October - My Favorite Month

October is my favorite month for a lot of reasons. The weather cools, the grass stops growing. Bow season is in full swing. The first hard frost comes. The leaves change colors. Anticipation of deer season grows more each day. October memories are also something special for me. High school football games, Homecoming, all the magical Cardinal moments of the 1980s, time spent afield with Randy, Larry, Papa, and Willie, my trip out west with Annette back in 1993, on and on I could go.

This afternoon our family did something special. Each fall I need to go to a rifle range and prepare my rifle for deer season. You know, shoot it, check it out, make sure everything still functions correctly and it's still sighted in properly. This year I bought a new scope and we adjusted Michael's scope so both rifles had to be sighted in again. Instead of just the two of us going to the gun club to shoot, the whole family went, and each person shot. Michael shot his single shot .243, I shot my Winchester 30-06, all the kids shot a .22 Marlin, and Annette, Michael, and I all shot my 9mm Ruger. We've never before had a day where we all shot together.

We drove to Owensville Gun Club to shoot because I am a member there and they have a 500 yard rifle range. We left there at the end of the day and on the drive home the setting sun behind us cast an orange glow onto the treetops in front of us, onto trees whose leaves were already beginning to fade from green into yellows and oranges. It was a beautiful moment on a quintessential October day. It reminds me yet again about the importance of families finding time to do things together.

Now, Michael's rifle and my rifle are both hitting bullseyes at distant targets so the burden is now on us to deliver deer to our freezer this year. If we don't, we won't be able to say, "stupid gun." Also, tomorrow night begins hunter education which I will be taking with Michael and Abbey. Passage allows them to buy deer tags and hunt in their own deer stand. Abbey isn't ready to hunt but Michael is. So tomorrow the class begins. I was hunter education certified in 1988. I suspect a lot has changed in the class in the last 21 years!