Oregon Magazine

Cover

Widow's Lament
Hunter's Wife
Expresses Issues

By Kelli McCarty Wall

I am a hunting widow. I dated a hunter that used all the hunting tactics any good man uses to get "a good one." Saturday night dinner dates with flowers or cards enticed me to hang around (the 'automatic feeder' ruse). He would use his best 'deer calls' (phoning me at work, to let me know he was "thinking of me"). It was great. I was a deer in the headlights. So I did what any girl would do...I married him. I married a man who told me he liked to go hunting. I said that was nice...end of conversation.

Since I did not come from a family of hunters, I didn't know what I was marrying into. In our first week of marriage we moved from a big city to a small town. He unloaded all our belongings into our first apartment, carried me over the threshold and kissed me-it was so romantic. I couldn't wait to open our beautiful wedding gifts and decorate our new love nest.

Our cabinets were filled with our sparkling new china and the linens were neatly folded and put away. I laid the fresh doormat out for our first guests to wipe their feet. While I was unpacking to start our new lives, my husband was packing. Little did I know it was the official 'opening day of hunting season.'

There I was, surrounded by boxes and wrinkled newspapers as he announced with the excitement of a Christmas morning that he would be leaving for his first big hunt of the season on what was my sixth day of marital bliss.

What entered my mind was the rewarding career, friends and life that I had traded to be abandoned. I had changed my name, my life and my plan to find myself second place to a family tradition that was in his blood. I was in Shock. I screamed. I yelled. I cried. I did what any new young bride would do...went a little crazy. I pleaded "help me understand!" He looked down at me as I begged him not to go. Through my tears I heard a justification that still haunts my very soul..."all the old men at the deer lease say that I shouldn't worry if you're upset now, because someday you'll be glad when I go hunting -- that you'll even pack my stuff and won't even miss me."

With that, he shut the door as my tears fell to the floor.

Ten years later: as our wedding anniversary fell on opening day of deer season I was still in second place, but with flowers and a sweet card. What I wanted was a nice romantic weekend away from kids and daily life. Maybe I didn't yell my original request loud enough, because now he and his father are enjoying each other's company on a nice four-day weekend away from the kids and the daily grind while relaxing by the campfire telling hunting bedtime stories.

Yes, this is year #10 and I have learned many things about my husband and his mistress (the great outdoors).

I have seen him set up an automatic feeder and camera to photograph animals in their natural setting. He can also sit quietly in a deer stand waiting, waching and looking at nothing....hoping for a glimpse of something, yet will not sit quietly to enjoy, or have me enjoy, an on-stage performance or a movie. Most of all, I've learned that he was right, I don't miss him. I do enjoy the peace and quiet those wise old hunters spoke of.

I relish not cooking a big dinner, getting the kids to bed early and watching TV that does not include gunfire and death to deer. Ironically, my husband has learned that he misses his family more and for some reason it gets harder for him to leave every time. For our anniversary next year he asked if we could spend some time alone...I said "sure...go hunting and you can be alone. I have a babysitter, suitcase, swimsuit and a girls' weekend planned. You'll get a postcard."

EDITOR'S NOTE: this treatise was submitted by a lady living in Idabel, Oklahoma and we felt it appropriate to publish as we near the local hunting season. Kelli is collecting stories for a proposed Hunting Widow's Diary, so if you have a related tale to tell, contact her at: www.imahuntingwidow.com
imahuntingwidow@gmail.com
kelli_idabel@sbglobal.net