As I am writing this we are right in the middle of big game season. The moose rifle hunt has just wrapped up and the deer rifle hunt is just hours away. I still believe that the first week of deer season should be an optional holiday, no school and no work, but I guess it doesn’t matter too much because I didn’t go to school and I don’t go to work during the hunt anyways (one of the few perks of being a business owner).

Whether you are in room 7 at a hotel, cottage 7, a privately owned camp or hunting from your own home it doesn’t matter as long as you get to hunt. No day beats opening day. The excitement is overwhelming and for those of you lucky enough to hunt out of a camp that can be almost as much fun as the hunt itself. Here are some rules of hunting from a camp.

1. Pack everything you need and bring it all with you. Leaving it all at home doesn’t help but happens more frequently than you think. It will never fail that someone will forget something and everyone will bring too much of something else. Trigger lock keys are always left at home and everyone must bring at least two dozen eggs to take up all the room in the fridge so there is room for nothing else. Bringing an extra gun is never a bad idea. Sometimes it is nice to have a choice if conditions change or accidents happen, or someone leaves theirs at home.

2. Whoever decided deer season should happen after Halloween was a genius. That was always my department as I was either young enough to trick or treat or had my own kids to take out. It is very important to ensure there is never a shortage of snacks.

3. There will always be a fight over who gets the best room, bed and who has to share with who. This is complicated by the person who snores and the person who makes barn animal noises and talks all night.

4. The hot water tank is going to run out of hot water. Repeatedly. There will cause issues over the order of the showers because inevitably someone is going to get one that ends as ice cold torture, its just a matter of who and when.

5. Someone is going to get wet, someone is going to freeze, and someone is going to get an owie or two. Bring extra clothes, lot of heat pads and lots of bandaids.

6. Once the hunt becomes successful someone is going to get to be the one to do the gutting. They are going to get a few knife kisses and be a really big mess (cue the extra clothes here).

7. At some camps there are a few drinks and some camps a few more and that is where rule #8 comes in to place the most.

8. The final rule of camp is what happens at camp stays at camp. It doesn’t matter what kind of camp you go to there will always be something that happens that does not leave that camp.

Whether your hunt is over or hasn’t started yet-here’s to the big game hunts of 2019, no matter how you hunt or where you hunt may you have memories that last a lifetime!