You’ve been introduced to one of the dogs, now let’s introduce you to the witty, independent, blond hair blue-eyed mini-me.

I wore them to do everything. Those generic black rubber boots you get at the local feed store. In our case it was The Big R. This was the 1990s. We didn’t have fancy prints and super bright colors in a town of just over 5000. They were cheap. Easy to put on and off for chores. Fun to fill up with the hose water and try to walk in them in the summer time. Quite honestly, the best “shoes” ever made.

They’re the farm, ranch and fish fashion footwear. County fair staple. They’re even great for hunting. And I am not just talking about waterfowl hunting. They’re great in the Brooks Range of Alaska chasing caribou.

None of you should be surprised that our daughter loves rubber boots too. Since she could walk, I’ve made sure she’s had a pair. Have you ever tried to keep your kid’s feet dry in the snow when they’re learing to walk? Rubber boots with wool socks. Keep them relatively clean while turkey hunting? Or any hunting really? Rubber boots. They don’t want to wear clothes but don’t want to be outside barefoot? Again, rubber boots. And, a fashion statement. It’s too bad that at my age rubber boots and underwear are not appropriate attire for public. Such a classic, and easy wardrobe to maintain.

We’ve had unicorn prints. Rainbows. Sparkles. Their feet grow so fast! And they can be expensive. Buy the ones YOU like before your kid develops preferences and wants something out of your budget.

I have this pair of Xtratuf deck boots that I take everwhere with me. My sister-in-law sent me a photo of an entire lineup of them on sale once and I sent money and said bring me some! They’re absolutely awesome. I’ll probably never need another pair in my life. Well, never say never.

Last July when our family was in Valdez to go fishing, we were burning up time at The Prospector looking for a beanie before we headed out onto the water. We’d been inland and warm for a couple days and while we had the best weather in Valdez known to man, I was a little chilly. But on the back wall of the store was a whole spot of kid’s Xtratuf and other brands of rubber boots. At the time, Morgan’s color of choice was purple.

They had a purple pair.

In her size.

I squeeled with glee, Jason rolled his eyes, and we bought $65 rubber boots two sizes too big for a toddler. I was determined to get our money’s worth. She wore them home on the airplane. She’s still wearing them over a year later and I’m calling this a win.

Someone looked like a pro on that boat that week and it wasn’t me.

She took to the open water in Prince William Sound for overnight fishing like she was meant to be there. Her great-great grandfather was a fisherman by trade out of Ilwaco, Washington. And, her great grandmother on my side has been fishing since she could walk. She does come by it naturally. Because both Jason’s family and mine grew up farming, blue-collar jobbing and working outdoors, it is no surprise she is good at whatever we do.

We get asked how we get away with taking her hunting so often. I’ll start off by saying you cannot decide someone else’s hard. So while it looks easy from the outside, a lot of the time it is not. However, some might call us lucky.

Morgan’s been hunting I think since conception. I’m pretty sure an elk hunt brought her to life. At four months pregnant, I hunted javelina and quail. At eight months, I finally connected with my first turkey. What a waddle I had going on back then. A couple weeks later she arrived into this world with a fervor for life I’d never seen before.

I bought her a Savage Rascal single shot .22LR when she was a month old. She’s now shooting it with assistance and quite well actually.

When she was 8 weeks old, we helped a friend on an antelop hunt in 90 degree temps in Arizona’s unit 10 and I just dressed her in a onsie and carried a portable fan. A couple weeks later, she was with us as I loosed an arrow at a buck and missed. And again that winter, it was back to javelina camp. In a drafty toy hauler. With a crawler who liked to pull herself up at 7 months old.

Camp was beginning to get fun in a different way now. There were two infants, one toddler and a couple of elementary schoolers running around. And something like seven dogs. It’s a lot to watch out for. So what did we do? We hauled pack-n-plays to our glassing knobs. We had Daniel Day Care. (IYKYK) There’s this thing called an octogon, or at least we dubbed it that. Two of the littles didn’t always get along and we forced them into close proximity in this pop-up octogon shaped playpen while we took turns glassing, breast feeding, having snacks and wiping butts. Javelina still died. Babies partied until midnight. Germs were shared. A new generation of hunters was blossoming.

The grandmas do make it to camp and we do leave the littles in camp a day or two, though Morgan doesn’t always want to get left behind anymore. This year, there were ten in camp, the oldest aged ten and on his first hunt and the youngest, 6 months. It seriously does take a village.

As a four year old, Morgan has been on five, technically six javelina hunts, several quail quests, two pronghorn hunts, three deer hunts all north of the big ditch (another coming up this fall on the Kofa), a handful of OTC archery deer hunts (where she watched me miss or run the bucks off while trying to get close with her in tow), four turkey hunts, a desert bighorn sheep hunt, a sandhill crane hunt (another coming this fall), two elk hunts, a bear hunt, several predator stands and a dove hunt. She’s been fishing at a couple local waters, Lake Powell for bass and on the ocean for Halibut, cod and rockfish. She’s even hosted a youth deer camp.

She had a love/hate relationship with her first fishing experience. Luckily this rod was retrievable. And since then, things have gotten much better.

My favorite OTC archery hunt memory is when she was just over a year old. I took her out in a backpack, just her and I on the second to last day of the hunt after the rain let up for the afternoon. We located a herd of deer and I was working my way in. After 19 days of those deer being chased I was elated that this might work. At about 96 yards, she piped up “OOH DEER!” and they all thundered away. In the silence and long shadows, she then stated “Uh Oh” and all I could do was laugh. This prompted a continual chorous of uh-ohs all the way back to the pickup.

