My husband loves hunting waterfowl, upland birds as well as other game. His dog was a Labrador retriever and he trained him a lot. As we started seeing more of each other I began to learn how dogs are trained and noticed that I have a natural ability to work with animals. He told me that he was going to go deer hunting only a few months after we have been dating. I questioned this because deer season was still two months away. He told me that he was doing archery hunting and that the period began two months earlier than the gun season. I knew about archery hunting, but I never knew anyone that was doing it. I now knom that this is a entire new world of hunting.
I did not see him get ready for hunting during the year we were dating. I just noticed that We did not spend as much time together on the weekends because he was out hunting. Once we were married I discovered the preparation that goes into bow hunting. To begin with the clothing is completely camouflage. My husband insists that the clothing be laundered without detergents and it has to hang outside for several days so there would be no household smells on it. The reason for this is that with archery hunting you must get really close to the animal that you will shoot. Also, he practiced shooting arrows into a big target that has the form of a deer. This was to get a better accuracy at various distances. Also he installed a portable stand in a tree so that he could quietly sit and hope for a deer to walk close enough to be shot. He explained that there is a technique named still hunting in which the hunter is on the ground, but in the early season when there is still many leaves on the trees, the tree stand is a much preferable method of hunting.