Bolivar Hunting and Building a Mantle

This past weekend my parents came up to visit. Dad came up to go hunting and Mom, just to visit. A few months back I bid on a hunting trip at an auction for the American Liver Foundation. I’m a sucker for auctions. For some reason, every time I go to any type of charity event with an auciton, I completely lose my mind. I bid on all sorts of stuff. Whether I need it or not. This one was no different.

The problem with this trip was that I really don’t have any need to ‘buy’ a hunting trip. Dad’s got land in Mississippi that I can hunt on for free. Also, I have a lifetime Mississippi hunting license, so I wouldn’t have to buy one. Still, it would give us a chance to hang out. So dad came up, forked over 175 for his license, I paid 80 for mine, and we were off.

The guy that offered the trip in the auction’s name was Jim. He was
an absolutely awesome guy to deal with. The trip was originally for me only. He said Dad was welcome to come also. He said we could kill one buck between us and 2 does each. So we met him on Friday afternoon in Bolivar and hit the woods. We didn’t see a thing, which I thought was odd. It had just gotten really cold for the first time the night before so I figured the deer would be moving. We went home empty handed though.

The next morning we headed out again for Bolivar. Dad saw a six point, but I didn’t see a thing. I was overlooking a creek and the scenery was great. Just no deer. That afternoon, we went hunting one last time. Dad told me that he and Mom were heading back to Jackson that night. I didn’t know that. So I’m sitting in my stand and thinking that I probably won’t shoot a deer. They’ve got about 4 and 1/2 hours of driving ahead of them and getting messy to clean one deer isn’t worth it. I thought that it may be worth it if I could kill 2, but of course, that can’t be guaranteed.

About 4:00, 2 does came out in front of me. I watched them for a while thinking that if I shot one, the other would most likely run off. So, not worth it. Then 2 more came out. I watche all four of them for a while and all of a sudden 2 of them crossed each other. That got me thinking. I thought that if they did it again, I’d try to shoot two at one time. A few minutes passed and two started walking towards one another. I managed to squeeze off a round right as they crossed. I dropped both of them on the spot. One through the neck, the other through the top of the head.

We got the deer cleaned up and headed back to Memphis, only to be stopped by the Bolivar Christmas Parade. Man, that thing lasted FOREVER. We waited probably 35 minutes before we were able to get back onto Hwy 64. There are some pictures on the photo pages.

In other news, I built a mantle over the past few weeks. It doesn’t look too shabby. I’ve primed it and will end up painting it.

Laura and I are going to have another ultrasound today! I’m so excited. She’s getting even bigger. We should get a 4D picture so that we can really see what she looks like. My parents gave us a mattress for the crib this weekend, too. We will be able to put the bedding on it in about a week or so when we get it back from the lady in Georgia that is making it for us. Laura’s pretty fired up about that.