OPENING DAY TURKEY

This is the first year (out of 3) that I've actually killed on opening day ... what a great feeling! AND, it was with a BOW! WOW ... been trying to do that for two years. I started shooting again (after my wrist surgery) a week ago and bam! I got a turkey! Woo-Hoo!!!! Here are some pictures!

He weighed 24.6 lbs, 10.5 inch beard and his spurs were 7/8 (a little over). He's probably a two year old bird and one of the 3 Amigo's we've been watching for a couple of years!

The long boring story: we sat almost all day Saturday. From 10:30 - 4:00 before a group of Toms, Jakes and Hens made their way to our ridge. This Tom spotted our decoy and made a beeline for it. Steve was taping with the video camera and was trying to make sure we were on the same bird. When he saw this one come he, he was like this is your bird. So as the turkey is FACING me in the blind, I draw back, but I guess he was so intent on the decoy he never noticed me. Drawing back sitting is hard, let me tell you.... takes all upper body strength and when you're trying to do it without being noticed and quickly .. more pressure! So I get pulled back, waiting for him to take a step out from behind the decoy and I let the arrow fly. I hit him a bit far back, but I knew I had hit him. He ran off, down the hill. Not just a hill ... a mountain and ended up dying in the creek. WOW! Lucky for us, Neighbor Mike hiked back up the mountain with him for me, I'd never had made it!

More news from the Burch family household

With only 3 months to Turkey season, my goal killing one with the bow lies on 4th Ave in Downtown Nashville..... how do you ask? Listen to this story!

Em had a cheer competition Jan 30 at Municpal Auditorium (downtown). Forecasters were calling for bad weather, snow and ice. Since we live so far from downtown, in rural Davidson County, I knew we'd never make to the Auditorium at the 8:30 arrival time without leaving the house around 7:00. And there is always the chance of not making if they close "the hill", which they have done before.

Em and I get a hotel room 2 blocks from the Auditorium at the Doubletree. We weren't the only family to do that, the Seals did the same thing. So we walked with them to the Spaghetti Factory Friday night and then early to bed. We got up early, when down for breakfast, got ready and packed our bags and started the 2 block walk to the Auditorium. It had snowed ALOT! The roads were covered, the sidewalks covered ..... everything covered and really pretty.

We get not even a full block from the hotel and I knew Em's feet were getting wet. The cheer shoes she has are held together with white tape since the sole is coming off. I see a metal grate up in front of us and my idea is to stop there and clean off her feet, knowing that heat comes up from the grates, I thought it would be warm. Little did I know that it was covered in ice. As soon as my waterproof boots hit that grate, I'm landing on my booty ... and snap goes my right wrist. I knew as soon as I landed that it was broke. I got up and calmly told Em we had to get to the Auditorium because I had broke my wrist. Poor thing had to carry the luggage and one other bag while I carried my purse and supported my wrist. We finally make it to the Auditorium and I found a police officer who takes me to the medic office. The police officer was nice and asked me questions about moving my fingers and tried to give me hope that it was just severely sprained. I knew different. But I kept a small sliver of hope. When I got to the medic office, she took office my glove and both she and the police officer agreed it was probably broke. The officer offered to take me to the ER, since I needed to go. Luckily though the Seals' were already at the Auditorium and while Em stayed with Mrs Seal, Mr Seal took me to Baptist ER.

I was really dreading going to the ER. I just knew it was going to be packed. I've never been to a ER that wasn't. To our surprise it was empty. They took me straight back. The Dr looked at it and said yep, it's probably broke, but we need xrays to see how bad.

Here's what it looked like at the ER:
So, I never called Steve, since he wasn't thrilled that the girls were performing anyways. And I really wanted to wait till I was calm again before I called. I was a little emotional. I did call my mom and tell her. I eventually called Steve and he and mom decided that my parents would go watch Em and Steve would come to the ER. He got neighbor Mike to bring him down since he can't drive yet because of his shoulder. I sent Mr. Seal back to the Auditorium because I didn't want him missing the girls (and he always take pictures). And then I sat by myself and had a little pity party. How could I be so stupid, how was I going to pay for this, why did it have to happen today. Then I got better. Made some calls and then they came in and took xrays, asked if I was sledding when I got hurt. Ha-ha ... wish I was doing something fun.

Dr. came back in and said yep, it was broke and I needed SURGERY!!! WHAT????? I couldn't believe it. They needed to put it in a temporary cast and I needed to call the orthopedic dr Monday morning and he thought he had time at 12:00 to do surgery!!!! OMG! Here's the xray:
See that little piece of bone sticking out, it's not suppose to do that! It's all suppose to be aligned.

