In preparing for the upcoming issue of Vicksburg Living magazine, I’ve had the pleasure of swapping stories with some of the area’s most active hunters.

If the word “hunters” conjures up images of camo-clad old men with buffalo check shirts and safety orange trucker caps, you’re sorely mistaken. No, in this issue, I’ll be focusing on sportswomen, their trophies and their triumphs.

As a girl who grew up in the hunting woods, it’s a special assignment for me.

This week is also a bittersweet one, as Thursday marks the second anniversary of my father’s death. As the only girl in a sea of boy cousins, many of my fondest memories with my father were spent in the hunting woods.

I remember how excited I was to “shoot” a little spike buck at age 7, even though he held the gun and took aim and all I did was pull the trigger. Daddy was proud, too, and when it came time to mount my trophy on the wall, he proudly cut out a wooden heart on which to mount the antlers — and painted the heart Pepto-Bismol pink.

As I got older, and admittedly lazier, I was less eager to rise before the sun to sit in the hunting woods. But every time I asked, Daddy was there and ready to take my brother and me to our lease in South Alabama.

I loved getting out of the truck ever-so-quietly, stepping gingerly in the footprints my father left behind and climbing into the treeline or setting up a blind on the ground and blending in while the world woke up around us. Sometimes, I’d get bored and braid pine straw or take out my little hot-pink pocketknife and whittle a stick I’d found.

Too many times, I fell asleep leaning on my father’s shoulder, but he never complained or made me move.

Perhaps as memorable as the trips to the woods alongside my father were the stories he’d come home and tell. I vividly remember waking up on Saturday mornings in the fall to the smell of homemade biscuits baking in a cast-iron skillet, accompanied by local honey and whatever fruit preserves Daddy made the summer before (usually red plum from the tree in our yard.)

The whole family would crowd around the breakfast table and listen intently as Daddy detailed each aspect of the hunt, from the direction the wind was blowing to the food plot he was hunting and the number of wild boar or fox squirrels he saw. On days when he harvested a deer or a turkey, we celebrated. Regardless of the fruitfulness of the hunt, I tried to hang onto every word as he told us what happened.

His storytelling skill is something I’m grateful my brother and I inherited.

The last time I went hunting with my father was Easter weekend 2017. I needed some quiet time in the woods, and it was turkey season. Thankfully, I brought a friend who snuck behind me and captured photos of the hunt.

I had no idea that a short two years later, Daddy would be diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer or that four years after our last hunt, I’d tell him goodbye for the last time.

While my father may no longer be on earth with me, I am so thankful for the values he instilled in me and my brother during our quiet mornings in the woods.