Gopher Day

Ok… this is the part of the blog that gets gritty,  definitely more the Camo part of C&C. However it’s part of who I am and I feel the need to share, for anyone it offends- my apologies. Last fall I bought a Diamond Razor Edge compound bow and started practicing at the archery range, my goal to ultimately kill my own Easter or Thanksgiving turkey (trust me they’re sneakier than they look). After the long winter, we felt a little practice in the field was required and what better practice than the multitude of gophers milling about. For anyone who is unaware, in agricultural settings gophers are pests, they destroy fields leaving it unsafe for livestock and riders. Many farmers/ranchers exterminate them in various ways. Since my number of shots to hits ratio is about 1000 to 1, the gophers were relatively safe and unscathed.

So how do you set about gopher hunting you ask? First off 4 X 4 into a large field, then grab your equipment and survey the landscape- looking for little darts of movement (brown gophers on dead grass landscape are hard to spot). Finally if you see one- be very quiet and still (my technique of making a high pitched squeaking noise and running after them was not the key to success). Funny enough, I eventually had to get into full hunt mode and “sneak up on the gopher”. NOTE TO SELF, while crawling through spring runoff in a pasture laden with cow manure, don’t wear new jeans, or Uggs, or really anything you don’t want to incinerate afterwards.  And then the aiming part- don’t rush the shot! Patience is a virtue I guess because after hours of practice with targets to finally have to shoot at a moving object sometimes only the size of an egg; in my excitement I might has well as thrown the arrows at them by hand.

But this isn’t a fairy tale, in the end there were two victims- one was kind of an accident so maybe 1.5 victims. The outing taught me the skill required to be effective with a bow. And though I felt like I was ten years old catching marmots with my brother again, I definitely need some more practice at the range before Tom the Turkey and I have a date.

Also I had to add “Norman” to my blog. Norman was a calf that was left by a pond where we were shooting gophers by, his mom was MIA so he decided to come over and investigate what were were doing and continued to follow us around for the rest of the afternoon. Although I want a puppy, Norman was more than I had bargained for so we made sure he met up with his mom before we left for the day.

Norman

Gopher Stalking

Aiming with my David Yurman

Gary may have helped out....

Hanging out with Norman