I’m not sure what it should be; the first little thing to write seems fraught with neediness. Be important! Be relevant! Matter the most!

But this isn’t that. This is meant to be light-hearted and speak to where I’m at today. And all I’ve done since the crazy days of the recent wedding of my youngest is climb up every day to my fort waaaayyy out in the middle of woods in the middle of the freezing north and sit in winter.

Hunting is hard (and super cold), friends. There are months of prep (acquiring my new rifle and practicing and preparing the area and a million other boring details). I cannot cheat and bring a heater up there. I’m already the girl skipping Wine and Tapas Deer Widows Shopping Night and getting a surprise 35 Remington rifle as a gift from my sweet man instead of jewelry. I certainly cannot abide by or justify ridiculousness like pink camo or WARM AIR! I do feel like I have a lot to prove (don’t we all most days?!).

And then when it gets right down to it, hunting means you sit and conquer your need to pick up your phone, (each year this makes me truly question if one can perish from sheer boredom) and hopefully, at some point, decide if you feel confident enough to aim and pull a trigger on a living thing (that is a real challenge every time).

Let me explain that we can and only would ever shoot the nasty, mean, killing bucks. And we hunt to fill our freezers (not for sport).

With all that said, I’ve compiled a list of the reasons I hunt for so many hours every. single. day:

• I stand at 60.5 inches tall. Taking down a big ol’ buck with iron sights feels pretty bad@$$ no matter how you slice it.
• I love to shoot guns. I love the smell and the satisfaction and the skill.
• Gosh dang it, I prefer being *one of the guys* and think I have my whole life (truly, my eyes roll at Wine and Tapas and Shopping).
• I love being in a tree fort watching birds and wolves and watching the snow fall. It’s time that is unscripted, unspoiled, and all mine.
• It’s both forced quiet and the most adrenaline rush (when that big-chauvinistic-pig-buck peeks out at me I have also wondered if one could perish from a lengthy round of heartbeats all the way to fingertips) I may have ever experienced.
• I mean, who doesn’t like getting dressed and then undressed in 6 pairs of pants and 18 shirts twice a day and hauling gear up slippery steps and sitting in the wind and cold until appendages are numb?
• Hiking too far through the woods in the dark with fresh wolf prints and a recent cougar kill nearby is just every girl’s idea of a great time, right?
• And mostly, dropping trou to pee in a bottle is a life thing every girl should try at least once.

And BOOM!! Since I first wrote this post, I nailed that sucker! A buck that all my husband, all of my sons, and even the deer processor complimented me on. Biggest success: one shot that dropped him where he stood at 55 yards with iron sights. 165 pounds of meat later, this, indeed, is why I hunt.

Would you hunt? Is there an activity that you enjoy that you wish people could understand better? Tell us about it in the comments below!