When I first met my husband he told me that he was a hunter. He enjoys hunting waterfowl, upland birds and other game. His dog was a Labrador retriever and he trained him a lot. As we started seeing more of each other I started to learn how to train dogs and found that I have a natural talent of working with animals. He told me that he was going to go deer hunting only a few months after we have been dating. I questioned this because deer season was still a few months away. He explained to me that he was doing archery hunting and that the period started two months before the gun season. I knew about archery hunting, but I never knew anyone that was involved with it. I was about to enter into a whole new world of hunting.

The year we were dating I did not see him get ready for hunting. I just noticed that I did not see him as much as I would have liked on the weekends because he was out hunting. I discovered the preparation that goes into bow hunting once we were married. To begin with the the clothes he wear is completely camouflage. My husband insists that the clothing be laundered without detergents and it needed to hang outside for several days so there would be no household odors on it. The reason for this is that with archery hunting you must get very close to the animal being shot at. Next, he practiced shooting arrows into a big target that was shaped like a deer. This stage is to get a better precision at various distances. He also placed a portable bench in a tree so that he could quietly sit and wish for a deer to walk close enough so he can shoot it. He told me that there (exists|is} a procedure named still hunting in which the hunter is on the ground, but when there are still many leaves on the trees in the early season, the tree stand is a much preferable method of hunting.

I was very astonished at the amount of time to train and the energy that is necessary to pull back the strings on the bow. After a few years I started admiring archery hunting and the people that do it. It is much more of a sport that utilising a gun to shoot a deer. The animal needs to be close and the shot needs to be very defined. My husband has shot several deer and two black bears with his bow. It is more work and more time consuming, but it is a sport that he enjoys.