What a Hunt

One of the goals for my life was to get married have a kid and go on a hunting trip together as a family. As one of my goals I have been committed to going on this trip. I got married to Andrea-Ally Harper-Smith 9 years ago and I had my child, Freddy-Tim Smith 11 years ago. My son is finally old enough to go hunting at his age. I am not the richest guy but I promised myself I would take my family on a hunting trip. Living in North Carolina, I have done research on places to hunt that are somewhat close and I found a place up North. In New Martinsville, West Virginia, there is a nice place to hunt. The place is a wildlife management park that is said to have really nice animals that live there. 
I plan on packing for this trip and going to this place with no worries. We pack up our stuff and start to leave. It will be a three hour drive to this place.  On the way our camper that we are taking to sleep, in blows a tire. I put a spare tire on and we hit the road again. While we have a bathroom stop, some guy at the gas station tries to rob the store. I luckily walked in as he was trying to get money from the cashier and I stopped him from doing anything. As I walked in he stopped and turned and the cashier pulled out a bat and hit him in the head. The blow to the head knocked him out. The cashier thanked me and called the police. As the police arrived, we were just about to leave and they stopped me from leaving. I was told I cannot leave because I am a witness to the crime they gave me a card to call once everything was settled that I had to call once I got home from my trip. I did not like the idea of me having to be a witness when all I wanted was a drink from the store. Once we left time was flying by. We got to the campground in this wildlife park, five and a half hours after we left. It was dark and hard to set up our camper. It was really late once everything was set up and time for bed. It was a Friday night that we left for this trip. Hunting starts on the Monday after the weekend.
The next morning when I woke up, I made breakfast for my family. As they woke up to eat we noticed that there were a lot of other people who were at this campground. Soon after breakfast, I began to walk around and ask our neighbors at the camp if they have been to this place before. Some of the neighbors said that they have been going to this place for twenty or more years. When I went up to the woods to walk around I had seen a lot of animal sign. I walked around the woods almost all day till dark. I went back to the camp and got out the map of the park out. I studied where I had walked all day. The next day I went back out and walked some more and I have decided where I would sit for the opening day of the hunt. I also picked a spot where my wife would sit to hunt. My son would sit with me and we would both have a spot to watch. We got all of our stuff ready before we went to bed so that we could be ready in the morning.
In the morning as we ate and got ready my son said,” Dad will I get an animal today?”
I said, “I cannot tell if you will or not it’s all about timing and patience.” He looked at me and smiled because I told him that we have a nice hunting spot for the day. We finished up eating and getting ready and packed up the truck to leave for the woods. As we pulled out of the campground we had seen all of the other hunters leaving to.
Most of them said, “Good morning,” or “Good luck,” and we wished them the same. Once we dropped got into the woods we dropped my wife off at her spot. We told her good luck and left for our spot. Soon after we dropped her off we got to her spot. It is still dark when we enter the woods. My son and I get to our spot and prepare for the days hunt. Once we get settled in at the spot it begins getting light out. After it got light out we had seen some animals we cannot hunt like squirrels, chipmunks, and some birds that we cannot hunt. A short period of time later we see a deer. The deer is only a small doe and I tell my son that it’s too small to kill. He got sad for a minute but then a coyote comes walking down over the hill above us and I tell him he can shoot it. The coyote stop about fifty yards away from us and looks around. My son shoots and the coyote is my son’s first kill ever. Once we get it to the truck we call my wife and tell her. My wife congratulated him and said that she would check in with me in a little bit and hung up. So after that, my son and I go back into the woods into our spot. Once we are there it’s not long before we have two more doe come into range of shooting. Again, I told him to wait a little bit longer for a bigger animal to come in. So, we wait till about 1 to eat lunch and go back to the truck. We eat and I call my wife. She says, “I still have not seen any animals yet,” and I tell her that just wait it out and she may see something. So we finish eating and go back to our spot once again. About twenty minutes after we got into our spot we had a little spike walk across the top of the hill across the valley. It was too far for my son to shoot so he was sad once again. I told him to have patience and he will get a nice animal.
The day is now almost over and its starting to get dark. Freddy is tired now and is ready to leave but I tell him again just to keep waiting. I know that a nice animal will be coming. It’s also the best time of the day for you to hunt. It’s the best time of the day because all the animals are coming out to eat in all the fields. Luckily Freddy and I have a huge field rights behind us by where the truck is parked. It doesn’t take long before a nice little six point comes out from over the hill and stop about thirty yards from us. My son starts to shake because he has never seen a deer with horns this close. I tell him to take his time and that he cannot make any noise. He steadies the gun and shoots. The deer is now his second animal of the trip and he is done hunting for the trip. When we walked up to the deer my son started to smile and shake. It was his first deer ever he has ever shot and it was really big. I start my climb out of the woods with the deer and get back to the truck to again call my wife with the good news. When I call my wife she doesn’t answer. So I wait a couple of minutes and call again. Once again I get no answer. So I tell Freddy to get everything in the truck. I drive over to where I dropped my wife off and get out to walk down to where her spot. I have Freddy come with me so that he is not by himself. I get to Andrea’s spot to find her, to what looks like she sleeping, but I shake her and notice that there is blood coming from her arm. I immediately start to freak out and tell Freddy to get back to the truck. I pick Andrea up and carry her to the truck. I rush to the hospital that I found earlier in the week looking at the map of the town. When I run into the hospital with my wife in my arms, nurses come running with a bed and stuff for my wife. I am not allowed to go with them back to see her so me and Freddy go into the waiting room. One of the nurses come out to the waiting room about a half hour later and says that she has good news. The nurse tells me that she was shot and that she would need surgery to get it out but it will not affect anything.  So with that said I asked if I could see her. The nurse told me I could see her when she woke up. So I went back to the waiting room. I must have fallen asleep because when I woke up it was light outside. I immediately went to the nurse to ask if I could see her yet and she said yes. So I went to get my son and he was not there. I ran back to the counter where the nurses were to ask if they had seen him and they said he was with my wife already. I said okay and went to see her. I walked in and my heart dropped. My son was lying beside her on her hospital bed asleep with his head on her chest. Even sleeping he had the biggest smile on his face. She seen me walk in and smiled. I walked over and gave her a hug and a kiss and asked how she was doing. She said, “It hurts, but I am doing fine,” and I told her that she would be okay. She got her surgery later that day and the doctor came to tell me it went through fine and she could leave the following day. When I went to see her after her recovery she was so happy that she was okay. I told her I would see her the next day and that we had to go back to check everything out. When we got to the camp we looked around and seen that nothing was messed with. We ate dinner and went to bed. When we woke up the next day I went straight to the hospital for my wife. It took me about a half hour to get her out and we were free to go. When we left the first thing I asked her is what happened. She told me that she was just sitting at her tree when she heard the gunshot and the next thing she knew was that she was bleeding. She said when she noticed the bleeding she immediately got her phone out to call me. She said she remembered the time exactly. “It was 4:39,” she said. When she said that I was curious to see exactly what time I called her. My phone showed that I called her at 4:56. It made me think for a minute and when I thought about it, I said out loud, I think that gunshot was Freddy. Her reaction was, “No it was not,” but I said with the amount of time between the shot and when I called was the time we were dragging his deer out of the woods. Andrea began to cry but I said it was okay.
“Everything is fine, including you,” I said. And we were on our way back to our normal lives.