With Thanksgiving a very recent memory, I would like to reflect on what I am thankful for.  I realize, as I troll social media and the internet, not everyone approves of hunting. Or raising your own food.  And, I find it rather funny, that I was not a hunter until I met my husband in my mid-twenties.  I have to say, I enjoy hunting.  I love the crisp, cold mornings.  Watching the sun rise behind the trees, dancing yellow rays on bright fall leaves.  I enjoy the birds, the silence, the scent of the woods.  And I enjoy bringing in meat for my family.  It is never without a tinge of remorse.  And I think that is what separates hunters of food from killers of pleasure.  When I take the life of an animal, I always feel sadness.  Thankfulness and sadness.  I am a conservationist to the core, and a firm believer in stewardship and population management.  We spend much more each year on food and minerals and seeds for the wildlife than we could every get back in meat.  However, the meat we do harvest is organic.  Humanely harvested and utilized entirely.  From the hide to the heart.

I saw this young buck several times.  He is quite safe for a year or three.

When his girlfriend showed up, she spotted me instantly.  He was not concerned a bit until then.  Silly Boys.

There are also a LOT of wild hogs on the new place.

They have torn up the fields and roads and food plots.  If you do not live in an area where hogs have invaded, you can not appreciate the damage they wreak overnight.  Hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, in a single evening fling.  Wild pigs are BAD.  My husband, a native from Mississippi, had never shot a wild hog until this year.

I am happy to report, two of them are safely tucked away in the form of breakfast sausage in our freezer.

Organic Yumminess.