'Hunting' with Xay

This is Axel again. One of the real downsides of living overseas is there is no real hunting. Either you live in Africa or you don't hunt. Honestly the US and Canada are the last true places where hunting actually can happen. NOT Nepal.

So being a Bromley and wanting to introduce my son Xay (4) the finer points of hunting, I decided to get a mountain sheep as they are being sold here for the Dashain festival. I went to the market a few days before and selected the biggest one with good horns.

Don't feel bad. ALL of these sheep are going to be sacrificed to the Goddess Durga in the coming days. I was just going to do ours in another manner...

I had my Gardner take the sheep to his house the day before and drove up there with Xay to go 'hunting'. You can't use guns here so we had to use a spear gun I used to go spear fishing in Dubai.

I went into the forest near his house and tied the animal to a tree by the horns and then went back and got Xay. We 'snuck' into the forest and when he heard it we crept up on it like Indians. Or Nepalis I guess...

'Sneaking' up on the 'wild' mountain sheep...

We got close to it and I helped him aim the spear gun as it is pretty powerful for the little guy to shoot.

Aiming together

And the first shot was a hit! The spear went through his back probably piercing the animal's lungs.

Good Shot Xay! Nice hit!!! He is pretty excited right about now. Xay that is, not the sheep... You can see the spear coming out left side.

Then I quickly ran down and finished off the ram with a knife my brother Jake made for me years ago. Cutting the jugular vein puts the animal out pretty quickly.

One knife cut for the rope and one for the neck. Total time from when it got hit to when it died was about four minutes.

Xay was pretty dang excited! He wasn't put off by all the blood either. I was proud of him.

You can see how happy the little guy is. He is REALLY proud of himself here.

So then after killing it and getting it up the hill all the on lookers came over to help us get it back to the car.

Ramesh, my Gardner is the one looking back. I forget how big I am around these people until I see pictures.

Walking down to the car. Xay was talking up a storm.

So after the animal was in the car, Ramesh wanted us to eat lunch at his house so we did. We had been there before. Still it is always a trip to see how they live. Kitchen and cows (behind them) in the downstairs and they sleep (all of them) upstairs. Dirt floors and flies galore.

Us having a post hunt meal of rice and dall.

Ramesh's family. The wife is younger than I am.

'Xavier Bromley, I can't believe you got such a big sheep! How did you shoot it?' Mom adding some excitement.

Then we got home and Terah's Young Women's sleep over activity was still on going. Xay was triumphant in retelling the story of what happened to Heavah and mom and all the girls.

On the way back I bought one of the medical plastic bodies that show the insides of the human body. You can see the plastic organs next to the real ones on the blue plastic.

Xay holding the head while I gut the body

Young Women's activities Nepali (or Bromley) style.

The heart really is the best part. One plastic, one real. Showing the chambers. We ate it that night. Xay kept saying 'let me hold that part dad, I am not grossed out!'. And he wasn't.

So all and all it was a good day. We got to have a great father-son outing. He got to have his first kill and we got some meat, a fleece (if I can figure out how to tan it) and Xay will hang the skull and horns in his room once the flies and maggots pick it clean and I bleach it. It was a pretty good day.