Our blog, On Top Plot was developed to share our family’s story of deer hunting in northern Minnesota.  My husband and I have been hunting there for more than 40 years. We are part of a larger group that has become our hunting family. If you would like to know more about that story, you can see our posts under Our Story.  We finally purchased land and have begun to develop wildlife food plots; mainly for deer hunting, but would like to draw in wildlife for bear hunting, grouse and turkey hunting too.

The idea to write out this adventure started with a discussion last summer.  My husband and I were talking with the son and daughter-in-law of a friend.  She was telling us that their first date was sitting in a box stand for deer hunting.  She then went on to share that she didn’t know anything about hunting, but agreed to this interesting first date because she wanted to learn about hunting.  That intrigued me.  I hadn’t thought about someone ‘learning from scratch’ to hunt in many years.  While we are absolutely always learning something new about hunting (don’t we always want to learn more about something we love to do?), it’s not a start from scratch kind of learning. My father-in-law had been an avid hunter.  My husband grew up hunting and thinking about it, all of his closer friends are/have been hunters too. 

I grew up with some hunting in the family.  Definitely deer hunting, some times small game.  My dad was very traditional, I don’t think it ever occurred to him that a daughter would enjoy going on the hunting trips.  To be fair, I never asked to go deer hunting, it never occurred to me either. 

Marrying into hunting, it became a large part of our life.  With 2 sons who both enjoy hunting, it has continued to be a large part of our life.  A daughter-in-law who has become part of the hunting tradition and five grandchildren later, here we are.  Our oldest grandson loves hunting.  When he was younger, most of his clothes were camo in one way or another.   We’ve had some pretty philosophical discussions with our second grandson.  He is not sure he wants to do any hunting.  He asks many questions about the outdoors and has an interest in all animals.  Because we are a hunting family, guns are part of our life.  He has done target shooting, knows how to handle a gun, knows the risks of using a gun.  Granddaughters are also learning the rules of gun handling from the very beginning.  Whether or not they become hunters, they have been learning to have a love of outdoors and nature. They will each make their own decisions about hunting.

I don’t plan to share much about guns.  I think there are many reasons to choose one gun over another for hunting.  What you hunt, where you hunt, how you hunt are all just the first factors in those decisions.  We are all aware of the gun controversy and I don’t plan to engage in any of those discussions with this blog. 

Thinking back on that conversation last summer, I realized that I do know quite a bit about hunting, but certainly much less than ‘the guys’ in my life.  I have learned what I know from them.  I never have taken much time to do the ‘research’ about hunting; taken the time to learn more about all of the preparation and planning of the deer hunt.  

This blog will be written as we learn about our hunting land; how we bought it, what to do with it and how to make it draw in wildlife. There are so many details in the whole process. And so much we need to learn to maximize our hunting opportunities, so much that I want to learn and be the one to ‘teach’ my family. This is for those hunters that also want to learn more. And, maybe for the non-hunters who are just curious about wildlife, the northern Minnesota woods or how to plan for hunting seasons. And it is the story of family, our family and the family we’ve made with very special people. The hunting has been good over the years, the experience of hunting is priceless.