Right after they casted me Steve came in. The doctor got a kick out that since he was splinted on the left arm and me on the right. We drove home and I spent most of the weekend in terrible pain and sick from the pain and meds.

Monday morning I get up and call the Dr office. I go in at 9:30ish and he says yep, we need to place a plate and some screws in there to hold it all together. OMG! And we have you set for 1:15!

So instead of going home for 1 hour (and the road were still terrible). We went on over to the surgical center. It was an okay experience. I never got sick, never felt sick. Just sleepy. Steve kept me drugged! Here's what I woke up to:I wore this for one week. It came off 2/8 and I got the pass to go back to work on 2/15! I now have a removable splint and I hate it, but I'm glad it's removable. I can almost completely use my hand to do everything, including type. It's still very stiff and it does hurt some. Especially after work since I guess I'm using it a lot. I can't pick anything up yet and I can't pull or push with it much. But it's on the mend. Here's what it looks like:At first I was worried about my elbow because it was black and blue .... all on my elbow and up my arm. Some of it was probably settling, but my elbow is really sore, so I probably hit it when I fell too, but the ER dr checked it and since it wasn't painful when he touched it, he didn't think anything of it.

It's been a long 2 weeks. But I glad that it happened when it did since Steve is still home recovering from his shoulder. And we actually made a pretty good team. Since I couldn't use my right arm and he could, we worked most things out. My parents feed us a couple days, went to the grocery for us and I had a couple of friends from work make us supper and we ate on it a couple nights. I really just learned how to do things differently and slower.

So no bow shooting for me for a while and I'm thinking that a wrist release isn't going to work for a while. But I think my this fall, I'll be okay.

Update from the home front ..........

Steve's second surgery was Jan 13, on his shoulder. He's now in therapy. He's doing pretty good. Dr. Anderson repaired his labrum, rotator cuff, shaved off the end of his collar bone and did some general clean up. The therapist said the bone would give him the most problem. I just can't wait till he can get out of the house and drive himself. His neck surgery wasn't too bad, because I was off the 2 weeks he couldn't drive. But now, I'm back at work and Em's back at school, so he's lonely and stuck at home, one armed. And this morning you could tell. We were both in foul moods. He was mad because he says I don't walk right and I was mad because he was mad, plus I was tired. For some reason he doesn't think he walks heavy .... but he does. He says he don't because he doesn't walk heel first ...... SORRY, but thats how I walk. I've been walking this way for about 38 years now and probably won't ever change! I'm also tired of doing EVERYTHING in the house. Taking out the trash, feeding the dogs, cooking, cleaning, laundry, giving him baths, helping his ice his arm, etc, etc, etc ..... I'm so glad I'm not a nurse, I'd probably kill someone!!!!!!

Anyways, Em's finger is okay. Still a bit crooked and her knuckle is still swollen, but we go back to Dr. Chris today and we'll see what he says. She's back to cheering and tumbling with no restrictions and she says it feels fine, so maybe it's okay. Just looks funny.

Hunting is over for 2009 .... Steve's already found more land in Kentucky to lease along with some friends. It looks promising. We're hopeful he can keep this one a while so they can do some food plot and management on it.

We are gearing up for Turkey season. Steve's ordered us new leaf suits. I'm excited ... we have a huge turkey on the farm in KY that has a nice fat beard (I've posted pictures of him before). We call him paint brush. It is fun to turkey hunt, but I really wish we could find a different bird to hunt ... don't want too many of the same bird. You know that North America actually has 4 types of turkeys, Rio Grande, Merriam, Eastern, and Osceola. If you kill all of these, it's called a "grand slam" in the turkey hunting world. Rio turkeys are found south west, Merriam turkeys are found north west, Eastern turkeys cover the largest area - mid US to East Coast and the Osceola's are small birds usually only found in Florida. There is also a bird in Mexico called the Gould. It's a beautiful bird, as is the Merriam. Maybe one day, I'll have all 5 on my wall!

We had a little snow the first of the month. Not a lot and it was SOOOO cold that it was not a good make anything snow. And it messed up the roads for about 2 days. Schools were out for 2 or three days. We're hoping for one more really good, go sledding kind of snow, then I'm ready for warm weather.

Gotta run, update more later, hopefully with pictures!

