Saturday, October 15, 2005

Hunting

This morning I woke up at 5:30 to go hunting with my dad. Hunting is an interesting sport. I love it but it doesn't really make all that much sense to me. Especially when most of the time you are trying to outsmart all the other hunters and not necessarily out hunting the deer. It is the hunting part I like not the stragegy. So it starts to annoy me a little when dad and I sit on a hill for 30 minutes trying to decide where we should go to outsmart this other guy up on the hill. Should we go south and chase those deer even though there are a ton of other people waiting on the south end or should we go along this rockslide and try to push the deer out of their beds hoping that there is a legal buck? Hmm. This takes much pondering. We ended up doing the later, which was my favorite choice. We did push the deer out and we would have had a perfect shot except that there were no legal deer in the bunch. As dad says, "We were snookered." Don't ask me what that means, I am guessing fooled or cheated. We were in such a hurry to get up the hill and make sure no one else got the deer that we took no water. So it was tiring and I am so out of shape.
But despite my complaining I really do like to hunt. The adrenaline rush of sneaking up on one is amazing. My dad's friend and I did that last year and we got about 10 yards away when we realized it only had 2 points. But I was amazed at what a rush I got. This year I didn't actually have a license or carry a gun because I decided that I didn't really want to shoot a deer myself. I have no problem with seeing someone else kill one, but I didn't want to do it myself. But I enjoyed going along for the ride and spending time with my dad. And he teaches me so much about deer and their habits, things I am sure he learned from his dad and it becomes a generational thing to me. I am glad to spend time with him doing something he enjoys, sharing that with him.

Father-daughter bonding is the best. I suggest that you all do some of that soon with your dad. It is such a special time. It's great when your dad treats you like a princess and spoils you with ice cream and such, but it is also great to do something with him that he enjoys. Even if you don't. I am blessed to enjoy what he does, but I think the main reason I do is because he is doing it with me. I don't want to miss out on that. I don't want to regret not showing my love to him when I was young when I am older.
In a way I also see it as preparing me for being a wife. A wife needs to be supportive and join in the things her husband enjoys too. Doing that with your dad can be a "practice" run. Like playing house in a way.
But most of all I see it as a symbol of our heavenly Father. He also wants to spend time with us doing what He wants and what His heart is in. And that is loving Him just like it is loving our dad here on earth. And it is important to Him just like I know it is important to my daddy.
I love my dads. I hope I am showing it.

2 comments:

Waywordgrrl said...

This is so sweet!
My dad and I used to go skeet shooting together! So much fun and all the while he was teaching me how to use a gun and telling me how terrible boys were and I didn't want to get married and leave him did I? hehe.

I miss those times...

Christina said...

I loved how what you shared about hunting with your dad blended so well with what we were talking about at church last night - we should bear His burdens because we just want to be with Him, and to be a part of the things He's a part of.

I love it when our faith becomes practical, when the rubber meets the road!

Maybe I'll see you tonight at Dawn and Dave's...

Love, Chris