First, let’s clarify “hunter” which in my case means more like “watcher”. We aren’t very mad at them. We just like to plant food for them and watch.
I talked to Janie about being very quiet and no talking all the way to the stand. About half way there we got out of the golf cart and at the top of her lungs she says, “are we there yet?” Good grief.
Then I carefully instructed Janie to either walk beside me or just behind me. I noticed her footsteps were much louder than mine and so I looked back and she was stomping along. We stopped and had a coaching session about how to step lightly. All went well for about 100 feet when everything got really noisy again. This time I looked back and she was shuffling her feet and enjoying pushing a pile of leaves in front of each foot… with each shuffle. Again we had a coaching session about how to walk quietly and concentrate on staying right beside or behind dad. Then I noticed how quietly she was walking…feeling proud of how she had learned to walk quietly… to be unseen… to be unheard. Then it hit me…. She’s not even with me. Something had caught her attention and she had just veered away. She was behind me and out in the field about 100 feet away pulling up soybean plants and stuffing them in her pockets. Good grief. Once in the stand she waited no less than 1 minute and said “are we done?” She was disappointed to hear that we were staying until dark for sure. We saw 18 deer and she showed virtually no interest. The first thing she said when we got home was, “Carly, make sure you never go deer hunting with daddy. All you do is walk real far, sit in a cold box until it is dark time, and you can’t talk. It’s terrible.” Or in Janie speak “it’s tewwable”.
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