Sophia made it to deer camp! She had been putting it off for a few years but with the warm fall and an enjoyable youth hunt she decided to grace us with her presence. The Friday before was shirtsleeve or shirtless weather while putting up the tent. We dressed light and still worked up a sweat putting up the blind in the late afternoon. By 6 pm the temperature had dropped almost thirty degrees and brought freezing rain along with the cold front. We woke early on Saturday to fresh ice cover and snow but we stayed mostly warm in our little blind. We hunted until the mid morning and then made a quick run back to town for supplies and a newspaper for Grandprize. Getting him the paper seemed only far seeing as how we had spooked him by walking up behind him in the fierce winds and made him roll out of his chair when we broke a branch six feet behind him. We warmed up in the car and ate lunch back at the tent. I wasn't able to coax Sophia back into the woods. She did think maybe she would walk back out to the blind after hanging out in Evan in the tent. Evan made it back to the woods with about 40 minutes of light left and Sophia just made cookies and hung out. The evening played out as it often does, we sang the old songs and Sophia was able to share her first deer camp poem. At some point Grandprize even convinced her that she should use her gutting knife to give him a haircut. Given that she had already used a sharpie to make a jack o lantern on his orange shirt, the hair cut It looked alright and maybe completed the look. We were back in the woods early Sunday, the wind died down but it was still pretty cold and we packed up the blind and the season in the late morning.
