Mike and I woke up bright and early this morning to make progress on two fronts: He, to take the LSAT, and I, to complete my Idaho hunter education field day.

The field day wasn’t too horrible - though ‘field day’ is kind of a lie. It’s actually about 5% shooting, 5% safe handling of dummy rifles (like how to best carry when on line with hunting partners), and 90% classroom stuff that is totally redundant with what was already covered in the bookwork portion of the course. I was afraid I was going to be the only person in the room over the age of 12, but since it was a field day for folks who had taken the bookwork portion online, it actually turned out to be all adults.

We shot break-action pellet rifles - 25 yards, 20 rounds per person, five rounds in each of the four major shooting positions. Fortunately, I’m not so pregnant that prone was impossible - though it was a little uncomfortable. After my sitting shots, the instructor walked downrange to squint at two of the targets - mine and the guy next to me. I was convinced I’d managed to embarass myself that horribly. But nope! He walked back behind the line and I heard him tell one of the other instructors “I have a hard time seeing them when they’re all in the black.”

*smirk*

I ended up ‘winning’ an Idaho hunter education canvas bag thingy for being a top shot. I’m thoroughly stoked to use said canvas bag thingy as a reusable grocery bag at the hippie food co-op.

Anyway, I passed everything and am now an officially educated Idaho hunter, complete with a super-awesome ‘Idaho Hunter Education Graduate’ blaze-orange trucker cap. Since I needed to pick up some .22LR while in Lewiston, I went ahead and got my license and whitetail tag at the same time.

It is so on, Bambi.

—

As for Mike’s LSAT - he’s scored between 154 and 167 on practice tests over the last couple of months (I think his average has been ~160) so he was relatively confident going into it. He also swore up and down there was no way the logic games - his worst section - could be the extra/experimental section on the test. I told him not to be so sure. GUESS WHAT THE EXTRA SECTION WAS! Anyway, he said he feels like he probably scored somewhere in the range he’d seen on the practice tests, but he really didn’t have a feeling about how high or low.

He said a chick behind him at the test had a t-shirt on with a giant Obama face on it, which kind of freaked him out. I asked, “Like one of those Che Guevara looking ones, the Latin American communist propaganda kind?”

“Yep,” he said. “I wanted to thank her for the extra motivation, but didn’t really feel like getting into it in the middle of the LSAT.”

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Last but not least, I’d like to extend a warm welcome to Idaho’s newest residents: The wonderful, freedom-loving Ellie and Barry (and their pups, Gus and Raisin). They just relocated from southern California to Boise; Ellie has accepted a position at Boise State. (I’m going to let that part slide.) Neener-neener, California - we’re taking all the good ones! Y’all are so screwed.

Welcome to free America, friends!

On a totally random note, I keep meaning to tell y’all what happened to Mike at work the other day.

Poor Mike was driving down the road in his work truck. He was tired, and the afore-mentioned allergies were kicking his ass as usual, so he was driving rather lazily - left elbow out the window, head resting on his left hand, right hand on the wheel. 

All of a sudden, a deer runs directly into the side of his truck. 

He said the deer hit head-on right at the driver’s side door, and was then whipped around lengthwise against the side of the truck. (There’s totally a dent.) The best part of the whole thing? The deer’s neck CAME IN THE WINDOW and SMACKED MIKE UPSIDE THE HEAD. 

Mike hit the brakes to make sure he wasn’t going to have to deal with an injured deer, but he said he saw the dumb thing running off the road like it was no big deal. 

It’s a damn good thing it was a doe - I think he would have had a hard time explaining to the company insurance folks how he managed to get impaled by a deer antler while driving down the road. 

Now, if only we could come across this stupid, suicidal deer variety when we’re hunting them…

Mike called me from work around 5 pm to say, “I am probably going to regret this, but… do you want to rescue an injured duck?” Well duh. I got directions to the location of said duck, threw on some duck-catching clothes, and off I went.

(In case you didn’t know this about me: I have a St. Francis of Assisi thing going on. Lost and injured animals are attracted to me. They find me so I can help them, I swear. It runs in the family - the same thing has always happened to my mom, and her dad before that. Apparently this has now spilled over to Mike. Ooooh, poor Mike. It only gets worse.)

