Ah... The Life of a Hunter's Wife!

The Hunting Wife’s Life!
When you are a young teenager and you have grown up with a family of hunters all your life it’s normal to date a hunter. You want someone who will fit in with your family as well as someone to be proud of when they get their first big buck, especially their first legal buck!
Where I grew up boys were shooting their first bucks illegally by the time they were 10 and wives were getting deer shot and tagged in their names while they were still settled in with their curled up hair on their pillows. So dating a hunter is kind of a status thing when you are young and grew up where I did. When I was 14 I dated a boy who was from a family of serious hunters so I learned that boys will hunt and the women folk will hang out together all secretly harboring resentment that it’s assumed they will hang out because their men folk are hunting together. But…as it went it wasn’t all that bad to hang out with the women while my “man” was hunting.

Then as I got into my twenties I married a hunter (a different one, but still a hunter). In the beginning those assumed rules of my teens carried over – and by then I had 2 kids and those rules became more a part of my life – hanging with the women folks and our babies now that the men were off “killing sumpin”. Of course the resentment building up now was not from the fact that I was hanging with the other women bitching about our hunting men, but the fact that HE was not doing anything to help in the house or helping with the kids. But that’s the way it was. After all he got up early to truck out into the woods in the snow and cold to bring home some meat for the family. He was entitled to come home, strip off his hunting gear down to his long johns, eat dinner that I made and then kick back in the recliner with food all over his shirt, mouth wide open and a sound coming out of his nose that sounded like a chainsaw running next door.

Going into my thirties this entire hunting thing was becoming an annoyance. I looked at it now as something that was just plain stupid and a total waste of time. Now married to another hunter (when am I going to learn?) this man was still acting like twenty year old playing those hunting games with the other men he hung out with. Be assured that hunting season is not just the dates you can actually HUNT – it involves months of pre-talk and planning and rehashing old stories from years gone by – and of course it involved post-hunt talks and long drawn out stories of each step and movement they took in their quest to “kill sumpin” along with the rehashing of those old stories AGAIN. So as the kids got older and I got tired of hanging with the women folk I was beginning to view hunting as a deadly enemy of mine.

Once I turned 40 things got even uglier with my view of hunting. What is the big draw? Why do men get up early, dress up in camouflage clothing, grab a gun and go out into the woods to shoot an animal that did nothing to tick them off when there is perfectly good hamburger, steaks and roasts at the supermarket? It’s not like we were going to starve if a deer was not killed. However, being 40 with the kids out of the house mostly and plenty of time on my hands I was resentful of not having time to spend with my husband so I basically hated hunting and let him know all the time that is exactly how I felt. Poor man – he was as passionate about his hobby as he was in his teens, his wife was just not as passionate with him anymore! But as the sign in his den says “Honey AFTER hunting season, you are #1” I figured a few months out of the year being #2 wasn’t all that bad. Hmmph, his den, that’s the room my daughter affectionately calls the “DEATH ROOM”. Some say it’s a man’s cave – or some crap like that.

Well I’m now in my 50’s…. my husband (same one!)still loves hunting and I am beginning to see just how beautiful hunting season really is! Those glorious days and weeks of being alone in the house, watching what I want on TV, cooking what I want for dinner or just getting take out, watching old love story movies (Red Box and I became quite intimate) while he is gone on a hunting trip. Today you won’t hear me complaining about hunting at all - now you will hear me saying things like “Aren’t you going to NY too this year?” “Why not?” – “Oh honey you should go to NH, NY AND Idaho this year”…. My how times have changed.

What is it about hunting that strikes something in the hearts of men? What is it about the actual hunt, the stalking, the winning over the animal and the kill? I guess as a woman they only thing I can equate that with is shopping! It’s like going on a hunt right? Let’s say you know you want a black skirt and purple sweater to wear to that special dinner – so you set off on foot or car and go from store to store searching for the right color, the right size and when you find it – bam! You have won! You succeeded in your quest to “get” that skirt and sweater (hopefully no other woman has the other end of it as a tug of war will ensue).

I hate driving or walking to the store. I hate the in and out the back and forth the waste of my time. I shop online where I can hunt in my underwear and even though I don’t use a gun - I use a bag of tricks I have up my sleeve – like coupon codes for special deals and my hot deals tab – AND my search feature! No skirt, sweater or any other item I want can hide from THAT search engine– it’s powered by Microsoft FAST – and it is!

It not only finds you what you want – it does all the comparison shopping for you –giving you a list of the stores and prices right then and there so you get the best deal! WOW – this would be like my husband having a gun that can shoot around corners – think how excited he would be!

The way my husband hunts is by spending hours and hours searching, looking and calculating how to best get what he wants, the elusive big buck. I spend minutes doing the same thing. My husband gets up early, has to dress warm, leaves the warm house out into the cold and has to DRIVE somewhere where he then will subject himself to the elements to seek out his treasure. ME? I get up, grab some hot coffee, walk 45 feet to my computer, put on my bunny slippers, stretch, yawn and go after my quarry.
Check my site out http://brendasabin.com