Woman Midwest-style

       A boat ride in pitch dark across the coves, a rocky hillside climb was the start of our deer season open...      Cold water chopped at the hull as we raced through the main channel. Ed's DIY boat headlights shone along past the cold waves, revealing jagged stubs of trees. In the summertime they are connected by jugs strung on trot-lines, bobbing with an occasional Channel-cat on, suspended in the deep water.      We skirted past those wooden stalagmites left standing when the channel was flooded, forming the lake. My quilted vest collar wrapped snug against my neck, I braced against the chilly November wind that hugged the shoreline. Fun memories of summer fishing quickly subsided in hopes of a shot at a good deer beyond the boulders, and tree limbs strewn en masse that made my climb difficult with a backpack and rife strapped to my back. I felt more like a pack-mule. And just as stubborn.      My husband guided me, shone the mega flashlight along the rubble t

  I finally broke my five year dry spell  -  shot a button buck opening day gun season...           I'd about given up after five disappointing years of no game to my credit.  I ached to break in the .243 my husband had given me for Christmas last year.  So we got up at four a.m. for the one and a half hour drive to our Truman Lake spot.     Walking in, a young man met me on the path up the hill, sweaty and smiling and out of breath.  Told me if I was lookin’ for the 8 point that he shot it.  But I had no way of 'lookin' for that buck he referred to since my husband and I had arrived only a few minutes ago, Mr. Ed was surely half-mile deep in the timber ahead of me by now, as usual, confident that I'd find my own special spot.  Puzzled or amused, I must have looked as though I wanted the story, the young man bursting at the seams to tell the first person who'd stand still to listen.  Rare on the first day of deer rifle season, but I did, his adrena