My daughter and I went out Sunday afternoon, and had a great day afield together. I mentioned that day that maybe the story would make a good blog post. She thought she might write a story as well. When I got home today, Mikaela could hardly contain herself! She dragged me over to the computer and opened up Word, to show me the story she wrote. She hadn’t even shown her Mom yet! My daughter is an excellent writer for 10 years old, but I could hardly believe my eyes! This piece was awesome. I decided to make Micky my Guest Blogger, and let her tell the story. I decided to post the article as is (unedited) so some of us adults can appreciate just what a great job she did in writing this piece. Without further ado, I present Guest Blogger Mikaela MacFarlane. And, yes - I’m just a little proud! ~Desert Rat

Adventure Hunt

On Sunday, probably not a care in the world (at least for me), me and my dad went out hunting quail and coyote for a few hours before it got dark. I had just achieved my Hunter Education license, and was eager to get out again, possibly able to shoot at a few things. We left about 3:00 in the afternoon and set out for 37B, but I forgot the exact area; some place in Florence. We went in about half hour towards the center of the acres and acres of wild desert.

Finally, Dad pulled over at the side of the dirt road, got out of the truck, and got ready for the hour trek through the Arizona “forests”. As we walked, my dad told me the type of quail we’d be hunting, Gambel’s, and what kind of sound they made. “No, Mikaela, that’s not it, that’s a ground squirrel, a quail makes a more complicated sound.” He’d say, as I’d mistake a ground squirrel sound for quail.

Dad told me that he’d try and give me an easy shot if he saw a quail, such as if it was walking on the ground. “Isn’t that unethical,” I said, confused. “For not giving game a fair chance?” All that Dad said to me is that he was still sitting on the fence. So we got into this big discussion on ethics and fair game. As the chat died down, I was getting tired, and slowed to a very slow walk, while Dad walked ahead. Occasionally we’d stop and listen for quail. There was nothing.

Halfway through the hunt, when I was like 20 feet behind Dad, for I was very slow-paced ten-year-old. Suddenly, I saw something that amazed me as much as freaked me out. “Dad!!! Tarantula!!” I screamed to Dad, who seemed mildly bewildered with the yelling. He spun around, saw the great hairy spider and said, “Whoa! Cool!”. We didn’t know that there was more to come for us that day. And I was still losing hope of finding quail.

Finally, after 45 minutes, just as I was out if hope, we heard quail 100 yards away. Careful not to spook the little tufted birdies, we walked very quietly over to the clump of bushes. Dad thought they were too small, but asked me, “Do you want one?” Shocked, I replied, “Sure,” so Dad took his aim and fired one shot out of his 12 gauge pump shotgun. It was so loud that I covered my ears for the second shot. Once he was done, I picked up the shotshells and asked whether he had hit the bird or not.

Once I got the ok, I walked over to the bush and picked up the medium-sized quail. As he looked for more, I examined the bird, expecting to see puncture marks everywhere. Not a single shred of evidence that it had got shot. Except that it had blood on its beak. Dad found none more, and we walked back to truck, as I picked up the “souvenir” rocks of quartz that I had found. We took our pictures, ate our granola bars, did the necessary to the quail meat, and hopped into to the truck for the ride home, talking all about our great trip.

But we had one last animal visit. As we drove through the dirt roads, we saw a Diamondback Rattlesnake in the middle of the road! Dad drove backward so we could see the rattler, and stepped out of the truck to get a closer look. I wanted to see the rattle, so my dad took a very long stick and jabbed the snake. As it slithered away, I got a glimpse of its black-white rattle.
The quail meat we had that night, and it was delicious by the way. We never stop thinking about the tarantula, the quail or the snake. Today I still call it The Never Forget Hunt, or the Adventure Hunt.

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