The Muzzle Load!

Okay, it's really the muzzleloader, but now I know why they call it that! Last Wednesday Justin and I took off work to go hunting. It's kind of a crazy story...


(These are the deer, you may have to blow it up on your screen, but after Justin shot, the deer went to the top and then filed out of the canyon)

At 3:45 am we dropped Mya off at my mom & dad's and headed up for Clear Creek, past Snowville. I was really tired, so I laid my head down on the console as we drove. After a while, I noticed Justin was turning and slowing down. "Did you just get off the freeway?"...the freeway was closed, which wasn't convenient since we were trying to beat the sun. So we were taking a little detour through Brigham City (I just assumed there was construction and sometimes they close the freeway at night). When we were driving to the next freeway entrance, our Explorer just shut itself off. Justin checked the oil and gauges, and everything was fine (after a little prayer, of course). The car started right up again and we were on our way. We got to the on ramp, and that was closed by a cop car. So I knew it wasn't construction. We ended up driving all the way past Brigham City until the next entrance, and the freeway was opened and cars were driving on it. It was so weird and I just felt like we were being delayed for some reason, like something could have happened to us and we were being protected. You never know, but that's what I really think.
So after we were up there, we were sitting at the top of this cliff, looking down in the canyon. I looked around, didn't see any deer (the sun was still not quite up) so I was just enjoying the view with the sun coming up and enjoying nature, when I hear "So I count 25 deer"...What?!? "Where are you looking?" We weren't sitting there for more than 10 minutes when Justin spotted all of these deer that looked like dots. I guess I was looking for bigger deer...? There were actually about 35 deer. So after 20 minutes, Justin had his deer picked out that he's been scouting and moved over to a closer cliff and shot it. He waited for this deer to get to the top of the mountain until he shot it, but after he shot it, the deer drug itself back to the bottom of the mountainside. We went, found the deer, boned it out, and carried it back up the mountain...wait...did I say we? I meant, I carried the gun up the steep mountain while Justin carried the pack with all of the deer meat in it and the head. We were back to the car by 10:00 and home by 1:00.
BUT, our day wasn't over. We ran around doing errands taking care of the deer head, finding a meat grinder, picking up Mya, and then we stayed up until 1:00 processing the meat. I KNOW, Natalie, who hates touching meat, touched deer meat, the deer we just shot that morning, cut it up, carried it up the mountain, washed it off, trimmed it up, and then made it into ground meat, touched all of this and was just fine. But even though we were so tired, it was really fun. I loved spending all day with Justin and there was some sort of pride with killing an animal and making meat out of it to provide for your family. My sisters are going to think I'm disgusting, I know. But we even cooked it up the next day, and with my amazing cooking skills :), it actually turned out really good and you couldn't even tell it was deer meat (and I am picky with my meat). I just had to get over the mental thought of eating deer!