The 2019 hunting season will be tackled by yours truly sporting some pretty fun new gear this year. I am not one who thinks I need new crap all the time. Quite the contrary actually. I am more notorious for hating change so much that I will stick with my same ol crap after it is well beyond its best by date. Why can’t our gear just last a lifetime?! (*Sniff Sniff*) Anyway…I started down the joyous road of wonder with Pnuma last year. I am happy to be continuing to use their epic clothing line this year and adding some pieces to my wardrobe. I find the woman’s hunting gear options to be incredibly lacking and Pnuma has zero woman’s clothing available but I am blessed to be built more like a small man anyway so hey…works for me. I want hardcore layers with waterproofing built in and merino wool as the base layers and Pnuma fits the bill to a T. I can’t find woman’s gear that is warm enough and tough enough and waterproof enough to handle the crapshoot that is my hunting style. I also have really broad shoulders and monkey like long arms that often just make woman’s clothing look like I’m trying to wear my kid’s stuff. Not practical and the wildlife snickers rudely from the bushes and it’s just frankly distracting and more than a little humiliating. I need these animals to take me seriously so yeah.

My hubby and I both got new packs this year after using the same old packs for years. He always carried this tiny little wanna be pack and I always carried a military issue 3-day assault pack with more like a week’s worth of crap jammed into it. If it wasn’t for the freakishly strong military zippers, I would have long ago split the seams of that poor thing. Even so when my hubby said he was looking into new packs for us he got “the look” from my ugly mug. Ya know…change…it’s hard and why in the world would I want a new pack with more than enough room for my week’s worth of crap that also has an incredibly comfortable pack frame incorporated into it? I mean, that is just ridiculous. Who wants all that comfort and practicality in their lives? Not me, I wanna fight with my overloaded pack and carry it strapped with bungy cords to my pack frame. Duh. I came around eventually and now we both have some sweet packs from Stone Glacier. True to my husband’s nature of researching the research, these packs fit all of our needs and then some. I can’t wait to put them through the paces this year and I am slightly and reluctantly excited to be able to pack my whole hunting room around in it with a level of comfort I have not known in past seasons. My biggest fear is that…well…the comfort level will make me into (*gasp!) A PANSY. I guess I’ll just have to make some other part of my life more uncomfortable to compensate for the lack of pain when carrying my pack…cuz that makes sense.

I saved the best for last. I need to put in a disclaimer here that I do NOT deserve my husband. He’s ridiculously good to me and frankly I don’t know why but it’s just a fact. That said, he bought me a new gun for my birthday this year and this isn’t the first year he has done that. I was just as shocked this year and just as excited as well. He went all freaking out and plopped into my lap this beauty of a gun. It is a Barrett Fieldcraft chambered in 7mm 08 with a fantastic Vortex Viper HSLR 4-16×50 scope sitting proudly on top. I drool over it honestly. It is the best gun I have ever laid my hands on and it shoots like a freakin’ dream. Incredibly accurate, slimline and so so light! In fact, it almost makes me mad how light it is because I am used to carrying a 15 lb. gun around the mountains with me and after him giving me this pansy backpack and pansy weighing gun, I feel like maybe he’s trying to make me weak somehow? I’m gonna keep my eye on him. Literally just one eye because my other eye doesn’t work but that’s a story for another time. I took this rifle out to the ranch and helped my dad lower the excessive population of ground squirrels that are creating foot traps for the cattle in our pastures. After killing four squirrels with four shots I felt pretty darn satisfied that this rifle is going to be a tag notching machine. She’s a thing of accurate and deadly beauty.

So that’s it! All these crazy, fun, new, pansy creating things will be getting the Lindsay test in the mountains this year. It’ll be a fun ride…a crazy journey and I might come out on the other side with a few new skulls for the wall and a few less muscles but I’ll find some other way to compensate for that.