I am sure it was pretty hard for my daddy living with a house full of females, but he was always willing to take us deer hunting and such. One COLD day in December Dell & I got up at 4:00 a.m. to go on an all day hunting trip with momma & daddy, today they would running the dogs.
After we met up with the other hunters in Monroe County and they planned out their run we were all placed on our deer stands. Dell & I were usually always placed together. After about an hour Dell & I were so cold we were shivering beyond control and the thermals were not helping. At the time Dell was 16 and secretly a smoker, so we had the bright idea of using her hidden matches to start a small fire, after all, what could it hurt? We could hear the dogs running in the distance as we cozied up to our fire but the barking seemed to get further away, no concern of ours however.
After about 15 mins of sheer bliss we heard daddy blowing the horn to pick us up and he seemed awful early, like the run had just started so why was he here to get us?
He was not a happy camper!! Not only had he seen our smoke, he and all the other hunters could smell it as well!! What was the big deal? THEN daddy explained to us in a rather high pitched tone that deer RUN AWAY from fires and sure as hell not towards them!! Oh well Dell & I thought you live and learn. P.S. the other hunters and our mom were just as upset, my daddy told that story for years and that's not even the best deer hunting disaster story. More to come....

I was so excited!! I had killed my first squirrel!!  My excitement was short lived when daddy told me that I now had to clean it!!?? I was shocked and appalled with such a suggestion, daddy proceeded to tell me "if you kill it you clean it", my heart sank, he guided me through how to properly make the cuts so I could pull the furry part off and I successfully accomplished that task. Once again I was so excited!! Then he informed me I also had to gut it, just the sound of those two words together made me shiver. He talked me through how to cut the belly and I did so with my eyes partly closed, and oh my goodness when the smell hit me I began to gag of course the actual vomiting quickly followed. I don't think I had ever seen my daddy laugh so hard, He really got a kick out of that!! Needless to say I finished the task at hand but I was never interested in killing a squirrel again.
And I NEVER tried to actually kill a deer, I kept imagining what the cleaning experience would be like.