A Hunting We Will Go

It's been said that men marry their moms, and women marry their dads. I used to think this sounded kinda creepy. Scratch that - I still think this sounds kinda creepy. But I have to admit that the saying does have some truth to it. Case in point: last night. Actually, it all started after church on Sunday when Jared chased down a lady in the ward to ask her if we could come visit her and her husband this week. When he told me what he was doing...well, let's just say that I wasn't completely on board. And by 'wasn't completely,' I mean I didn't like the idea at all. And I was sure to let Jared know how I felt.

Call it anti-social, call it being shy, call it whatever you want. I don't like random visitors at my house and therefore I usually do whatever I can to not be a 'random visitor' myself. I've always been this way, too. It's no secret amongst the Hunt family that when the doorbell rang at our house growing up, you immediately hit the floor and lowered your voice so as not to be seen or heard by whomever was nosing around unwelcome at our door. Everyone, that is, except for my dad. He never hesitated to get up and blindly answer the door even after hearing, "Whoever it is, tell them I'm not home!" from every family member as he walked to the front door.

There's a very good chance that this is how things will be in the Lyman household as well. Unless Jared has his way, of course. Which at the rate things are going... I don't know. Our visit with the ward couple last night actually ended up being quite enjoyable. And I even told Jared that we should do that kind of thing for FHE more often. He just had to be the one to initiate the visits :) It was fun hearing about past experiences they've had with Jared's family and swapping stories about hunters and trespassers. The wife actually taught Jared and his siblings in elementary school which I thought was cool. Got me thinking about my teachers back in the day. My two favorite teachers were my mom (of course) and Mrs. Parrish. My mom was my sixth grade teacher and Heidi and I were both in her class. Except for not being able to call my mom "mom" in class, and being limited to two questions a day, and having to wait for my dad to get home from work for any homework help (it wouldn't be fair to the other students if my mom helped with homework), I loved being in my mom's class. If memory serves, my mom usually did a bulletin board each year with the theme, A HUNTing We Will Go. Pretty clever, huh?

But anyway, back to trespassers and hunters. It's definitely been the season for both. I've enjoyed this hunting season just because of the increase in people. Although feeling like I should wear orange when I go out for a walk or a run is kind of annoying. But other than that...  We had five hunters stay out in a trailer next to our house a couple weeks ago which was really nice. (I love the solitude out here but sometimes it can get a little old.) It was even fun watching them get their first buck outside of our living room window.

(Like most of my pics, this was taken from my phone so it's not the greatest...but the little orange blur by the haystack is what I'm talking about.)

We had the hunters over for dinner one night and heard story after story about all of their hunting successes and failures. I loved every minute of it, and was sad to see them go home at the end of the week.

The other hunter experiences, however, haven't been quite as enjoyable. For me anyway. Jared and Reed would say differently. You see, along with the friendly hunters and good stories, comes the trespassers. Jared and his brothers keep a close eye out for hunters going where they shouldn't. And they don't have any hesitancy confronting anyone trespassing on their land. My first experience catching a trespasser was on a Saturday night maybe three weeks ago. There was a truck parked at our south gate when we got home that night so we hopped on the 4wheeler and went 'hunting for hunters' as Reed calls it. I eventually spotted a small light off in the distance and pointed it out to Jared so he headed that way. Sure enough, we found two guys under a tree gutting the buck they had shot. Holy cow - talk about awkward!!! Jared did all the talking while I sat quietly in the dark on the 4wheeler. Not only do I HATE confrontations, but I feel bad for people a lot more often and easily than I should. Like that night - I just felt bad for the hunters! They were two young guys from the area and the one who shot the buck was on his first hunting trip. And after spending 90 minutes with Jared and Reed, was also likely on his last hunting trip.  Here's one of the pics Jared took as proof of trespassing....faces have been blurred to protect the non-innocent (sorry for the graphic pic):

I show this fairly gross pic only so that I can brag about the fact that I didn't even come close to throwing up when I saw the dead buck or the pile of organs on the ground next to it...which, lucky for all ten of my readers, I didn't take a picture of. Not too shabby for my first encounter with a very dead and very bloody animal.

The next hunter run-in wasn't any more impressive on my end. Reed spotted some hunters heading up the road east of our place so Jared and I hopped in the truck with him and headed out to see if they went on to private land. Sure enough, they did. Reed caught up to them and cut them off on the road to stop them. Jared hopped out with the camera and started snapping pics, and Reed hopped out to talk to the hunters. And I  sat cowardly in the backseat hiding my face and feeling incredibly sorry for the hunters the entire time very bravely and intimidatingly stayed in the truck to make sure no one tried to steal it when the guys weren't looking. Reed and Jared were quite impressed, and I'm pretty sure Jared was proud to call me his wife when all was said and done.

I'm so awesome.

Our most recent trespasser that we caught was one that has been giving us problems for just over a month now. This little guy doesn't come with a bright orange vest and hat, though. He comes with four little digging paws and a big white stripe down his back. We noticed about five weeks ago that something had been digging a hole under the house below the kitchen. A few days after we found the hole, we discovered what kind of animal it was. We're guessing there was some sort of altercation shortly before 4am on a Sunday morning involving a skunk and who knows what else under the house, because we woke up shortly after 4am to the worst smelling house in the whole entire universe. And beyond.

Since then, it's been a constant battle between us and that dang skunk. I can't even tell you how many times Jared has filled that hole only to wake up the next morning to a freshly dug hole. We thought if we kept filling the hole, the skunk would eventually get the point and find somewhere else to spend the cold nights. We weren't that lucky. We tried moth balls and skunk repellent but neither worked. That's when we decided that our only hope was to shoot the dang thing. So Jared got a live trap yesterday and left it next to the hole over night with some raw hamburger. 

We woke up to an early Christmas present this morning:

And after Jared attached a chain to the cage while I hid around the side of the house, he dragged the cage outside of the fence and took care of our little friend once and for all.

And once again, lucky for all ten of my readers, I have not included a pic of the "once and for all" part...

We're hoping that he's been our only under-house pet and we won't have any more problems. But we're definitely gonna stick the trap out again just in case. I'll let you know if we catch anything else.

Stupid skunks.