Tag soup

 My hunting season ended, not with a triumphant win at the end, but with a quiet acceptance when hunting hours ended on this past Saturday. 

I had never heard of this phrase, "tag soup," until I joined a couple facebook hunting groups last year. 

Basically, it means you weren't able to use any or all of your tags for your hunting season. 

On Saturday my husband and I were in our respective blinds, waiting for *something* to come by. We didn't see even a squirrel.  It was snowing a little bit.  The deer may have been bedded down. 

I took a selfie while I was in the blind, while feeling pretty confident that a dream buck would cross into my line of sight and provide me with the perfect shot.  It had to happen! 

I was bundled up in my warmest hat, hand warmers in a hand muff, mittens, extra mittens, a heated jacked and a hot water bottle tucked into my coat.  I was sitting warm while I waited for the minor miracle I was praying for. 

Then hunting hours ended and I sat there kind of like "Wow, this is not how I expected the day to end." 

I sent a quick, last message to my husband, letting him know I was heading back, and then I left my blind for the last time of the season.  We had already decided if we didn't see anything on Saturday we weren't going to go out on Sunday. 

It was a slow walk back to the house. I kept stopping because I wanted to pause and listen to the woods.  I stopped a few times to take photos. 

My footprints to the blind and the ones I just made as I was walking back to the house. 

One of my very first seasons hunting I didn't fill my buck tag. I don't even remember how long ago that was.  Gosh, I was SO green that first season.  Until this year I've managed to fill all the tags I purchased for the season.

I was able to fill my antlerless tag earlier in the season, so it wasn't a total bust, but I kind of hurts to buy a tag and then not fill it.  

This is the first season I've gone out the entire season. It was a good year for it, weather-wise.  I'm a wimp when it comes to cold. I won't complain about it much, but I don't like it.  

Sunday we went to our blinds and packed up what we didn't want to leave out there, and took down my husband's blind, which seemed surreal in a way. 

After we took down the portable blind.  Like a crop circle. Snow circle?

Filling up the ATV trailer.  

We also shut down the game cams and took the SD cards. Later in the day my husband sat down with the card from my camera.  

Look who showed up after midnight.