Surgery date

As many of you know, Steve hurt his neck and shoulder at work on Dec 18, 2008. We've been dealing with workers comp and finding the right time to do the surgery. His shoulder hurts, but just enough to be annoying. His neck though, has really been giving him a time, especially these past few weeks. He has a bulging disc between c6 & C7. He's been in so much pain in the past few week, I'm almost afraid his ruptured. He's not even really felt like hunting much. His surgery date is finally set for Dec 17. Please say a prayer for him if you think about it.





I haven't been hunting much either. Too busy.





First, Emilee broke her finger Nov 13 tumbling. Of course, it was the day before a competition and I told her to suck it up and perform (not believing it was broke). When she let the trainer at school see it, he said we might want to have it xrayed if it wasn't better by Thursday. So on Thursday, we hopped on down to Vanderbilt Children for xrays and it was broke. Friday we sent to see Dr. Mark Christofersen at TOA and he immediately said, it's fix it with temporary pins. So my baby was to put to sleep the day before Thanksgiving. He set the break and inserted two pin and then casted the hand. This is what it looked like that day:

Now it is covered with about 75 signature of all her friends from school. I'll be glad when it comes off!

Gotta run, more later!

Halloween & cabinet

This is the only picture I got on Halloween. This was at Abby's house when we dropped off Em. Yes, there were girls there, but they were already around back. You can barely see Emilee back there.

This is my new project. I bought this last year and it's sat in my parents basement waiting for me to get motivated to clean it up. I finally decided yesterday was a good day since the weather was so pretty. I also stopped by our neighbor's house and talked to his step-son about making me a butcher block top for it. I plan on using this as my stamping station. I've gout about 1/2 of it cleaned up yesterday. I think it was used in a garage at some point because it was pretty greasy.

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Cheerleading competion in Nashville

This was the girls first competion of the year. They did good, but not great. Their dancing was amazingly good, but stunts need work. Em and her group dropped their flyer, but nobody was hurt. Our varsity did the same thing, great all the way through till the last BIG stunt and a girl fell. Nobody hurt thank goodness!

Em getting her makeup done!

Libby watching Heather get her's done and Lacy's in line behind Em to get her's finished.

A few of the girls:

Abby, Em and Heather

Emilee is in the middle during this jump. Pretty good!

Trying to smile even though she was soooo nervous!

Beginning of dance sequence... they rocked!

Deer pictures

Just wanted to update you on the deer we're seeing on the leases. Pretty impressive!

My Cougar Cheerleader!

Here is my little cougar cheerleader. She looks little "harried" in these pictures. I usually can get to school before the game starts so I can pull up her hair really tight, but with my new job and the games times sometimes starting at 4:30, I can't always make it.

Intern Adam

When we went to the Jonas Brothers concert, Emilee was dying to have her picture made with Intern Adam from Y107.5. She was so excited! She was funny because she wouldn't talk to him .....

Titans Game

Emilee danced again this year with the Titans. Here are a few pictures from the event. She got to dance on the stage to start off the show... it was GREAT! Such a proud momma moment. She did as good as the "big" cheerleaders did! Actually I think she might have know the dance better than her coach! Check out that perfect bow ... do I have it or what?

School & life

So, hunting has slowed down for me some. Emilee's schedule is busy right now. Football games, school fundraisers, competitions, halloween, etc. I get to be the one to stay home and be the taxi driver. But that's okay. I know Steve needs his time to hunt also. When I go, he doesn't even take his bow in the woods. It's all about me! (isn't that nice!). Maybe the first weekend in November I'll get to go. For you that know hunting lingo, it's be prime rutting time, so maybe getting a shot at big buck will happen.

Emilee has been struggling a little with school lately. I think she's too much like me, social butterfly. She has a "boyfriend". I really use that loosely, because he's basically her lacky. They text and talk all the time and when they are together, he's usually just following her around or doing stuff for her. But whatever. He's a good kid and their family is good family. Her report cards comes out this week (or maybe next) for the first 9 weeks and she's got like one a and the rest b's and c's. The c's were f's one point in the 9 weeks, but she worked like crazy to bring them up. I still might ground her from the phone though, because of of those c's was english and her biggest problem was not studying. Actually studying is her biggest problem in all her classes. And believe me, she's too much like me ... she HAS to study. No easy subject for her. She likes social studies and science, but I think that's more about the teacher, because they make learning fun for the kids. Anyways, let's pray that the next 9 weeks is better - let's pray that she's learned a little from this 9 weeks.... a little studying can be rewarding in the fact that you don't have to spend a whole weekend doing extra credit to bring up your english grade!!!!!

