"The Woman"

Last week my sister Natalie got a call from the Fish and Game.  Don't worry she didn't get caught killing anything...it was good news! My dad has been putting us all in to kill a Bison on Antelope Island.  He has been putting in forever and it was Natalie who got the call.  They called her Thursday and had to go that same day to take a special class on how to kill a buffalo!  When she called me she was beaming through the phone with excitement.  She was on cloud nine the whole weekend.  Bj, my brother, was soooo jealous and so was my dad.  The whole time Bj kept telling her he would pay her x amount of dollars to let him pull the trigger.  

Through out the weekend Natalie would call and ask what she should wear...she had to be in style because you know she is going to be in a magazine! I mean really, what other girl shoots a huge buffalo at Antelope Island?  Just my RAD sister.  So, like always, she was lookin good Monday morning when we went out for the hunt.  

No one wanted to miss this experience.  They all had to live through her.  My dad, Bj, Klint, Jake, Red, Jayden, Aaron, Alex, Otis, My mom, and me all went out to watch.  We had to be out there at 7:00 am to meet our guide.  There were only 5 other hunters that got drawn out...all boys.  When we pulled up there were men everywhere.  Natalie said when she went inside for the mini meeting before the hunt they all looked at her with the thought of "What in the Hell is she doing here?"  

Natalie and Bob, the guide

Bob, our guide, started us taking us around.  We instantly saw some huge buffalo and got to watch them fight.  We decided to take our time and find the winner.  We drove around and finally found a huge one on the hillside.  Red, Jake, and Bj went up to scare it down towards us.  We hiked up so that we could be in a good range for Natalie to shoot.  All of the sudden we heard my mom honking the horn like crazy and yelling, "it's right here, it's right here!" It had gone around us without us knowing and it was standing right in front of the car.  By the time we ran back down the hill it was too far to shoot.  Red volunteered to chase it some more until it came back into range...he kept running and running until we couldn't see him anymore so we went back off the mountain....we finally decided just to find another one.

Meanwhile, the butcher that was on the island radioed the guide and said, "Has the woman decided if she needs me today?"  I said, "I didn't know there was another lady out here!" The guide said, "No, she IS The Woman".  It was hilarious.

We finally came up on a crowd of good ones.  The whole time Bj, Jake, Red, Dad, and Aaron had all there gadgets to tell us how far it was away, if it had a good mane, if it had good horns, etc.  We decided that she was going to shoot one of the ones we found.  

This picture is one of my favorites because it shows the obsessed, jealous men!

She sat down and got ready....and sat some more...and breathed...and sat some more...and warmed up her trigger finger...and finally shot...5 times before it finally fell over.   Each time she shot right were she needed to.

You should have seen her face when it was done!  Her smile was priceless!!! 

Then the other buffalo went and smelled it and started getting upset with us and snorting.  It was really scary.  It was huge! They said it was about 1600 lbs! It took a tractor to put it into the truck and all the guys to roll it over.  

When the butcher was gutting it, Jayden said, "Klint, dude look at it's heart!"  The butcher clarified, "no that is his man parts".  It was actually the balls.  Ha ha 

Klint and Jayden trying to poke the stomach

here are a ton of pictures: