Looking Forward to the Season

No, not the season for holidays. I'm not talking about turkey and pumpkins and bright colored leaves carpeting the yard.

I'm not referring to snow and presents and Christmas dinner and carols.

Don't you know that there's another season that comes before all that? Actually, it runs right through those other seasons. It's all encompassing and consuming.

What is this season, you ask?

Hunting season, of course.

Not that I'm an expert. I'm more of a spectator in this season. Actually, until I met my husband, I didn't know that people still hunted. In fact, when he told me that was one of his hobbies, I asked him if he knew that grocery stores now sold meat all packaged and ready for cooking.

Early in our marriage, Terry asked me if I wanted to go hunting with him, but I turned him down. Getting up in the wee hours of the morning and bundling up in multiple layers to ward off frostbite from temperatures below freezing is not my idea of a good time.

Although I don't understand it, I do know that this hobby is of great interest to my husband. And I'm okay with that. He works hard, and he definitely deserves this time of relaxation. And who can argue with the great mounts he provides to decorate our home?

He has even pointed out that his hobby helps provide meat for our table, and I certainly don't deny that. He's filled our freezer through more than one season, saving us money. After all, how much cheaper is to to just buy a hunting license? Of course in our state you have to buy a base license first. It doesn't actually let you hunt anything, but you have to buy it. Then you buy the small game license and the doe tag and the buck tag ... well, you get the picture.

And then, of course, once you've bagged your game, the butcher has a price for processing the meat. If you don't want to go that route, you can do it yourself. You'll just need a really good meat grinder. And a strong stomach.

In the meantime, while I don't go hunting with my husband, I did a little hunting on my own. I found a great sale price at a butcher shop about twenty minutes from here. They had ground beef for $1.59 per pound and boneless skinless chicken breasts for $1.25 a pound. That is incredibly inexpensive for around here. I hopped in my car and headed out for the hunt. In the end, I bagged over 50 pounds of meat at great prices. I brought it all home, separated it out, package it up and filled our freezer.

Boom.

Guess Terry's not the only hunter in the family after all.