Work is good for me. Okay for Steve. He's having neck surgery the week before Thanksgiving (we hope) and then a couple weeks after that, his shoulder surgery. Of course, dealing with workers comp is terrible. It's a big ole' pile of yuckiness. We finally contacted a lawyer, because 1) everyone told us to and 2) to make sure we were doing everything right and V wasn't taking advantage of us. Steve's neck injury scares me. He's been so active all his life and our marriage. I certainly don't want this to slow him down. His doctor appears to be really good and says it's nothing, plenty of people have this type of condition (bulging disk) and even Chris Hope that plays for the Titans has had the same exact surgery that Steve is having. But still, scarey stuff.

I changed jobs the first of Sept for those who don't know. Same place, just different boss. I'm working for a women now and she's great. I love what I do. I'm still learning and I'm constantly comparing myself to the previous AA because she was the greatest, but I really try to remember I'm basically learning a new job and it'll take me a while. C didn't get to be a great AA overnight and neither will I ........

Gotta run!

Sept 5 - KY hunting season starts and I was there!

So, the hunting season in KY started September 5. We were there! My first real hunt as a hunter! I was nervous honestly. I'm not sure why, but I always get that way till I'm settled and in position. So we get up Saturday morning at 4:00 after only 3 hours of sleep. We see deer, I draw back on deer and never release my arrow. Never saw a real buck. We did see a deer we have nicknamed unicorn because he only has antlers on one side. Fast forward till Saturday afternoon. We are heading back to the stand. Early afternoon ... Em texts to tell us storms are heading our way. As soon as we get in the stand we have deer on us. Several deer actually. I stand up for 1 1/2 hours straight, and even pulled back and help for about 3 mins before letting down and having arms of jello. It thundered on us and rained pretty good, but did it deter the deer? Nope, they are there. I finally got a decent shot at a doe and took it, only to miss. Steve says he knows what I did and it's basically at rookie mistake. Hey, we are all allowed. Neighbor Mike went hunting with us and shot a doe, so in the pouring down rain, we load up his doe, field dress it and get it hauled to the processor. Steve and I were soaked to the bone, because by now, it was raining really good! Sunday morning we got up at 3:30 and was in the stand by 5:15 or so. It was still dark. The sun rose while we were sitting in the stand. Had a couple of doe and a nice spike come up, but nothing to write home about till the very end and we had a HUGE bodied doe come in, but never close enough for me to get a good shot.

Hunting is a little stressful. First there's being scent free. Steve had me showering and washing my hair with scent free stuff for a whole day before we left. We had Scentblocker clothes also. And you spray down with the scentblocker stuff about 20 times. Then you hike as quietly as possible to the stand, through the dark in leaves, bushes and fallen trees/limbs. Then you take off your bow, hook it to the pull rope, then climb into the stand. FIRST thing you do is strap yourself into the safety harness. THEN, you pull up your bow, take off the quiver, nock an arrow quickly cause you never know when they will get there. Then you put on your jacket, gloves, facemask/head cover, spray down and then take a deep breath. You do all this as quietly and as fast as you can. Hopefully you won't be sitting too long without action or you'll go to sleep. I nodded off a couple times myself. After the deer come in, you've got to be really quiet and move really slowly cause they got really good eyesight. It's crazy what they can see. And their sense of smell and hearing is top notch!

It was a fun weekend. I especially like spending time with my hubby. Our 18 year anniversary was yesterday (Monday, Sept 7) and although hunting doesn't seem like fun to most, time spent with your life partner is always good.

Trail Cam Pictures ... 7.24.09

Steve and Neighbor Mike went up to KY leases Friday and hung stands and swapped out cards on the trail cameras. They got some really good shots. We spent most of Friday night downloading them. Then Steve spent Saturday morning/mid-day deleting the bad ones. We usually get a lot of the same deer and LOTS of racoons. We also have black birds and nothing shots. Anyways, its really fun to see what you've got on them. After we download them and weed out the bad ones, we put them in Picasa (cause it's the GREATest), so we can view them full screen. I noticed a few things when I did this that we didn't know about. Also love on Picasa that you can add text. Makes keeping up with our different deer a little easier.

I'll point them out:

When this pictures was full screen I noticed the deer in the back. You can't really see it too well, but it's there and what's weird is that in the next shot it's in the picture and the Skinny 8 has already passed. This camera is set up on a trail and guess who's stand it on it? MINE! and its only a 12 yrd shot! I'm pretty deadly from 10 - 18/20 yards, so I should do good on this. Steve was happy to get these shots because it just shows that the deer really use it, since there was no corn down at all to attract them.

