My outdoor pursuits got put on hold this month for work travel and spending time with my out-of-town family. Of course no summer in my life would be complete without partaking in the full complement of activities at Cheyenne Frontier Days - the world's largest outdoor rodeo and western celebration held right here in my hometown.
The end of CFD has always made me a little sad. Growing up, it was the event of the summer in our family. Rodeos, concerts, carnivals, parades and seeing family and friends - Frontier Days was the highlight of the summer. Held during the last full week of July, it was also the beginning of the end of my summer. And that was not something I wanted to think about...until now.
Now, I can hardly wait for summer to end and hunting season to begin. One successful hunt and I'm hooked and want more. I'm like a little kid at Christmas, except that instead of bothering my parents about buying me a pony, I'm bugging Outdoor Guy about where and when we're going to go. He promised to take me deer hunting around Sheridan, and if he hadn't remembered that before, I must have reminded him of it half-a-dozen times last weekend.
"So where exactly are you going to take me? When can we go? When should I get the license? When does the season open? What kind of stuff am I going to need? Can we go shoot soon?" And on and on and on. I think the only reason he bought two elk calls at Cabela's the other day was so he could practice on the way home and not have to deal with my relentless chatter.
Like any good kid come Thanksgiving, I'm working on my wish list of stuff I want. Last season, it was my first hunt and I didn't want to pour a lot of money into something I might not stick with. Now, I've got catalog pages marked with Post-Its and Internet sites bookmarked to revist once I get my August paycheck.
The Becoming an Outdoors-Woman camp I helped with in June only fueled my hunting obsession by getting me interested in archery hunting. I longingly handled the season's newest models of bows at the store, raising each and pretending to bring them to full draw. I must have had that stupid day-dreamy look on my face most normal women get when they look at Brad Pitt, because the salesman turned to Outdoor Guy and said "You need to buy this pretty lady a bow and quick!"
Heck, that might have sold me on buying two bows, but Outdoor Guy just laughed, mumbled something unintelligible to the salesman and quickly hustled me out of the archery department. I was tempted to make a crack about how he should be glad I was admiring a Bow-Tech Diamond bow and not a diamond of another kind, but decided not to push my luck. He had the car keys.
"You're going to cost me a fortune, woman," laughed Outdoor Guy, taking the 20-gauge from me at the shotgun counter a few minutes later. I must have had that stupid Brad Pitt look again. No wonder I can't win at poker.
Just yesterday I decided to entertain myself on a trip home from Buffalo by buying a beginner elk mouth call for practice. I'd been mocking Outdoor Guy when he tried to use his, telling him he sounded like a dying duck in a windstorm.
"Better?" he asked a few minutes later after several dozen more consistent, if not entirely authentic, noises.
"Did the elk eat the dying duck?" I mocked.
I'm here to tell you, those mouth calls are a heck of a lot harder than I thought. I didn't know I was capable of producing that much saliva, let alone projecting it out of my mouth in so many directions. After gagging and slurping and cleaning off the windshield a dozen or so times, I started to get the hang of it. I think. If elk are attracted to a noise that sounds much like an 18-month toddler pitching a hissy fit, I'm set.
So I'll continue to hone my calls, start get in shape and begin compiling my gear for the days ahead. But until opening day dawns, I'm going to be doing my best impression of a little kid on a really, really, really long road trip and whine...
"Are we there YET?"
