Autumn from a Nature Enthusiast's View
|This month's blog post is by Gillian Buhler who works here at Pine View Farms. She is a nature lover at heart. She is a photographer, rabbit breeder and bow hunter. She writes this perspective for us.
It’s September 2020 and the trees are bright colors of red, yellow, and orange. The sun is just barely starting to rise through the early morning fog, giving off a heavenly glow that looks more like something from a painting. The grass is cool and damp making our footsteps almost completely silent… not even a bird is singing. The only sound is the brush of my camo suit as I walk down the sandy trail, just a few feet behind my dad.
My bow is resting lightly on my shoulders. I’ve never hunted with a gun, In the 9+ years that I’ve tagged along hunting with my dad I’ve only ever carried my compound bow. My dad taught me how to shoot a bow when I was six years old, and I harvested my first deer at fourteen.
The air is so calm and peaceful, all the smells of the different plants and forest around me beat any fake scents you can buy in a store. We stop for a moment and listen; I think I hear footsteps in the leaves… or is it the warning stomp of a deer’s hoof? My dad sets off a loud bugle that breaks the silence like a scream!
We wait… Not a minute later we hear it… A bull elk screams back at the top of his lungs. The eerie sound carries like an echo as he ends the call in a chuckle… almost like he was mocking us. I think to myself “It’s moments like these that keeps me coming back every year, to be outdoors and experience things like this that some people have never been able to.”
It's that time of year again and Fall is just around the corner. How the seasons change so fast, it seems like summer only started and now I see back to school signs in the stores, fall themed décor, and pumpkin spice scented candles at Bath & Body Works.
It's time to sight in my bow. Countless hours of shooting into a foam target just trying to make that perfect shot every single time. Archery is a sport where your only opponent is your mind. Archery takes a great amount of focus and patience and if you let your mind take over, target panic sets in. If you have ever shot a bow, you will know exactly what I’m talking about!
But in the end, it is truly rewarding. The hunt, the shot, and the harvest…. It’s good to know where your food comes from.
I have been working at Pine View Farms for a little over a year now and understanding the different cuts of meat has really opened my perspective of trying different ways to prepare and cook them.
We usually just turn our deer into ground meat because we aren’t too creative when it comes to cooking! …But this year I’m looking forward to making elk and deer steaks and roasts. Elk is considered one of the best types of wild game and has less of a gamey taste than deer.
Well, back to shooting my bow…. Good Luck out there this hunting season!
By: Gillian Buhler