How to Eat Crow During Hunting Season

Many years ago I was owned by a mixed breed dog, Dixie. There was hardly a day that passed by she was away from my side. One evening, I found her laying on the ground with blood streaking down her coat, barely alive. I knelt beside her and gathered her little body up to my chest and ran inside the house calling for my husband to have our vet meet me at the clinic. While wrapping her up in a towel and a blanket, I heard shots ring out. It was hunting season. I stood there holding my swaddled dog, tears running down my face, swearing to my husband that he better find the person who shot her, before I got back.

Let Anger Be Your Appetizer.

A raging mama grizzly would have been much easier to reason with. I exchanged very heated words with my husband, who was an avid hunter and the sole reason behind the hunting on our property. Upon tearing out of the driveway, I berated some of the stunned hunters gathered at the sign in lodge. I was fully consumed with blind rage, and wanted to conduct my own hanging on their skinning racks. Even now, I wonder how I made it into town without hitting something, or strangling some rifle bearing hunter with my bare hands. The emotional roller coaster could not have been any different if it was my child that was lying there, bleeding on the seat next to me.

Show Your Lack Of Logical Reasoning.

As the vet worked on Dixie, he listened to my tearful convictions that she had been shot by a hunter. During his initial examination, he pointed out where a set of fangs could possibly have punctured her shoulder area coming out the other side, in a pattern not consistent with a gunshot wound. Her spleen and stomach were also damaged. His findings left me more than just irrational. I was still not ready to give in to this theory as my fingers traced the markings of her stitches that ran throughout her little form. Leaving Dixie at the vet was hard that night, but harder still was trying to do some logical reasoning with myself on the drive home. I was not ready to let go of the scene of a hunter looking down the cross hairs of a rifle at what they knew was not a feral dog.

Mustering The Courage To Take That First Bite Of Crow.

We had always made the habit of listening for the shots during the hunting seasons and guessing who the lucky hunter might be. The eventual realization that there were not any gunshots heard before I found Dixie, did little in helping to prepare me for that first bite of crow. I waited for the platter full of crow to arrive. It came in the form of uncomfortable apologies, and I, myself, did not hunt at all that year. In the end Dixie healed up nicely, with just a small hernia hanging out under her tummy. This caused people to comment on what a beautiful dog I had, and ask, "what is his name?". My mother-in-law's German Sheppard, responsible for the mauling, met her untimely death by the wheels of a UPS truck several months later.