Anyway, ten minutes later, Mike and I were mucking around beneath a bridge, trying to catch a young female mallard who quite obviously had a problem with her left leg/foot. She didn’t do well on land, but managed to flap into a creepy puddle with unidentifiable swimming things (I’m 99.9% sure I saw leeches), which I was not about to go wading into. Fortunately, we were able to herd her out and catch her. 

Turns out the duck had a nasty open fracture above her left ankle. There was about 1/3 of an inch of bone protruding - it wasn’t bleeding and looked pretty dirty, so I couldn’t really tell how old the wound was. Other than that, she was quite lively and not very pleased to be in captivity. Driving home one-handed while delicately holding a pissed off mallard under my arm was interesting. 

Once home, I put her in a box with a towel over the top and set about finding somebody within a two-state radius who actually cares about a wounded wild duck. There’s a vet in town who does wildlife rescue - the office was already closed, but I called the number anyway. I got the answering service. I started to explain that “I found a wild duck with…” and was interrupted with a shrieking ”IS THIS AN EMERGENCY!?” Cheese and crackers, lady, I was unaware I called Animal 911. I explained the duck has a broken leg and cannot live in my bathtub so yeah, it kinda is, but she didn’t seem to understand the practice flipping does wildlife rescue and instead referred me to Washington State University’s teaching hospital. Okay, fine. 

I called over to WSU and after a little phone tag with the receptionist and a vet student and the doctor, they said to bring her on in. Now, Artemis (the lab) had been in her kennel this whole time, and you better believe she thought this was just the icing on her woe-is-me cake. There was a bird in her house and it was hot today, did I mention that and why am I not letting her catch the duck!? Poor pup. 

Anyway, off ducky and I went to WSU. They had a form for me to fill out, and that was pretty much that. I actually feel better leaving her at a teaching hospital than I would with a vet who does wildlife rescue on the side… Hopefully, they’ll be less concerned about the bottom line and more interested in the educational value of the experience. 

I took pictures, for posterity. The first one is my “Here I go again, rescuing things” face: 

And, DUCK! 

I tried to get one of her injury but it didn’t really turn out well with the camera phone.

During the course of this whole thing, somebody mentioned that WSU will accept wild animals from across the state line, with the exception of deer. I wonder what the deal with that is? And if you have an injured deer, what in the hell are you supposed to do with it?

As I explained to Mike, my philosophy on wildlife rescue is that the sporting thing to do is help injured animals so they can live to breed, exist, and maybe be fairly hunted another day. I’d like to think we’re a little more evolved as predators than those that just prey on the weakest members of the herd. This is why I like organizations like Ducks Unlimited, which value both conservation and hunting. 

Ha - put that in your pipe and smoke it, hippies!

Mike and I are finally getting off our collective ass to try our hand at whitetail hunting. Neither of us has been before, so this will be a learning experience.

We’ll be taking out the Savage 99 .243. This is currently non-negotiable, as we don’t have the ability to get our other rifles properly scoped at the moment, other than the 20″ AR. Just kidding! We got mounts for the Savage 99 .300. That is now the winner. I talked Mike out of hunting with the .223… Maybe someday, but I’m not really comfortable with it on our first time out.

Anyway, your mission: Share with us your sage hunting advice! Specific areas I’d like to hear about:
1) Where do you prefer to place your kill shots?
2) What level of field dressing/gutting do you do? What do you do once you get home? (Keep in mind we live in town, and rent, and share our carport with the other half of the duplex. Assume our neighbor isn’t down with turning the carport into a butcher shop.)
3) How do you age your meat? Have you ever aged in the fridge? Early season weather is supposed to be low to mid 60’s. We’d prefer to age by hanging in our enclosed storage area in the carport, but if it’s going to be too warm, we’ll have to do the fridge thing.
4) Do you do your own butchering, or take it somewhere?

Mike’s getting antsy to go zero in the rifle, so I better quit there. I look forward to your thoughts!