Matthew somehow got confused and entered Hyrum for a non-youth hunt. He got drawn, which was awesome, but the area itself was strange and the timing of the hunt wasn't ideal. Normally youth hunts are during ruts or before adult hunters have scared away all the animals. Needless to say, the odds were not in his favor. They saw at least a dozen does, but Hyrum's tag was for a forky and they saw zero bucks. To add misery on top of it all, a storm blew in right before opening day and temperatures plummeted. Hyrum was a trooper, and gave it a good effort, but unfortunately he did not harvest an animal and our freezer is now without elk or venison.
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The plan was for Matthew and Hyrum to leave mid-morning on Monday, the day before opening day, so they could get their camp set up and do some scouting. My plan was to give Abraham and Mercy three days off of school since Hyrum wouldn't be doing classes, and then have all three make up the days during Thanksgiving week. The mighty hunters left around 10:00 and were home about an hour later. They hit some really strong wind near Bernalillo and had a bad feeling about proceeding. There ended up being a winter storm warning where they were headed, so we felt good about postponing their departure for a day. The rest of Monday was spent in a fairly haphazard manner. Mercy wasn't feeling well, the boys had a lot of screen time, and I spent several hours locked in my bedroom organizing and wrapping presents.
There were a number of supplies that Matthew felt inspired to add to their hunting gear. He added a shovel, an extra battery, and the wench. They left for the second time after breakfast on Tuesday. Neither Abraham nor Mercy had done their jobs the day before, so they were grounded from screen time and decided that since they couldn't do what they wanted, they might as well do school. Dad and Hyrum set up the four man REI tent inside the bell tent, which really helped with the wind, and ran a propane heater that night. It got down to 12 degrees and despite lined sleeping bags, double tenting, and the heater, it was still very, very cold.
Mercy had had a low fever and a cough Tuesday night, then woke up Wednesday morning super congested. We had a scheduled appointment with her pediatrician to get a referral for speech therapy, but because we are living in the time of Covid and she had a cold, we could not go into the appointment in person. Thankfully, we are living in the time of Covid and virtual appointments are now a normal thing, so we were able to change our in person visit to an online one and got the referral with very little effort. Mercy spent the rest of the day encased in blankets while Abraham played video games. It turned out that while Mercy was home feeling ill, Hyrum was out hunting with a low fever and feeling ill. He took a long nap in the middle of the day and went to bed again as soon as it was too dark to hunt. That night was only a little warmer at 16 degrees.
Mercy was feeling better on Thursday so Abraham spent the afternoon trying to teach her how to ride her bike. I spent their two days off doing a lot of computer work and getting caught up and even a bit ahead on things like seminary, home school, and the blog. Dad and Hyrum had run out of propane for the heater and therefore couldn't stay out another night. They returned home around 7:30 to hot bowls of chicken noodle soup and thick slices of homemade bread. They said that a lot more hunters had started showing up as the weekend approached, and since the area is so small, they didn't feel too bad about leaving early.
Today we did school as usual, then enjoyed an evening of The Mandalorian and hamburgers off the grill.
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