We all know that I'm a turkey junkie, so to see this moma BEARDED turkey with poults is pretty cool. This turkey is legal to shot because she is bearded, but really... why? Other than it's really cool to see a bearded hen. We have one that lives around us and I've seen her in the fields, but never while hunting.

This is Tall-Wide 8 .... he's got a very nice rack, even if it's only an 8. He'll be a good deer next year for sure if nobody gets him this year.

More turkeys .... TOMS and JAKES! This is Paint Brush Tom ... looooook at that beard. KILLER! I have to say, if I even see a turkey during bow season, I'm game to try and shoot one, especially this honking huge bearded TOM!

This is Kicker 10. We see him a lot at this spot. Sometimes alone, sometimes with a male friend and sometime with a lady friend. We also discovered while viewing this full screen, that he has 10 fully developed points and one "kicker" that comes off his left side browtine... pretty cool. Here's another picture of him.

So, I won't get to use the leases much .... but it's fun to see what's up there and we've still haven't found the deer that made the freakly huge tracks in the blog entry below.... still waiting on that one.

Steve had me shotting today out of the stand. Getting more comfortable being up there on that little platform. Hope I get a shot of at least a nice doe this season! We need some meat in our freezer!

Thats all for now. Blog ya later!

New pictures from last year

Last weekend, I borrowed mom's iBook and took it to KY. We wanted to download trail cam pictures on Steve's leases to it so we could leave the memory cards (that didn't work - another story or another time). But while I was pulling some pictures off Neighbor Mikes' card, I found some pictures we made at the beach last year. I barely remember taking them and they turned out really good. All of me and Emilee. We think Steve was playing golf and Mom, Emilee, Nana and Grandaddy were waiting for him to get home. Mom took these......

As mentioned above, we visited Steve's leases in KY. I know, doesn't sound real exciting, but it wasn't bad. I wanted to go since I had never been. Plus out of the 3 adults, I am the only one with any "computer" abilities. My job was to download the memory cards off the trail cam. BUT, I discovered on the way up trying to clean off one of Neighbor Mike's cards that my card reader won't read a 4gbHC card. So much for using it - good thing he had another 256 that I could clean off for him. They had two camera's already out. One with a 2gb and the other with a 4.... and you guess it, 4gbHC card. SO, I couldn't download Steve's card... the one with over 1700 wildlife pictures on it. We did stop at a Walmart to buy two more cards and I talked them into 2 gb cards, so we wouldn't have any problems. But, it really doesn't matter, because to get those 1700 pictures off the card (with no camera - because we replaced the card and left the camera strapped on the tree) we had to buy another card reader. NO problem though because it reads HC and non HC cards. BUT it doesn't read mom's compact flash card... bummer!

While visiting the lease with the camera's we saw a momma deer and a little fawn. It was toooooo sweet! When we left that lease, we visited Steve's other lease. Check out what we saw there ....

a freaking HUGE deer track. I actually asked Steve if he was sure it was a deer track. Needless to say, today he is in KY on this lease, checking for more FREAKING huge tracks. They don't have cell service where they are, so I'm not sure he's found anything... but they are putting out another camera in the location so we can watch for him!!!

What about Steve McNair? RIP! I saw him once at Goodpasture. He was a pretty big fellow. He was getting in his car and I was parked behind him. I really wish now I had stopped and either taken a picture or at least gotten his autograph, but I always hate bothering folk like that. I mean, doesn't Nashville pride itself on leaving our Celebs alone? No I wish I had! It's really a very sad situation. Nobody deserves that ... and neither does/did his wife. I'm sure she's a basket case right now. I didn't realize till just Wednesday that I know the guy that found him, Wayne. I use to buy all kinds of stuff from him at the sporting goods store across the street from work. I was actually in there about 3 weeks ago buying Steve a pair of weight lifting gloves to use when he cuts. Poor Wayne for finding his friend like that. I'm sure it will haunt him the rest of his life!

Emilee is at cheer camp .... this is her first camp experience and they are staying in dorms at TTU! Today has been a better day than yesterday .... and I think she'll be so tired tonight that she won't even remember our names. We go pick her up tomorrow. I miss her, but I think this is really good for her to learn to be more independent. Good for both of us I guess! :-)

Gotta run! Check ya later!