babies feed every 3 hours, and the drive to Jackson is 3.5, so you do the math. We ended up stopping at a Hampton Inn in Batesville, MS and feeding them in the breakfast area since it was empty at 11 am. We made it to Jackson with enough time to get unpacked before feeding babies again. We then went to take pictures with my wife's parents and 3 brothers, along with their babies. 7 kids, all under 4. Lots of screaming kids. We finally wrapped that up to get back to her parents to feed the babies (I think you are seeing the pattern for my week). Next day we went to Meridian for Thanksgiving lunch with a ton of her family. Lots of more chaos and feeding babies and driving. Finally Friday rolled around and we went to my hunting camp. I missed the morning duck hunt, but it was a bust anyways, so I didn't care. Almost as soon as I got there, I passed off the babies to my mom and dad as well as the other guest to take care of for a bit. I went off by myself to some stress relief and sighted in my AR with it's new scope I got for my birthday, and then proceeded to burn off an additional 40 rounds just for fun. When Saturday morning arrived, and for me my first duck hunt of the 2012-13 season, I was wide awake in anticipation since the 3 am feeding of the babies. Brook, my 1.5 year old lab was more excited. She was bouncing around and almost howling with excitement after suiting her up in her neoprene dog vest. The hunt was great. I took a member of our club and his grandson. We were covered up in wood ducks at first light, and then plenty of spoonies and teal after that. I was letting the grandson shoot primarily and he ended up with 3 shoveler and a wood duck, and I managed 2 mallards and 2 wood ducks in between chasing his cripples with Brook in the flooded corn. It would have been a fairly easy limit of 6 birds for me, but giving a young kid the opportunity to shoot by himself at the ample opportunities was fun. 2 more birds for me wouldn't have changed my life. Brook made some great retrieves and found a couple birds that landed in thick cover that would have been impossible to find without her. Here's Brook after the hunt while I picked up decoys.

We pushed home to Memphis Saturday afternoon since the birds really aren't down to our place yet in Mississippi, and ended up bow hunting for deer Sunday morning in Tennessee. I saw a ton of deer that were on the move with the rut in full swing and the first sub 30 degree morning, but nothing worth shooting. A couple small bucks passed by, and several does came well within range, but I wasn't going kill anything unless it was a nice buck. I wasn't too concerned with not killing anything. I've killed a lot of deer in my 30 years of existence (and 17 years of actual deer hunting)and most with a bow. Deer hunting is my least favorite of all the hunting I do, but it has the longest season of anything I hunt and it fills a lot of time between turkey, dove, and duck hunting. Since I exclusively bow hunt, I can hunt them from late September to the beginning of January in Tennessee. However, it has become more of a meditation to me now. It's a way to just sit comfortably by myself in silence and just relax. And there's no better way to relax than in the peace an quiet of nature.