We did leave her behind on Maui when we hunted goats and pigs and we did leave her behind while we hunted axis deer on Lanai. Logistically, it wasn’t impossible to take her but certainly inconvenient and would slash our potential success rates.

Scolded. That is what I got for that.

She hasn’t let us forget about leaving her while we hunted for deer eventhough she got to swim in the ocean and see the turtles daily on Maui with grandma, auntie, and her great aunt and uncle. Lesson learned. Being guilted by a four year old is not for the faint of heart.

I’ll probably leave her again sometime though. I am still more stubborn than she is.

The reality though is that not every tag is going to get filled. And that’s okay.

Whether or not you want my advice I’ll give it. Take your kids along. Need help with clothing or equipment to make it easier? Ask me. I’ll share.

This isn’t about the groceries. Those are cheaper at the super market anyway. Create the memories. Create the lifestyle. Create the habits of good, solid, ethical hunting and fishing. Wake early. Walk and talk softly. Tell them why you’re doing what you’re doing even before they can talk or even understand. They’re listening. They’re watching. Thank the animal before the grip and grin. Let them touch it. Let them explore. Let them see, hear, smell and taste the products of your spoils.

When we are lucky enough to connect, Morgan is the first to cheer. The first to dig into the guts. The first to tell everyone the story of the hunt.

She’s also already the world’s greatest eyes in the sky behind glass. I thought I would just let her destroy the $5 toy binoculars that really don’t magnify anything let alone offer a clear picture. I certainly underestimated her astute glassing abilities and now she’s got a pair of Bantams to grapple when she hasn’t already commandeered the 15s.

Besides being the world’s most awesome hunting partner, our daughter is quite the mechanic. She knows what a phillips screwdriver is and what it does. She understands a drill and hammer and nails. She even wields a paintbrush with an abundance of confidence. When Jason brings home equipment on a trailer, she rushes to unclip the lynch pins and tries to haul out a ramp that weighs three times as much as her on her own. She watches you once and takes on the task herself like a seasoned professional. I wonder at times where along the way adults become so inept at basic life skills when a toddler performs them with ease? I mean, she already drives me home from her school when I pick her up at noon.

I do not envy the boy who will try to win her heart. He has his work cut out for him.

But I have to remind myself all the time that she’s four. She still throws fits. She still refuses basic asks. She still needs help wiping her butt. Needs us to kiss the boo-boos. Asks me to sing her to sleep when she’s having a hard time settling. She’s allowed to have bad days just as we are allowed to have bad days.

I realize this is getting long, but there are a couple more stories to tell. Yes. I am gushing on our little girl. She’s awesome.

We hit the KOFA for Jason’s sister’s sheep hunt last fall. Forecast called for rain. I packed the rubber boots but not the rain gear thinking that it wouldn’t be that bad. It never was in November when I lived down there. Boy was I wrong. And a story for another day, we ended up with a kitten right before this hunt started. So, we took ourselves, the pointer sisters, (one with a broken carpal and a new orthotic brace) the kitten and the camp trailer to unit 45A.

Epic.

It rained. A lot. Almost daily. I’m glad I packed the boots and I dressed Morgan in a garbage bag.

Puddles everywhere.

We left this hunt to hit Wilcox for a sandhill crane hunt over Thanksgiving. We rolled in after dark, set up camp and switched gears to shotguns and insulated layers. The alarm would go off at 3:15am.

At 4:00am, we caravanned to a field and let the headlights shine into corn stubble. Part of hunting with our favorite outfitter for this is helping set up hundreds of decoys and brushing in the blind with tumbleweeds. This will not be the first time that I’ll mention that a three and a half year old outshined grown men. Morgan carried stakes and decoys into the field. Helped unfold stools in the blind. Made friends with those she deemed safe (Marsupial owner exclusively seemed safe to her).

Then the sitting part began.

It was still dark. I forgot the activity books and the tablet with copious amounts of Bluey episodes loaded onto it. There were 15 hunters and a handful more people in this blind all touching shoulder to shoulder. I felt like an idiot while anxiously awaiting a meltdown.

During the next seven hours, amid fog so thick no birds died, while grown men bitched and moaned about paying for a zero-kill guarantee, an executive toddler subjected every hunter to a relentless verbal thrashing. She even shit-talked the guy in charge of this outfit back at camp and told him his feet were stinky when she walked by him and noticed he was removing his boots.

We would do this again for two more days except I remembered the tablet which she barely used. Making fun of people who can’t shoot a shotgun was apparently more exciting.

Every morning without fail, she helped carry decoys to the field in the dark. Every mid-day, she was the first to the field to pick up and carry decoys back to the truck. And all with a smile on her face. All in purple boots. An executive at three years five months old.

Here’s where the boots really shine. We processed the few birds that fell from the sky on Turkey Day and wrapped up camp in time to make it somewhere for Turkey dinner. I had shot a greater sandhill so we were headed to a taxidermist who graciously waited for our arrival on the holiday. Again. Puddles everywhere.

Muddy puddles.

I stripped Morgan out of her clothes, minus her wool underlayers and boots and let her go to town. And why not? She had made this one of the most memorable hunts to date and clothes will wash. She wouldn’t be this little ever again.

Morgan jumped and splashed and kicked and giggled with glee in the muddiest of puddles and her yellow pants turned brown. Spray-n-wash to the rescue.

But I’d let her do it again. Every day.

Of all the boots I’ve purchased and all the boots I’m going to purchase, I think a little pair of purple Xtratuf are going to be my favorite. The most cherished by me, and hopefully by her.

And even when she’s grown and moves on, she will always be my little girl in rubber boots.

Every day as she gets older and even more fiercly independent, I thank my lucky stars for the blessing that is everything Morgan. She’s our favorite adventure.