(I have no idea how many times I’ve done this.)

I surprised a friend this weekend with this fact – I used to go hunting with my dad.  I used to wake up at insane hours in the morning, dress in his extra camouflage, cover my hair since it was too light, and sit in a duck blind in a wetland with my dad and his dog.

Ironically, I never shot my dad’s gun while hunting. But I did shoot his military rifle.

….In PE in high school. It was actually funny because the guys assigned to this recruiting effort class kissed my ass because my dad outranked all of them. By a lot.

….Plus one of them had a crush on me. (He was like 22, and I was 17.)

My parents said they would have let me date him had he had the balls to ask me out.  Don’t ask how that topic came up between him, my parents, me and a friend of mine.  In the end, he didn’t have the balls to ask me out.

It’s funny how all of this came up this weekend because I was having flashbacks to all of these hunting trips as my dad and I were hiking back through a wilderness area.  His little tips at spotting deer in heavily wooded areas when I was a kid all came back and made me realize how good I was still at it.

…..As I was pointing out deer he wasn’t seeing.

And as we walked thru the wood, I realized how much I am his daughter.  We both hike through the woods quietly – very conscious of where we are stepping and how much noise we make.  More lessons from hiking with my dad as a kid.

It’s funny how these lessons stuck with me and no one else.

Happy Wednesday!